James Lunney

[Appointment of Judges, May 6th, 2003]

Madam Speaker, I would like to commend the member for Charlesbourg—Jacques-Cartier for bringing forth this excellent motion.

It is an issue that Canadians are indeed concerned about. There was a huge public outcry in British Columbia, for example, because judges failed to respond to child pornography with the John Robin Sharpe case and refused to prosecute any child pornography cases. People were outraged because of that.

People have an understanding that it is the role of Parliament to make the laws. It is the role of police to enforce the laws, and it is the role of judges to do the sentencing and to settle disputes where those arise.

I want to commend the member. It is an excellent motion and he will find a lot of support for it. We think there should be a review of the way judges are selected. He was recommending that a committee look at the various options.

I do not know if he will have time to respond, but I wondered if he was also looking at a committee that would review the judges themselves? Was he recommending that the committee would be involved in making recommendations to the House? Finally, was he considering, as one of the options, that members might even consider some of these controversial issues that judges get snarled with if they involve social concerns, and make recommendations to the House so that Parliament would make the decisions and not the judges?

[An Act to amend the Criminal Code (cruelty to animals and firearms) and the Firearms Act, May 6th, 2003]

Mr. Speaker, the war museum in Nanaimo has been collecting military pattern weapons. It has at least three firearms inspectors who are licensed there. It is collecting military pattern weapons from Canada's history: the Boer War, World War I and World War II. However, now, it is not allowed to receive weapons from the public because it cannot transfer weapons that are not registered.

We have been trying to get this sorted out and I wonder if the member might have heard about such problems developing. We even hear that gun safety courses are being harassed and stopped by the government. What is the government's agenda?

[Petitions, April 30th, 2003]

Mr. Speaker, I have a bundle of petitions to present today on the subject of freedom of choice in natural health products and personal health care.

There are approximately 30,000 signatures and more coming in daily from coast to coast. The action called for would be accomplished by passing my private member's Bill C-420.

These Canadians are calling upon Parliament to recognize that natural health products are foods, not drugs, and that access to these safe products should not be unduly curtailed by government bureaucrats and antiquated legislation.

They call upon Parliament to recognize that the weight of modern scientific evidence confirms the mitigation and prevention of many diseases and disorders through the judicious use of natural health products.

The petitioners ask Parliament to restore freedom of choice in natural health products by deleting subsections 3(1) and (2), and schedule A of the Food and Drugs Act.

Private member's Bill C-420, currently before the House, addresses the concerns of these citizens, the recommendations of the Standing Committee on Health and the Office of Natural Health Products' transition team that reported in March 2000.

It is my hope that all members of the House will support this initiative and give Canadians the freedom of choice in natural health products for which they are looking.

[Cod Fishery, April 29th, 2003]

Madam Speaker, I will be sharing my time tonight with the member for Skeena.

We congratulate the member for Labrador. We know that for him this is not just another issue, this is a heartfelt issue. We also congratulate the member for Bonavista—Trinity—Conception for bringing this very important issue to the House tonight on behalf of his constituents in the province of Newfoundland and Labrador.

This is not just an issue for Newfoundlanders. This is an issue that affects all Canadians. Newfoundlanders are our neighbours, although a little removed from where I live on Vancouver Island, but this is an issue on which we need to stand together. Canadians need to recognize that we are all Canadians and that even though we do not face the same realities every day, we can identify with life issues, the day to day, bread and butter issues of our neighbours, and that we need to stretch ourselves to do so.

The issue today is about the cod closure. A few days ago the minister announced the closure of three cod stocks in the Gulf of St. Lawrence and in the northeast of Newfoundland. He talked about bringing in conservation measures, about creating seal exclusion zones and no trawling zones, and about closing the recreational fishery in the Gulf of St. Lawrence and in the northeast of Newfoundland and Labrador for the next three years.

He has talked about community based economic development assistance of some $44 million over two years. He has talked about a $6 million investment in scientific research to evaluate and assess the impact of seals.

That is what the debate is about tonight. We heard a very impassioned plea from the member opposite on behalf of his constituents. I do not know how it can be said better than that. A lot of data has been presented tonight and most of the issues have been addressed but we want to bring a perspective to this debate from the other side of Canada because fisheries decisions do affect communities. They affect the communities that depend on natural resources. These decisions that are taken affect the stocks on the west coast as they do on the east coast.

I am pleased to say that up until recently I served with my colleagues on the fisheries committee for about two years. I appreciated the support we received from the committee on a very important fisheries issue in my riding involving the hake fishery. I appreciate that the committee took the trouble to come out to hear the issues on the west coast. The minister made a right decision on that fishery and we appreciated that. The fishery was managed on shore as it ought to be. There are still issues with that fishery but we appreciate that decision and the support of our colleagues.

However, in the same way, we on the west coast want to identify with the people of Newfoundland in their issues. This is a decision that involves all Canadians. It is a Canadian resource. It involves the custodial management of the Grand Banks which is part of our continental shelf. It is part of the shore on the continent on which we live and it is one of the most prolific fishing grounds that the world has ever known. Of course the closure is not directly out on the Grand Banks part, it is more inshore, but the issues overlap on the two areas.

In introducing this I want to allude to a couple of fisheries issues on the west coast because they are management issues. In fisheries management sometimes we make good decisions and sometimes, unfortunately, we make bad decisions, but whatever the decisions are, they influence people's livelihoods and it is the bad ones that are the most costly.

We have had our experience with bad fisheries decisions on the west coast and I will allude to one that is very current: the recent disaster in the fishery on the Fraser River. The minister just recently acknowledged the rather disastrous management issues on the Fraser River sockeye run. It is one of the largest runs in history. Some 15 million sockeye salmon swim up the Fraser River but only 3 million are allowed to be taken because of conservation concerns.

Some 12 million fish were allowed to swim by. It was about a $200 million loss to the commercial fishing fleet which has suffered greatly over the last number of years. The minister and his officials have now recognized that it was a mistake but the cost to the local fishermen and the cost in watching this huge resource swim past and not being allowed to catch them was a decision that really hurt the community and the people who were most affected by the fishery.

Another issue on which I want to touch base relates to aquaculture. The people on the west coast, as well as on the east coast, particularly in Newfoundland and Labrador and in New Brunswick, have big concerns relating to aquaculture. In my particular riding it is a huge issue right now. The concerns are science related. I am very pleased that the DFO is putting money into more science for aquaculture issues in relation to the interaction between wild stocks and aquaculture.

We have made bad decisions and good decisions. The provincial government had a moratorium on aquaculture sites because of the concerns of the day. However for many years new sites were not allowed and, frankly, that was a bad decision because it compounded some of the problems when the aquaculture sites were not allowed to relocate to less sensitive areas.

Right now there is a big issue with proposed siting all along the Alberni Inlet, which is a high traffic area for commercial and recreational fishing and in sight of a huge population. It is not a good location for siting. Maybe the forest industry could learn something about clearcutting right to the edge of the highway.

It was not a good decision and we are on the record as being opposed to that decision. We can have aquaculture in a lot of places but not in a high traffic area in the middle of a commercial fishery with a huge wild salmon run.

I want to go back to the issue of the day which has affected our friends from Newfoundland and the people on the east coast. Other members have addressed the fact that groundfish stocks were at an all time low in 1992 due to mismanagement and overfishing, but other issues are germane to this discussion today.

Historically, the people went to Newfoundland for one reason: the abundance of the fishing resource in one of the most prolific bodies of water on the face of the earth. It fell to us as Canadians and to the people of Newfoundland and Labrador to manage those resources but, sadly, we failed at being good managers of the resource.

In looking at this over the last number of years we can see why the stocks, in spite of the closure in 1992, failed to return. These have been alluded to but we need to go over them quickly.

If we do not get serious about rebuilding the cod stocks the communities will literally disappear. We do not need more Newfoundland communities in Edmonton, in Fort McMurray or in other places where Newfoundlanders find work. Frankly, we feel that on the west coast as well because, sadly, many of our young people, because of the downturns in forestry and fisheries, have ended up living in a province where they would prefer not to live but where they had to relocate. We want Newfoundlanders to have a chance to benefit from the resources in their area.

There are two main reasons why we failed to see the stocks recover. The obvious one, which we heard mentioned tonight, is the seal population. If we are to make a decision as Canadians, we need to make a courageous decision.

We have heard it said tonight that it is estimated that some 7.5 million to 8 million seals are in that area now, an area where a sustainable herd would be about 2.5 million seals. Each of these seals eat about a tonne of fish per year. That is a lot of tonnes of fish being eaten by seals. As has been said in debate before, seals do not eat the whole fish. They just take a bite out of the belly, eat the choice parts and the rest is left to rot on the sea bottom. It is a tragic waste.

I can well imagine how farmers would feel if wolves were jumping over fences and tearing the guts out of the sheep and lambs in the fields. What is the parliamentary word for this? If the wolves were eviscerating the sheep and leaving them bleeding and dying in the pastures I think there would be a call from Canadians to take action and cull the wolf packs that were taking out so many sheep.

As Canadians we need to do the right thing. We need to encourage the minister. He has increased the cull on seals to 350,000 a year over three years but it is not enough. We need to be realistic. We need to deal with the predation issue.

We also need to deal with the overfishing issue, the foreign overfishing off the nose and tail of the Grand Banks. The stocks do not stop at the 200 mile limit. They follow the continental shelf out to where the food supply is plentiful. With foreign overfishing beyond our 200 mile limit, the stocks go to where there is abundant food and they get siphoned off. It is like going down the drain. Foreign fishers keep taking our stocks.

That is one of the huge issues that must be addressed. The fisheries committee made an excellent report, recommending custodial management. Canada must do the right thing. It is our continental shelf. We must do the right thing by taking custodial management, managing the stocks, and giving the people of Newfoundland and Labrador a chance to prosper and profit from the resources. They can come back if we manage them properly.

[Food and Drugs Act, April 9th, 2003]

Madam Speaker, I am thankful for the very good question. Simple natural products should not be classed as drugs because they have a physiological effect. Whether it is garlic, L-tryptophan, chromium picolinate or melatonin, these simple natural health products should not be restricted from Canadians because they have a physiological effect, as they have been to date. It needs to change and we are hoping that Canadians will have access to the health products for which they are looking.

[Food and Drugs Act, April 9th, 2003]

Madam Speaker, we have been hearing from Canadians across the board. We have had communications from Prince Edward Island. We have had petitions from Vancouver Island. As a matter of fact we have almost 33,000 signatures on petitions that are at the clerk of petition's office right now. Unfortunately it does take time to process so many and they were not ready to be presented in the House today. Those largely came from Alberta, British Columbia, Manitoba and Saskatchewan. I know that more are coming. As news of this initiative spreads, I know we will be hearing from more Canadians across the country.

I am hearing impassioned responses. I even had one call from Virginia. People are concerned about this issue. It is Canadians I am concerned about because they deserve the right to be well. The products that are being withheld from them by the directorate are products that build healthy Canadians.

Healthy Canadians are not the ones who fall victims to diseases. If they have a strong immune system, they are not the ones ending up in the emergency wards. They are not the ones who are developing the chronic degenerative diseases. They save Canadians money.

I have a little anecdote in talking about the two models, the disease management model and the remediation prevention model. A physician in my riding spoke to a rotary club and I happened to be in attendance. It was during the rotating strikes in medical offices.

The first remark he made stuck in my mind. He said that physicians are tired of being accused of not being more proactive in wellness and prevention. He said that they are not trained for that, that they are trained to fight sickness and disease and there is lots of it out there. That is how he started his presentation. It made an impression on me. If I could have, I would have liked to interrupt him to say, “But Doc, do you not get it? All the early interventions gag the signs of failure in the early stages”.

If we have a fever we take an antipyretic. If we have a pain we take an analgesic. If we have a muscle spasm, we take a muscle relaxant. All of the early interventions are designed to gag the symptoms. What has become of us as Canadians is that our health care system has become a school of firefighters specializing in smashing alarms rather than addressing the real problem.

Unfortunately the remediation and prevention side of treatment is largely outside the public financing domain. People have to pay to see chiropractors for their back pain, which by the way, health care economists tell us could save about $2 billion annually rather than looking to drugs and surgery to solve a problem that is largely biomechanical. Canadians are paying to see naturopaths. They are paying to see massage therapists. Sadly, it seems the remediation and prevention side of things is largely outside the disease management system of payment.

We need to see a genuine synthesis of treatment options. Canadians need the right to get treatments that work. They need access to simple, natural health care products that ameliorate their condition, that build healthy bodies and keep them well. That will significantly relate to the health care expenditures we have.

Frankly, Mr. Romanow did not have an answer when I asked him the question. He basically said that he had heard that from Canadians but that it is really up to the provinces to decide how to spend their money. My point is that the provinces are so strapped feeding a disease management model they have not got the money to invest where the savings are in prevention and remediation. We need to reconsider what we are doing in Canadians' interest.

[Food and Drugs Act, April 9th, 2003]

Madam Speaker, it is a pleasure for me to introduce Bill C-420, an act to amend the Food and Drugs Act. This is an important bill to Canadians.It is also a simple and clean bill.

Bill C-420 responds to the requests of Canadians, beginning with attempts by Health Canada to regulate natural health products and to put them under a drug directorate that started in the nineties. In 1997 there was a huge outcry from the public in response to this over-regulation of natural health products. Over one million people communicated their displeasure to the government that natural health products such as vitamins, minerals, and amino acids, were harmless vitamin compounds with low adverse reactions. People did not want them to be brought under the onerous responsibility of a drug directorate.

In the 36th Parliament, the minister of the day called on the health committee to look into this. The health committee heard from Canadians and listened to witnesses from across the country. The committee tabled its report called “Natural Health Products: A New Vision” in November 1998. It contained some 53 recommendations. The provisions of Bill C-420 are taken basically out of the committee's recommendations and out of the subsequent work that was done.

Recommendation No. 36 stated:

Health Canada, subsequently, conduct a study with the participation of representatives from consumer groups, the food, natural health products and pharmaceutical industries, and health practitioners to determine whether subsections 3(1) and 3(2) of the Food and Drugs Act or all of the diseases listed in Schedule A should be deleted.

Recommendation No. 53 stated:

The Minister appoint, immediately, a transition team responsible for ensuring that the new framework is established quickly.

Bill C-420 addresses these recommendations. Subsections 3(1) and 3(2) and Schedule A would be deleted.

A transition team was assembled and it carried the ball a little further by creating the Office of Natural Health Products. The final report of the Office of Natural Health Products transition team was tabled on March 31, 2000. The report was the cumulation of a response to the outcry from more than one million Canadians. We know that those concerned are even greater in number today.

The transition team recommended that Schedule A of the Food and Drugs Act be removed. It lists a number of diseases, disorders or abnormal physical states for which treatments, preventions or cures cannot be advertised or sold to the general public, and in particular, makes reference to subsections 3(1) and 3(2) of the Food and Drugs Act which state:

1. (1) No person shall advertise any food, drug, cosmetic or device to the general public as a treatment, preventative or cure for any of the diseases, disorders or abnormal physical states referred to in Schedule A.

(2) No person shall sell any food, drug, cosmetic or device (a) that is represented by label, or (b) that the person advertises to the general publicas a treatment, preventative or cure for any of the diseases, disorders or abnormal physical states referred to in Schedule A.

With regard to Schedule A, the transition team recommended that “more importantly, the schedule does not reflect contemporary scientific thought. The weight of modern scientific evidence confirms the mitigation and prevention of many diseases and disorders listed in Schedule A through the judicious use of NHPs. It is time the regulations and legislation reflect the prevailing science”.

A recommendation was made to remove all diseases listed in Schedule A and that subsections 3(1) and 3(2) should be revoked through legislative renewal initiatives.

My bill addresses the concerns of Canadians and the concerns identified by the health committee in the 36th Parliament. It implements the recommendations in the final report of the Office of Natural Health Products transition team.

There has been quite a lot of interest in the bill since its first reading in the House on March 20. There have been responses from across the country already because Canadians are concerned.

Frankly Canadians feel betrayed by what has happened in the interim. The good consultative process was moving in the right direction and Canadians were satisfied that the government had listened. However the Canada Gazette part I came out with the consequences of the implementation.

Canadians were led to believe there would be three categories: food, natural health products and drugs. We are finding that in fact there are only two categories: food and drugs. Natural health products have been put under the drug directorate as a subclass of drugs with the attendant responsibilities for clinical trials prior to any claims being made. This is a betrayal of all the consultation.

