Bills C-51 & 52 Standing Committee on Health Input
Here is Canadian Coalition for Health Freedom's (Trueman Tuck) in depth input Report From The Trenches. Trueman has been advocating for over 35 Years for Freedom of Choice. This provides an historic account of attempts to usurp our access to nutrients. The 5 minute House of Commons Standing Committee on Health certainly does not provide justice to this issue. Below is Trueman's input. The complete report for all to see is here.
When reading the full transcript please keep in mind the following:
Alternative Medicine Unwittingly Being Used In The Battle To Restrict Access To Nutrients
Canadian Health Food Association (CHFA) Member Questionnaire
Canadian Coalition for Health Freedom is the only group advocating our nutrients be treated as foods - no smoke and mirrors of third category or such that some are pushing for their own self serving interests (as per the two links above). There clearly is no need for separating nutrients from foods as they, in the main, are already covered under our food regulations and are a safer subset of foods.
Chris Gupta
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Mr. Lui Temelkovski: We will start with our second panel.
On the second panel, we have the Canadian Health Food Association, and Penelope Marrett and Anne Wilkie. Welcome. We have Truehope Nutritional Support Ltd., and Ian Stewart. We have the Canadian Coalition for Health Freedom, and Trueman Tuck. Then we have the Natural Health Products Protection Association, and Peter Helgason, and the Canadian Men in Nursing Group, with James D'Astolfo and Branden Shepika. Welcome.
"--- please, for five minutes. If you have additional information that you may not get through in the five minutes, please do supply it to us. We look forward to receiving more.
Thank you.
Mr. Trueman Tuck (Coordinator, Canadian Coalition for Health Freedom): Thank you very much.
The last time I appeared here was three years ago, on Bill C-420. I think it's very important that we understand that whether we're talking about what we're not supposed to talk about, Bill C-51 as Bill C-52, or whether we're talking about Bill C-420, the Natural Health Products Regulations, we're talking about a continuous process that I first encountered, as did over 10,000 small businesses and the million-plus consumers that I represent. I think it's very important that we understand that.
When I started in 1972 on an holistic, spiritual lifestyle choice, I did not believe in medical doctors, I did not belive in pharmacists, I did not believe in synthetic drugs that I'd lived a lifetime. I'm 60 now and I work 14 hours a day, seven days a week. There's a million-plus consumers that worked with our Canadian Coalition for Health Freedom in 1997 to stop the July 1, 1997 attempt to make drugs out of our nutrient-rich foods, food extracts and food concentrates and our foods that are rich to begin with, the healthy food.
So this whole world is upside down. We want people to be eating healthy foods, we want them to be eating nutrient-dense extracts and concentrates, we want them to be going to naturopaths, chiropractors, herbalists. We don't want big pharma ruling world, we don't want the Natural Health Products Regulations to be forced on us, in complete contradiction to the 1998 study process.
I appeared last before this committee in 1998. If you check our coalition's message then, it was quite simple. We created the largest grassroots uprising in Canadian history, by the admission of the Liberals, and started working with the Liberal government. They did a great job. The 1998 report was one of the most extensive stakeholder consensus in the history of this country. From a consumer and a micro small-business point of view, the Natural Health Products Regulations are illegal, outside of authority, were never brought to this committee and need to be cancelled immediately, and the majority of our membership in small business is ignoring them, increasingly, the large businesses are ignoring.
Health Canada is federal, criminal investigative police officers. Their actual act started in 1884. All that is in federal jurisdiction is to charge people a crime under the Criminal Code or under the criminal powers of 91.27 of the BNA Act if there's a serious adulteration or harm causing serious national death or adverse events. That's all there is. