44th Parl. 1st Sess.
April 29, 2024 11:00AM
- Apr/29/24 6:01:03 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, since this morning, the Conservatives have been presenting worst-case scenarios involving the budget. They are taking a bulldozer approach, but that is not the Bloc's style. We try to be somewhat constructive and see the positive points. We try to help, be accommodating and improve what is presented to us. That is our approach. We are obviously going to vote against the budget, but not for the same reasons.
I would like to ask my colleague if he can find just two or three small items in the budget that he agrees with.
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- Apr/29/24 6:01:54 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, the approach of the government is hollowing out the Canadian economy and the Canadian middle class. I see no reason to support it whatsoever. We need an immediate election.
I am glad the hon. member and his party have finally decided to stop propping up the government. We will see what the NDP does.
I am ready to go next week. Let us have an election.
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- Apr/29/24 6:02:28 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, I know my colleague is going to oppose this budget, but maybe he would like to be a little specific about some of the reasons why this is such a challenging budget for small businesses.
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- Apr/29/24 6:02:42 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, as I said, we all know who is going to end up having to pay for the ongoing debt, the ongoing borrowing, which is starting to choke out the rest of the budget. We can see how interest payments are now choking out other expenditures. It is going to be the young, it is going to be seniors, it is going to be workers and it is going to be small businesses that end up paying the price for the government.
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- Apr/29/24 6:03:16 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, I have often made reference to the Conservative Party and its leader being on the far right. I know that upsets the member across the way, but that is the truth.
Could the member reflect on the leader of the Conservative Party and his flirtation with Diagolon, which is an extreme right group that preaches hatred and who knows what else? It is a far-right group. That is the driving force being enabled by the his leader, the leader of the Conservative Party. I would be interested in his comments on that.
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- Apr/29/24 6:03:54 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, that member has nothing so he just blathers nonsense. We are debating a budget. That member is obviously not prepared to debate my speech or to offer a question or a comment on the speech or the matter at hand.
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- Apr/29/24 6:04:19 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, what is the legacy of the current Liberal Prime Minister? Sadly, his entire legacy amounts to one thing. The Prime Minister has grown the national debt more in nine years than under every other prime minister in Canadian history before him combined. That is his legacy. That is the end of it. That is the only thing that he stands for and has as a legacy. That debt now stands at $1.3 trillion, which is an enormous number. It is actually hard to comprehend or even imagine for just about any Canadian. It is really hard to visualize how much money we are even talking about there, so I want to break that down just a little bit.
First of all, our national debt of $1.3 trillion is relative to a $2-trillion national economy. For every dollar the Canadian economy generates, about 65¢ of it has an obligation attached to it. Now, a trillion dollars is a massive amount of money. If we cashed it into $100 bills and stacked those bills into billion-dollar piles, we would have 1,000 piles, each climbing about a kilometre high. That is what we are talking about in terms of what this money would look like. However, that is still viewing the situation from 20,000 feet, so let us zoom in at the ground level for a little better perspective.
For Canada's population of about 39 million people, the share of the total national debt is now about $34,000 for every person in the country. For every family of five in Canada, there is about $170,000 in debt. We can think about what that could mean for the average Canadian family of five and what they could do with that $170,000, if they had that for themselves instead of it being their share of the national debt.
Let us say a person has kids in hockey. A good, reasonably decent youth composite hockey stick, which everyone uses nowadays, is about $90 or so. The kids in that family of five would certainly never have to worry about breaking a hockey stick ever again. In fact, every one of their friends would never have to worry about it again either, because that $170,000 would buy about 1,800 hockey sticks.
A family of five can easily spend $400 or more a week on groceries these days with all the inflation, which means that $170,000 would cover food for that whole family for over eight years. Instead, under the Liberals, Canadian families are struggling to feed themselves. Food banks in Canada received a record two million visits in a single month last year, with a million additional people expected this year.
Examples of what Canadians could do with their own money is endless, but those dollars are not enriching Canadian families at all under the Liberal government. Those dollars represent the money that is owed to bankers and bondholders as their share of the Prime Minister's debt. It is interesting to be able to visualize that, but it is not a theoretical exercise. It is actually having real impacts on Canadians right now here today. The Prime Minister's inflationary deficits are driving up interest rates. He is endangering our social safety nets and our jobs by adding more inflationary debt. His government has caused rent and mortgage payment costs to double and made it harder to save for a down payment for so many young families who are just dreaming of getting into the housing market for the first time but wondering how that will ever be possible.