The bill seeks to address the concerns of Canadians. These products are ones that have traditional uses and have been in use for many years. The adverse reaction rate is very minimal, hardly measurable compared to drugs.

To put the onerous burden of a drug directorate on this industry will drive the costs up and will remove many products from the market. In fact under the existing regime many very good products have been withheld from Canadians. I will mention a few of the ones that are restricted.

This morning as part of my nutritional supplementation I took chromium picolinate. As a health care practitioner for many years, I recommended that my patients take chromium picolinate. It is essential because chromium is essential for the glucose tolerance factor and that is important for the metabolism of sugar. There are dozens of studies in the medical literature about the effectiveness of chromium and the importance of chromium as a trace mineral in the metabolic pathways of sugar. That product is technically illegal to sell in Canada because there are health claims made by it and of course scientific literature to support it.

L-tryptophan was taken off the market. It is an amino acid. Amino acids are the building blocks of protein. There are some 22 amino acids. L-tryptophan has a calming effect. It is like a sedative. When we feel sleepy after a turkey dinner it is because there is a lot of tryptophan in turkey. Unfortunately it was taken off the market, a simple building block of protein, because it is effective in calming people down. What is wrong with this picture?

Then there are products like melatonin and stevia, a sweetener that the member for Macleod prefers to use and he is a surgeon.

I would like to compliment the members on the health committee during the 36th Parliament who heard from Canadians. The members for Macleod, Nanaimo--Cowichan, and Saskatoon--Wanuskewin represented the then Reform Party. They did an excellent minority report.

My bill calls for the deletion of subsections 3(1) and (2) which are antiquated and the deletion of schedule A. These are recommendations which the minority report supported, which the committee basically supported, and which the transition team definitely supported.

I am hoping that all members will want to get behind the bill. I know they are going to hear from Canadians. Canadians are concerned about this issue and the tremendous benefits that are being withheld from them for very poor reasons, or no reason at all.

Some communications have come in recently. Martin Hanle from Vancouver wrote, “Safe products do not need undue regulation and my right to make choices without unwarranted and unjustifiable restrictions needs to be permitted”. Alexander from Penticton wrote with similar concerns, as did Grant from Kelowna. Doris Hall from New Brunswick wrote that she is upset that natural products have been withheld while pharmaceutical products such as acetaminophen, which can have drastic drawbacks, are seemingly allowed to roam unfettered.

Inga Hanle from Vancouver wrote, “Please, please vote for Bill C-420”. Lois Flett, a registered nurse from Prince Edward Island, wrote in support of Bill C-420.

Petitioners from Nobel, Orangeville, Burlington, Toronto, Brampton, North York, Goderich, Aurora, Concord, Bobcaygeon and New Hamburg, all in Ontario, are asking for support for Bill C-420. People from Parry Sound, Ontario and from Parksville, Qualicum Beach, Vancouver, Errington, my own communities, are sending in petitions.

Jeremy Duggan from Belleville wrote:

--be assured I am in 100% agreement with the majority of my fellow citizens in demanding that our representatives represent us.... Listen to the people that elected you. Allow us the choice - we are intelligent, informed people living in the 21st century, no longer willing to tolerate 19th century politics.

Chris Gupta from London, Ontario wrote:

Like so many Canadian citizens, we have lost trust and respect in Health Canada officials.

He asked that Bill C-420 to be supported.

Trueman Tuck from Belleville said:

Please, help us change the modern medical paradigm from one addicted to pharmaceuticals and surgery, to one focused on treating and preventing the underlying causes of disease--

He supports Bill C-420.

Michael Chamish from Vancouver wrote:

As Canadians we view it as our fundamental constitutional right under the Canadian Charter of Rights to have unrestricted access to these types of products, including information.

A lawyer from Ontario wrote to express her concern. These are all just in the last few days.

Wendell Wamboldt from the Healthwize Wellness Centre said:

Ottawa just slapped our food supplements with GST/HST [according to] policy statement P-240 because of representations of the drug companies.This is a new tax as these things have never been taxed and Ottawa is trying to say it is a “policy clarification” - more government doublespeak.

People are concerned when all of a sudden companies that produce natural health products are being slapped with GST retroactively. One company is facing a half a million dollar penalty from CCRA. It seems that Health Canada has turned CCRA loose on these industries to try and shut them down, or that is the way it seems to them.

I could go on. Many other people are communicating. I expect that members will be receiving a lot of communication on this file. It is something Canadians have been asking for. It is not a question of safety.

I want to mention an excellent report done by the Fraser Institute. The institute published a report in February 2002 on its analysis of the regulatory framework. It is called “A Cure Worse Than the Illness: Canada's proposed regulatory framework for natural health products in light of international evidence”.

It is a 50 page report and I recommend it to anyone interested in this issue. It is a great overview of the proposed regulatory framework for NHPs. It compares the adherence of proposed NHP regulations to the government's own regulatory policy. These overregulations do not appear to be justified according to the government's own policy.

The Fraser Institute compares the regulation of prescription drugs vis-à-vis natural health products and it makes some very significant recommendations.

One of the things it draws attention to is worth mentioning. It talks about part 4 of the proposed regulatory framework which deals with clinical trials. According to the NHPD this component has been developed to recognize the generally accepted principles of good clinical practice. There was no mention in the regulations in any of the NHPD's public consultation documents in 2001 of clinical trials before any claims could be made for effectiveness.

There is a problem. I asked a question of Mr. Romanow because he is considered to be the champion of health care in Canada. He was at committee a little more than a week ago. I asked him about his own report because billions are going in and depending upon who is talking it is $17 billion over three years or $35 billion over five years. There is a lot of money going in but it is all going in on what we call a disease management model of health care.

There is an inverse relationship between a disease management model and a remediation and prevention model of treatment. The more we invest in remediation and prevention, the less we will have to spend on disease management.

Sadly it seems that the whole system has been preoccupied with funding an increasingly failing disease management system. We need to invest in wellness and prevention. We need to allow Canadians the freedom of choice in health care products. It is what they want. It is what they are asking for. It is what they were promised.

The bill addresses the concerns of Canadians. It is my hope that all members of the House will support the bill and will give Canadians what they are looking for.

[Food and Drugs Act, April 9th, 2003]

moved that Bill C-420, an act to amend the Food and Drugs Act, be read the second time and referred to a committee.

[Committees of the House, April 9th, 2003]

Mr. Speaker, I know the hon. member from Newfoundland takes this matter very seriously. His constituents are very much affected by the issue.

He talked about the seal issue and pointed out that they eat about a tonne of fish each per year. They do not eat the whole fish. They tend to eat just a bite out of the belly. That is 7 million in a herd, about 2.5 million for a sustainable herd, which is a huge seal population. If that were sheep and wolves were taking a bite out of their belly, I wonder if people would be outraged and be calling for a wolf cull.

We heard at committee that there was another concern with the Atlantic salmon potentially being placed on the endangered species list for the same reason, that the seals are in fact trapping the Atlantic salmon as they come and go from the mouths of the rivers and are even being found miles upstream from where they usually would be found, and Atlantic salmon themselves being also put at risk because of the huge seal population.

[Committees of the House, April 9th, 2003]

Mr. Speaker, again I would like to applaud the member for bringing this up. It is such an important issue for the province of Newfoundland and Labrador. I was on the fisheries committee that travelled to Newfoundland and Labrador and we heard very compelling testimony. It was in the town of Trepassey where they dismantled the plant and moved it off to Japan.

Of course the government's answer in response to the depleted stocks was to throw a bag of money at the people there to try to reinvent why they lived in their locations. However many of these communities are isolated. They exist because of the one time abundance of those Grand Banks. Now of course, there they are with these glossy brochures trying to attract business to their communities which are removed from market. They exist because of the abundance of the sea, and with proper management it is possible, we believe, to bring back the stocks.

There are two primary issues, which the member has addressed very adequately, where we need leadership. One is on custodial management of our Grand Banks. The Grand Banks, with the nose and tail, where there is overfishing by foreign fleets in the area just beyond our 200 mile limit, is part of our continental shelf. Of course the fish do not stop at the 200 mile limit. When an abundance of fish are extracted from there, the ones from inside simply move outside, where the abundance of food is, and they get captured by the foreign fleets.

We need to take responsibility, and also with the seals. Does the member have a comment on that? We certainly concur with him on the motion.