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C-47, An Act to implement certain provisions of the budget tabled in Parliament on March 28, 2023

44th Parl. 1st Sess.
October 30, 2023
Context: Department of Health's Regulatory Changes for Natural Health Products Committee Business (HESA) - Oct/30/23
Mr. Robert Kitchen (Souris—Moose Mountain, CPC)
  • 11:48:09 a.m.
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Thank you, Mr. Chair. I thank my colleague for educating a lot of us on some of the inconsistencies and possible misinformation that was provided by Dr. Sharma on this very issue of the unfortunate demise of this young child. It's interesting, as my colleague presented to us today, the stacks of information we've received from all across this country. He's on the east coast. I'm in the Prairies, and my colleague is on the west coast. It's going all across.... We've all received this. As he has indicated, I know that our colleagues across the way have received it as well. In pointing out so many issues here, when we look at this motion that's being put forward to us, it's very clear and very straightforward, because the reality is that what we're seeing here is a discussion on regulatory changes that were presented in Bill C-47, dealing in particular with sections 500 to 504, I believe. The changes are being imposed upon small businesses in Canada, which provide, as my colleague has pointed out, tremendous economic benefit to this country, and that's going to have a huge impact on consumers and the rights of those consumers to choose what they would like to use, whether it's vitamins.... I take vitamin D and vitamin C. I use the Jamieson brand. That's what I use. It's a product that I've used for many years. It's very clear on that exactly what I'm taking, but there are so many other ones out there. Ultimately, the process is that there's a regulatory step that's in place. Could it be improved? Yes, it could be, and maybe the industry.... In my conversations on this with people, they've indicated that they are prepared to make those changes to adjust that so that we can have that avenue. On the issue of dealing with it such that people can actually read what's put out there, they've also indicated the great value of maybe adding more into it. However, that said, the packaging part now becomes a huge aspect of it, because if we're dealing with a hundred tablets of vitamin C in a small tube, the amount of paper that has to be produced to be able to put on there in a print that people can read.... I have to put my glasses on, and if I don't have them with me when I do it, that's on me to know what I'm reading and what I'm not. Ultimately that cost to the industry is going to be in the millions and hundreds of millions of dollars, which in turn is going to have a huge impact and result in Canadians all across this country.... I like to use the term “trickle-down effect”. It is a huge trickle-down effect. I talk about it from the petroleum industry point of view and how shutting down the petroleum industry, the coal industry and the energy industry trickles down to those small communities. The same thing happens here with natural products. You start impacting that, and that trickle-down effect is going to affect small businesses. A small community that has a small business person in there who maybe employs one or two people lays off one person. That person has a family of five. Where do they go? They move somewhere else. That community is impacted and so on. It trickles down. The schools get impacted because they don't have the kids in the schools. These are huge impacts, and we need to be aware of that. This motion is basically saying, “Enough of all of this.” Let's support this and go back to the government to say, “Enough. We don't see this as acceptable. These changes are a huge impact on the economy and on the industry.” Our witnesses today talked a bit about adverse effects. One of the things I wrote down when she made the comment about it was, how many? How many adverse effects do you...? Dr. Sharma has said 700. That's 700 out of a population of.... What's the population of Canada? It's 30 million-plus people—
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