Those are the problems facing Canada right now, but what is the fix? Common-sense Conservatives have solutions. In fact, we have offered the Liberals a starting point to fix it. We told the Prime Minister that we would support his budget if he would just take three very simple, small little steps towards addressing the affordability issues that are plaguing Canadians by starting to address the debt. We needed to see the Liberal government, at minimum, axe the Liberal tax on food, focus on building homes and not building up more federal government bureaucracy and cap the out-of-control government spending by finding a dollar in savings for every new dollar in spending.
The Liberals did none of that. Instead, they went further down the road of recklessness, adding $40 billion more to the growing federal debt.
Common-sense Conservatives cannot support a budget that continues to further indebt Canadians. We will vote non-confidence in a Prime Minister that has driven this country into the ground. I want to know this: Will the NDP have the backbone to do the same?
The government needs to be run in the same way that people have to run their households. A Canadian family that found itself paying more on their credit card debt and on interest than on their necessities would quickly realize that they had to address their debt load. The government, in a similar circumstance, chooses to open new lines of credit to keep on spending. If the government approached budgeting the way Canadian households have to, with actual needs weighed against available resources, the craziness of paying more to bankers and bondholders in one year than what it funds the provinces for health care would be apparent to every single other Canadian, but not to the people sitting on those benches over there in the Liberal government.
Under this government, the promise of Canada has become a promissory note to its debt holders. The Liberals have tried to rebrand their undisciplined fiscal policy as equal to the aspirations of Canadians, but let us look at the real promise of Canada. It is not the agenda of bigger government that the government promotes. It is certainly not about transforming society to reflect Liberal ideology, despite what Liberals would have people believe.
The promise of Canada is, in fact, about the opportunity and freedom to forge one's way in life. Canada has long held out the hope of achievement and prosperity for those who do the work and follow the rules, that a comfortable, secure, middle-class existence is open to anyone from any walk of life, from anywhere in the world, who works to earns it.
In year nine of the Liberal government, life in Canada has never been more unaffordable. The middle class is just a distant dream for far too many. Canadians looking for the Liberals to change things in their budget this year must be feeling incredibly disappointed, with reckless spending, deeper debt and deficits and, of course, the harmful carbon tax.
With these and other policies, Liberals are fuelling inflation and an affordability crisis, pushing middle-class aspirations even further out of the reach of many. Struggling families cannot afford more inflationary spending that drives up their cost of living. They cannot afford the interest rates on their mortgages, their taxes, all of these things.
Even Liberal spending on social programs is not as it actually seems. Many of the measures announced in the budget are deferred, so that the government can make feel-good promises now and then try to find loopholes to get out of them later. We have seen that with dental care and the other social spending Liberals have rolled out that did not quite come anywhere near as advertised. We are seeing it with defence spending promises that stretch out 20 years into the future, when they are needed now.
After nine years, the Liberals' budget is just more of the same that brought us into this mess in the first place. The Prime Minister is proving that he is not worth the cost for any generation, and it will be generations well into the future that will have to repay all of his debt.
It is clear that only common-sense Conservatives have a plan to stop the inflationary deficits that are driving up interest rates. We will protect Canada's social programs and jobs by stopping the piling-on of more federal debt.
Only common-sense Conservatives have a plan to bring down the cost of energy, food and everything else. We will axe the tax, build the homes, fix the budget and stop the crime. Conservatives will govern with common sense for this country, for all its people, in all its regions.
Canada's middle-class dream can once again eclipse the Liberals' debt and deficit nightmare.
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- Apr/29/24 6:13:53 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, I am sitting back here and I am listening to the member recite something that might have been written by the Conservative spin doctors behind the curtains, trying to put a little bit of passion into it.
Let me try to portray what the Conservative Party is really all about. When Conservatives talk about issues such as the deficit and the “dollar for dollar” in spending and cutting, what it really means is that things such as pharmacare, dental care and child care programs are all on the axing block. The Conservatives are all about cuts and austerity. They do not believe that the national government has a role. Instead, what they really believe in are things such as the Diagolon group, which is the extreme right, which preaches hatred, among many other things, and revolution.
Can the member explain to Canadians why it is that the leader of the Conservative Party allows himself to be tied to an organization such as that? All it does is reinforce the idea that the Conservative Party is being driven by the extreme far right.
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- Apr/29/24 6:15:18 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, how pathetic is the desperation we hear over there in bringing up these ideas? What we are talking about is a Liberal budget that will burden future generations of Canadians, so far into the future that we cannot even imagine it. It will endanger all of the things Canadians rely on, as a result of the Prime Minister's desire to spend money like it is going out of style. The only thing the member can come up with is, “Oh, the Conservatives. There is some group that likes them.” What desperation there is over there. The Liberals know that Canadians want a government that will bring common sense back to this country. They are desperate to hold onto the jobs they are about to lose in the next election.
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- Apr/29/24 6:16:19 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, I would like to hear my colleague's thoughts on how often these budget measures interfere in Quebec's jurisdictions. I could give one example after another. It is starting to get ridiculous.
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- Apr/29/24 6:16:38 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, I think there is a government right now that has created division in our country among different groups of Canadians, among the regions of Canada and among the different provinces. What we have seen as a result of that is that people, whether Quebeckers or all other Canadians, are looking at the government and seeing that it is tired and does not have anything to offer Canadians other than division, corruption and all the things that Canadians are so sick and tired of.
It is time to get rid of the government. It is time to replace it with a common-sense government that will govern for all Canadians.
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- Apr/29/24 6:17:30 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, recently the Conservative Party voted line by line against a number of different projects, including finishing the Gordie Howe bridge in my riding, a multi-billion-dollar project that is just about ready to connect. The Conservatives voted against $324 million to finish that job. Why have the Conservatives changed their position on supporting the project, doing a specific line-by-line vote against it when it is almost built? If they had it their way, it would be the most expensive viewing platform in North America. Not completing it is bad for our economy, and billions of dollars have been wasted leading up to the bridge and on the bridge itself.
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- Apr/29/24 6:18:14 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, the first thing I would do is remind the member that the Gordie Howe bridge was actually a project brought forward by the previous Conservative government, under Stephen Harper. Second, I will remind him that what Conservatives voted against was a tired and corrupt Liberal government. We voted non-confidence in the government. The NDP should finally grow a backbone and do the same.
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Madam Speaker, I am thankful for the opportunity to highlight some of the important actions in budget 2024 to ensure that Canada's social safety net works for every generation.
When our government was first elected in 2015, we recognized that the economy had changed. People needed more supports and supports of a new kind. The government got to work very quickly after 2015. We introduced the Canada child benefit, which has helped cut the child poverty rate by more than half. We reinforced the security and dignity of retirement income by strengthening the Canada pension plan and increasing old age security for seniors aged 75 and over.
We permanently eliminated interest on federal student and apprenticeship loans and made generational investments in early learning and child care with $10-a-day child care, cutting child care costs by at least half, giving families money back in their pockets and giving children the best start in life. That equates to thousands of dollars per year. The average family in my area pays about $1,800 per month for child care. If we think about cutting those fees in half, that is substantial savings for each family. These have been investments in people, unprecedented in the history of Canada. With budget 2024, we are making transformative investments that will continue levelling the playing field and lifting up every generation.
At the heart of Canada's social safety net is the promise of access to universal public health care. We have made a promise to each other as Canadians that if we get ill or injured or are born with complicated health issues, we do not need to go into debt just to get essential care. Here in Canada, no matter where one lives or what one earns, people should always be able to get the medical care they need. That is why last year the federal government announced our 10-year health care plan providing close to $200 billion to clear backlogs, improve primary care and cut wait times, delivering the health outcomes that Canadians need and deserve.
With budget 2024, we are introducing new measures that will strengthen Canada's social safety net to lift up every generation. That includes national pharmacare. It includes our landmark move toward building a comprehensive national pharmacare program. Bill C-64, the pharmacare act, proposes the foundational principles of national universal pharmacare in Canada and describes the federal government's intent to work with provinces and territories to provide universal single-payer coverage for most prescription contraceptives and many diabetes medications. The pharmacare act is a concrete step toward the vision of a national pharmacare program that is comprehensive, inclusive and fiscally sustainable today and for the next generation. With budget 2024, the government is proposing to provide $1.5 billion over five years to Health Canada to support the launch of the national pharmacare plan.
