- Member of Parliament
- Member of the panel of chairs for the legislative committees
- Conservative
- Red Deer—Lacombe
- Alberta
- Voting Attendance: 67%
- Expenses Last Quarter: $146,499.79
- Government Page
Madam Speaker, I want to thank all my colleagues for their support and for speaking to Bill C-368, but I want to remind people how we arrived here.
There seem to be some forgetful folks. Even though I am thanking the NDP for its position, I would like to remind people how we arrived at this place. We are at this point with natural health products because of a budget implementation act, Bill C-47, which was passed for budget 2023. The authority for that came from a promise made by the leader of the NDP in March 2022 to form a coalition, a supply and confidence agreement, with the Liberal government, which meant carte blanche. It was going to support every budget and every budget implementation act that it had not even seen, discussed nor been party to. It gave that power to the Liberal government, and that is why we are here today.
While I appreciate the NDP's revisionist history on this, it is the reason this change happened in the first place. I am glad it is supporting this bill, which would take the legislative framework back where it was with the previous Conservative government under Stephen Harper and where we had the best natural health product regulations, framework and industry in the world. There is no need to tamper any further with the natural health product industry.
I want to talk about freedom of choice in health care, as this is a huge issue. Over 80% of Canadians, and I suspect it is even more, are using natural health products. This is about that freedom of choice and losing that choice. I believe the Canadian Health Food Association, the Natural Health Product Protection Association, the Direct Sellers Association of Canada and the Canadian Federation of Independent Business when they say that the changes being proposed by the Liberal government, through Health Canada's changes to the definition of therapeutic products to include natural health products, is going to kill and stifle business. I believe them when they say that because we have a nine-year track record of the government doing nothing but harm to the economy of this country. The government is going to continue to do it to this beautiful, wonderful industry that gives Canadians the choice they need to look after their own personal health.
Finally, I want to thank all the Canadians who have reached out to members of Parliament in a very active campaign to let MPs know how important this is to them. I want to thank the mothers out there who look after their families. I know my wife is the same way. She had a full-time job on top of her full-time job of raising the family while I was here in Ottawa. She wanted to help our kids, to help our family and to keep us healthy. She wanted to make sure we had the best possible health outcomes that we could have. I want to thank all the women who make up the largest part of the workforce and the entrepreneurship in this beautiful industry. The fact that there was not a gender-based analysis on this is striking.
I want to thank the seniors and those with chronic conditions who are scared about losing their access to these health products. When these organizations I mentioned before said that they are going to lose these products, I believe them. These seniors believe them, and these people with chronic conditions believe them. This is how they manage. This is how they cope with their ailments, and we should be enabling and empowering that, not scaring away investments, businesses and opportunities.
I want to thank the wonderful people in the industry. I want to thank the beautiful people I have met from coast to coast who are part of this industry. I have never met a group of people who are more conscientious, more thoughtful, and more creative and innovative. I want them to know that I am very thankful for the work they do.
For those who are going to be voting in favour of this, we are going to be voting on this next Wednesday night in a recorded division. I want to thank my colleagues for sending this to committee so that we can hear from the experts and from Canadians about this because this was snuck through in Bill C-47. The Liberal government is doing it again, right now, with Bill C-69 in this place. It is making even more changes to Health Canada and giving it more powers. Why are we not talking about this in a separate piece of legislation so that we can actually have a proper debate about it? Now we are, with Bill C-368.
It is time to pass Bill C-368. It is time to get back to basics. It is time to get back to making sure that Canadians have access to the health products they deserve. I want to thank my colleagues who are brave enough and who have the courage to do what their constituents want them to do, and vote for Bill C-368.
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Madam Speaker, there is a joke going around that says, “It's not knowing that a politician can be bought; it's knowing how little they'll let themselves go for.” For a member of the NDP caucus right now thinking that this is the misery they are suffering in the polls, the misery they are suffering nationwide, which is the same misery Canadians are suffering, this is all they managed to get out of the supply and confidence arrangement with the government today.
It is not a pharmacare program. Health care is actually a provincial jurisdiction. It should be delivered by the provinces. The bill would simply be adding contraceptives and some diabetes measures into it. I guess, on the surface of it, that is a good thing, but to the tune of $1.5 billion. If viewers watching at home actually believe this is all it is going to cost them, I will remind them that the government bought a $7 billion pipeline and built it for about $40 billion. Therefore, if history is any predictor of the future when it comes to what things cost under a Liberal-NDP coalition, then they should be looking at least to that example if not more.
To us, as Conservatives, the issue is one of provincial jurisdiction. I come from Alberta, and this is a very important issue to our province and to our premier. This is just another intrusion into provincial jurisdiction. We think that, during these financial times, when Canadians are struggling to make ends meet, pouring more fuel on the inflationary fire is certainly not going to help. It is another financial albatross in the making, which Canadians cannot afford and are not willing to pay for.
It is not just me saying this, and it is not just Conservatives saying this. John Ivison eloquently stated in a piece that he published back on February 29, when the bill or this notion first came out, that this is “the woebegone child of a loveless Liberal-NDP marriage.” This is basically what we are dealing with.
It has become clear to me that the bill before us is basically the cost of keeping the NDP support for this Parliament under supply and confidence, and the coalition partners can take this until October 2025. It was supposed to be October 20, but it is going to be extended by another week to make sure that certain people here get the financial benefits they think they are entitled to. However, it just goes to show that there is only one serious opposition in the House, and that is the Conservative Party.
The NDP is not an opposition party but a willing accomplice to everything that the Liberal government has in its agenda. Its members have been witting partners in creating a massive inflationary deficit; setting restrictive policies towards, for example, lawful gun owners and natural health products, which they signed up for two years ago without even knowing they were going to vote in favour of that in Bill C-47 last year; impeding upon provincial jurisdiction time and time again, which is, of course, front and centre with this piece of legislation; continuing to cover up for the government's scandals, covering for it at committee and also here in the House of Commons; introducing soft-on-crime legislation or supporting that soft-on-crime legislation, which has turned our justice system into a revolving door; sending Canadians to food banks en masse, at a couple of million visitors, which is up over 300%; allowing housing prices to skyrocket; and neglecting our military to the point where our soldiers are basically relying on food donations while they are in Ottawa for training. I could continue, but I think members get the gist of what I am trying to say.
It is bad enough that NDP members backed budget after budget and shut down our work to hold the government to account at committee, but they are telling Canadians that they are doing their actual work as an opposition party. Well, they cannot have it both ways. They cannot be in opposition while they support everything that the government does. I do not buy it, and neither do Canadians.
A December 2023 Leger poll indicated that only 18% of Canadians listed the establishment of a national pharmacare program as a health care priority, and the promise was not included in the 2021 Liberal platform. Canadians did not vote for a party promising pharmacare, yet here we are, thanks to an NDP party that is keeping this weak and basically lame-duck government in office. It is no wonder that some provinces are already saying publicly that they are choosing to opt out.
Let it be known that the absence of the NDP as an opposition is also keenly felt in other areas. Just last year, as I was mentioning, the NDP-Liberal coalition passed Bill C-47.
I do not suppose anybody in the NDP was told, when they signed on to this supply and confidence agreement back in March 2022, that they would be asked to regulate natural health products in the same way as therapeutics, but they did it anyway. As a matter of fact, they made that commitment a year before the bill was passed, and it is going to basically shut down our supplements and natural health product industry when they are classified and rebranded as pharmaceutical drugs.
What did the New Democrats do when this came up for debate? They backed the budget instead of forcing the government to remove those four little clauses from Bill C-47, the budget implementation act. They had a chance. They could have flexed their muscles and said they were not going to support the budget implementation act unless the government removed them, but no such request was forthcoming, and the bill passed. It has caused unforeseen chaos in the natural health products and supplements industry across this country; consumers, of course, are rightly worried. In response, I had to table my own private member's bill, Bill C-368, to reverse these changes. This is just part and parcel.
New Democrats say one thing to Canadians but actually do another. Could anyone imagine such a thing as being the House leader of the NDP, for example, standing up and saying time and time again how much one does not like omnibus legislation, and yet gleefully passing Bill C-47. The NDP House leader has said this for the 18 years that he and I have been in the House together. However, he told the government that New Democrats would continue to pass every budget and every budget implementation act henceforth after March 2022. He cannot have it both ways. He cannot stand up and say New Democrats are going to hold the government to account while continuing to give it the keys to the house to do whatever it wants.
In the case of natural health product governance and regulations, New Democrats tell Canadians they are against omnibus legislation and that they are keeping the government accountable. However, as I said, they voted for Bill C-47, threw that industry into turmoil and then criticized me for giving them an off-ramp on the Bill C-368 debate last week. I was giving them a pathway to redemption, and all they could do was basically blame Stephen Harper for the mess that the country is in. I cannot even make this stuff up.
The most common questions I get from Canadians are these: When are we going to have an election? Who believes anything anybody in the NDP has to say anymore, when their actions are completely 180° opposite from what they say with their words?
It should also be highlighted that the bill was introduced with no public consultations whatsoever, which comes as no surprise to Conservatives. This piece of legislation has been pushed from a government with a terrible record on transparency. It is a government that regularly rushes massive changes with little regard for those people the changes may impact. It talks about the intended consequences, but it never fully understands the unintended consequences of the things it does, which is why we are in the mess we are in today.
The Conservative position on Bill C-64 is that the Liberals know this project is an expensive boondoggle. That is why they abandoned it in their 2019 election promise. Even former finance minister Bill Morneau noted in his book that a single-user system would cost an additional $15 billion a year. We cannot believe the $1.5 billion number, and that is why my colleagues here on the Conservative side and I will respect provincial jurisdiction and vote against this piece of legislation. We encourage New Democrats to change their ways before their party actually fades into oblivion forever.
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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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moved for leave to introduce Bill C-368, An Act to amend the Food and Drugs Act (natural health products).
He said: Madam Speaker, I rise today to introduce my private member's bill, which would amend the Food and Drugs Act. This bill would reverse the changes made by the NDP-Liberal government in its omnibus budget bill, Bill C-47, earlier this year. It would return natural health products to the status quo, ensuring these products are not classified as therapeutic products, like synthetic drugs, and are therefore not subject to the same regulatory regime as other drugs.
Previously, natural health products were classified separately from pharmaceuticals due to the minimal risk they pose to their users. However, after the NDP-Liberal coalition passed Bill C-47, bureaucrats in Health Canada can now implement their self-care scheme, which, according to the Natural Health Products Protection Association, will reduce choice, increase costs for consumers and drive businesses, investment and product development out of Canada.
The existing regulations already keep Canadians safe. As such, I urge all members in this House to listen to their constituents and the overwhelming amount of correspondence they receive and vote for this bill.
After eight years, enough is enough. It is time to undo the damage done by Bill C-47, kick out the gatekeepers and save our supplements and vitamins.
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