Another aspect of strengthening the social safety net is the Canada disability benefit. Last year, Parliament passed Bill C-22, the Canada Disability Benefit Act. This landmark legislation created the legal framework for a benefit for persons with disabilities. The benefit fills the gap in the federal government's robust social safety net between the Canada child benefit and old age security for persons with disabilities, and it is intended to supplement them, not replace them. That is very important. We are not replacing the provincial and territorial income support measures, but offering to top them up. We strongly urge the provinces and territories not to claw back those supports for people living with disabilities.
With budget 2024, we are making this benefit a reality by proposing funding of $6.1 billion over six years and $1.4 billion per year ongoing for the new Canada disability benefit, which would begin providing payments to eligible Canadians starting in July 2025. The Canada disability benefit would increase the financial well-being of low-income persons with disabilities between the ages of 18 and 64 by providing an income-tested maximum benefit of $2,400 per year. As proposed, the benefit is estimated to increase the financial well-being of over 600,000 low-income, working-age persons with disabilities. It is just a start. We know that those individuals who are living below the poverty line and who are living with a disability are going to need more support, and we are committed to increasing that in the future.
With respect to the new youth mental health fund, our government is also well aware that young Canadians are facing high levels of stress and mental health challenges, including depression and anxiety. Many of them are still in school or just starting their careers and are struggling with the cost of private mental health care. The rising cost of living has further exacerbated this issue. This is a top issue for my youth constituency council that has been meeting for years, and the youth on the council have often said it is important for them to have greater access to mental health care. That is exactly why we have set up the $500-million youth mental health fund, which will provide resourcing for five years to help younger Canadians access the mental health care they need.
Supporting children is another aspect, and this is something I feel very strongly about as a father of two young girls. We know that children are the future of Canada. They will become tomorrow's doctors, nurses, electricians, teachers, scientists and small business owners. Every child deserves the best start in life. Their success is certainly Canada's success. With budget 2024, the government is advancing progress through investments to strengthen and grow our Canada-wide early learning and child care system, save for an education later in life, have good health care and unlock the promise of Canada for the next generation.
This includes a decisive action to launch a new national school food program. This is something I advocated for well before I became a member of Parliament, and it was a pleasure to see us get over the finish line and get it included in this year's budget. That national school food program will help ensure that children have the food they need to get a fair start in life regardless of their family circumstance. The $1-billion commitment to the program is expected to provide meals for more than 400,000 kids each year.
We are also supporting millennials and gen Z, for whom we must restore a fair chance. If one stays in school and studies hard, one should be able to afford college, university or an apprenticeship. One should be able to graduate into a good job, put a roof over one's head and build a good middle-class life in this country. In budget 2024, the government is helping to restore generational fairness for millennials and gen Z by unlocking access to post-secondary education, including for the most vulnerable students and youth; investing in the skills of tomorrow; and creating new opportunities for younger Canadians to get the skills they need to get good-paying jobs. More specifically, with budget 2024 we are announcing the government's intention to extend for an additional year the increase in full-time Canada student grants from $3,000 to $4,200 per year and interest-free Canada student loans from $210 to $300 per week. The increased grants will support 587,000 students, and increased interest-free loans will support 652,000 students, with a combined $7.3 billion for the upcoming academic year.
We are also helping to lower costs for everyday Canadians. While I am proud of the social safety net support that our government has provided to Canadians since 2015, we are well aware too many Canadians today are feeling like their hard work is not quite paying off. I am here today to reassure Canadians that it does not have to be this way, and that our government is working hard to help Canadians keep more of their hard-earned dollars. To do this, we are taking action to hold to account those who are charging Canadians unnecessarily high prices, whether it is corporations charging junk fees or unnecessary banking fees. The budget will help better ensure that corporations are not taking advantage of Canadians, and it will make sure the economy is fair, affordable and set up to make it easier to get a good deal.
As Canadians, we take care of each other. It is the promise and the heart of who we are, and it goes back generations. From universal public health care to employment insurance and to strong, stable, funded pensions like the Canada pension plan, there has always been an agreement that we will take care of our neighbours when they have the need. It gave our workers stability and gave our businesses confidence that the right supports were in place where we live. This supports our economy and keeps people healthy, ready and well supported. It keeps the middle class strong.
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- Apr/29/24 6:29:10 p.m.
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It being 6:29 p.m., it is my duty to interrupt the proceedings and put forthwith every question necessary to dispose of the subamendment now before the House.
The question is on the subamendment.
If a member participating in person wishes that the subamendment be carried or carried on division, or if a member of a recognized party participating in person wishes to request a recorded division, I would invite them to rise and indicate it to the Chair.
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- Apr/29/24 6:31:01 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, the Bloc Québécois requests a recorded division.
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- Apr/29/24 6:31:04 p.m.
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- Apr/29/24 7:14:52 p.m.
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I declare the amendment to the amendment defeated.
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moved that Bill C-368, An Act to amend the Food and Drugs Act (natural health products), be read the second time and referred to a committee.
He said: Madam Speaker, it is a pleasure to rise in the House today and talk about the changes that have been made to Canada's natural health product regime by the Liberals, with the support of the NDP and the Greens, in the budget implementation act, Bill C-47. For Canadians watching at home, what is Bill C-47 and what happened? Last year at about this time, Bill C-47 was passed in the House of Commons. This is a budget implementation act. It is supposed to only change the law insofar as what the budget policy of the day is talking about. However, somebody snuck a few clauses into the bill that changed the definition of “natural health products” to be the same as that of therapeutic products, such as drugs that require a prescription and have a drug identification number. That is the problem.
The underlying problem with all that, for folks watching at home, is that the industry was not consulted at all about these particular changes. As a matter of fact, I do not remember a single member of Parliament debating that during the budget implementation act debates. I do not remember it coming up at committee. Nobody from the industry was called to the committee to testify about these issues. It was only several months after the bill had passed that people began to wake up and realize that Health Canada was proceeding with its self-care framework, because it had these new-found powers under Bill C-47.
That basically goes back to Health Canada now trying to get care and control of natural health products to the same effect that it has with therapeutics. However, if we go back to 1998, the health committee in the House of Commons issued a report with 53 recommendations. It basically said, in no uncertain terms, that natural health products are not therapeutic drugs. I will remind everybody in this House that this happened under a majority Chrétien government, so there would have been a majority of Liberals on that committee at the time. That is the conclusion they drew, and that was the template going forward.
If we fast-forward to 2014, when Vanessa's Law was passed, there was a lot of debate and discussion at that particular point in time. Again it was reaffirmed that natural health products are not therapeutic products and are exempted from Vanessa's Law. Then, if we fast-forward to 2021, the Auditor General's report came out. The Auditor General was very critical of Health Canada's ability to properly manage certain aspects of the natural health product regime, particularly when it came to looking at post-market monitoring, testing samples of the products that were on the shelves and so on.
Most importantly, in that report, the Auditor General took the strange step of actually taking 75 products. These were not random products off the shelf in Canada; these were 75 products that were deemed problematic from the beginning. The Auditor General used that for a false narrative that somehow natural health products in Canada are unsafe. I can assure everyone that this is simply not true, but Health Canada, nonetheless, is using this information to claim that it needs the powers under Vanessa's Law. What would that entail? Health Canada would now have a self-funding methodology, so it could apply massive amounts of licensing fees and product registration fees to a very small industry, when we compare it to the size of the pharmaceutical industry. According to everybody in the industry, this would likely cause a massive loss of products and a lot of chaos. The primary impact, for Canadians watching at home, is cost.
For those who do not already know, people should know that Canada is already the most regulated natural health product industry in the world. As a matter of fact, Canada's brand on natural health products is better than that of the United States, Mexico and virtually anywhere in the world. Our products, manufacturers and exporters already had in place, prior to Bill C-47, the best regulatory reputation out there. We are a growing industry in this country. The industry is growing so fast, in leaps and bounds, because of the proper regulation that existed prior to Bill C-47, whether in terms of our producers, manufacturers or distributors, as I said.
However, under the new self-care framework, Health Canada started out with these new site licences. People might not know this, but manufacturers, packagers and distributors have to have something called a site licence from Health Canada. They cannot conduct business without a site licence. This was free up until Bill C-47; with the new proposed regulations coming into force, the initial site licence fee was going to be $40,000 per year. I think it has been negotiated with the industry down to $20,000 a year.
Just imagine if someone has a traditional Chinese medicine establishment, or is doing Ayurvedic medicine or homeopathy, and has to get a site licence fee of $20,000 every year. Everybody, basically, in those three parts of the natural health product industry has already said that this is going to shut them down. It is a very onerous fee. There would then be a new product fee. For any new natural health product that one wanted to bring to the market, it would be upward of $4,000 to get one's natural product number. If someone buys their vitamin C, they go to the store and there is a little natural product number on it. There are about 50,000 natural products registered in Canada right now. If someone is going to bring a new product to the market, it will cost them an additional $4,000 per product. In that particular year, if one has a site licence and a new product, one is looking at $24,000 before one even gets anything coming in for revenues.
If a person is practising traditional Chinese medicine, and if somebody needs a new remedy and the practitioner needs to import some of the ingredients from China or someplace else in the world, they are going to bring those products in and be paying thousands of dollars to get a product registered in Canada. One might be in the market to sell only 10 bottles to a client that has a need for a very specific thing. This is going to basically kill traditional Chinese medicine practice in Canada. Of course, the right-to-sell licence that Health Canada is bringing in for each product will be over $300 per product, so now one is dealing with thousands of dollars every year for this industry. It is going to kill innovation. It is going to stifle growth. It is going to basically drive the innovation and product development out of Canada.
What is the impact? The industry experts are saying that up to 70% of products that are currently on our shelves in Canada with a natural product number on them, and it is very important that they have that natural product number, will be likely disappearing in the years to come when Health Canada implements the self-care framework. Three out of five manufacturers, retailers, practitioners and distributors say that they will actually have to close their doors. We are basically losing approximately 60% of the industry if Health Canada goes ahead with implementing the cost recovery fee program for the natural product industry. The job losses are direct and indirect. People may be interested to know that right now about 54,000 people in Canada are directly employed in the natural health product industry. They figure that about 66% of those jobs will be negatively impacted once the self-care framework is brought in.
One would think that the Prime Minister, being the self-professed feminist that he is, would have actually done a gender analysis on the impact of Bill C-47 when it comes to natural health products, but there was no gender-based analysis. One might be surprised to know that over 80% of the consumers of natural health products in Canada are women, as well as 90% of practitioners, such as homeopathic doctors and so on. Well over 50% of the micro-businesses are female-owned in this particular industry, and 84% of direct-to-customer sellers are women. This is very important. It is a very important industry to women in Canada, and we are going to lose these businesses.
It is too bad, because we are already, like I said, one of the safest and most well-regulated environments around the globe when it comes to natural health products. Over 80% of Canadians, according to the most recent information that we have, are users of natural health products. Of those 80%, when one asks them how satisfied they are with their natural health products, over 99% say they are very confident that the natural health products that they acquire from the shelves in Canadian stores are safe and healthy and work for them. That is true. One will find that across the country. I have been travelling across the country and can say without any hesitation whatsoever that Canadians are very concerned about losing access to the only part of their health care system that they have care and control over, which is natural health products.
For those who are interested, Deloitte has done an audit on some of the findings that Health Canada has been using. It has claimed that over 700 people over a two-year period were adversely affected by natural health products, but if someone actually digs down into the data, and it is Government of Canada data, they will find that only 32 people over three years were actually affected. Unfortunately there were three deaths, but if one takes a look at the other factors associated with those deaths, all of those people were also taking prescription drugs at the same time. There is a lot more misinformation out there right now that is attacking the industry unnecessarily.
We certainly should not be making a hasty decision in this place by bringing legislative changes in the back door like we did with Bill C-47.
I want to talk a little about consumer protection because I think this will be the argument the government will use. Members may also not know this, but if one buys products online from outside of the country, those are not necessarily regulated in the same way. In fact, I can guarantee they are not regulated in the same way they are in the Canadian marketplace. They will not have that natural product number on them.
One can buy a 90-day supply. Right now, Health Canada allows one to buy a 90-day supply. It can be shipped in with Amazon, or any number of these direct-to-customer purchasing apps or opportunities out there, and it will all be unregulated by Health Canada. They very likely will not have a natural product number on them.
These are marketed to Canadians on social media, such as Facebook, and through other types of marketing methods, and Canadians are buying them. Umary is an example. It is made in Mexico and marketed as a natural health product to seniors. Seniors are buying this product up, but it contains diclofenac, which is a prescription drug. This is the problem, not the industry within the borders of Canada.
Health Canada, in its attempt, would do the opposite of what its intended results. It is going to drive the businesses through regulatory burden costs and overhead. Businesses are going to say they can go operate in Mexico or the United States far cheaper than they can operate in Canada. They are going to be down there in the same environment selling direct-to-customer over the border with 90-day supplies. Health Canada is going to lose care and control over the quality assurance Canadians have come to depend on. It is not good for consumers at all.
I should let people know who are watching Health Canada already has incredible powers. We are going to hear some members of Parliament stand up in this place to debate this bill and say that Health Canada has no mandatory recall when it comes to natural health products. However, I will list some of the powers one might not know Health Canada already has. It already has the ability to issue a stop sale, and it does that from time to time. A stop sale order will go out, and that means that all that product on all the shelves in all the stores in Canada has to immediately stop being sold.
Health Canada does have the power, if it chose to implement it, for personal use import at the border. If it wanted to take a look at what was coming across the border, it would be a great place for Health Canada to start looking for opportunities to keep Canadians safer. It has the ability to seize. It has seizure provisions already in the legislation and regulations, which means it can seize any product from any of the points along the line, from manufacturing through packaging through distributing at the retail stores. It already has seizure capabilities in the law and regulations.
Health Canada can revoke the site licence for any manufacturer, any packager, any labeller or any importer. It already has the power to revoke that site licence. It has the ability to mandate a label change. If there is a health concern brought up from the Canadian public, it can investigate and then can tell the manufacturer or the labeller they need to change the label to reflect some health concern or some other information. It can do that.
Health Canada can inspect any site that has a site licence. It can go automatically into a manufacturer. It can go into a producer anywhere where a site licence is required. It can go in and conduct an audit anytime it wants. It can inspect any product off the shelf. It can take it, send it to the lab and do a verification check. It approves every natural product number being sold on the shelf right now. Nothing is sold without its pre-authorized consent. As well, it can revoke a natural product number anytime it wants.
That is already an immense amount of power. It does not need more. When we hear about the mandatory recall, that is simply a red herring. Health Canada already has an immense amount of power.
When something is defined as a therapeutic drug, that also subjects them to $5-million-a-day fines. There is nobody in the natural product industry who can afford a $5-million-a-day administrative penalty fine. Health Canada would unilaterally, without an ombudsman, without any process to appeal, have the ability to basically shut this industry down at its earliest whim or convenience. It is already causing a chill in the industry. It is driving businesses away from Canada.
We need to stop this. Canadians need to call their Liberal MP, their NDP MP or their Green Party MP and tell them to change how they voted on Bill C-47. They need to get them to vote in favour of Bill C-368. Let us get this bill to committee. Let us have an actual proper consultation with the industry. If there is something that needs to be changed, we can at least have an honest conversation and Canadians can be involved in a transparent way.
Passing this bill through the back door, tucking it into a budget implementation act, is shoddy law-making and shoddy policy-making. It flies in the face of everything we have done to this point. I encourage my colleagues to vote in favour of Bill C-368.
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Madam Speaker, I appreciate both the member who is presenting this legislation and also his speech, which was well-informed and provided good information for Canadians.
The member is right to point out that this provision was included in Bill C-47, omnibus legislation, which is something that the NDP has always opposed, both under the former Harper Conservative government and under the current government. The idea that the government would put, in the budget implementation bill, a whole range of other measures simply does not allow for the legislative scrutiny that is so important. The member is right to point out that Bill C-47 did that. It made those changes, just as Bill C-51, under the former Harper Conservative government, purported to do the same thing.
I thought he was very eloquent about the fact that we need to move forward with this legislation. The NDP will be supporting this legislation at second reading. We want to send this to committee. We want to have the committee do the fulsome work of finally consulting the industry and natural health practitioners, so that we finally get something that has not happened under either Bill C-51 or Bill C-47, which is the scrutiny that is so important.
I consume a lot of natural health products—
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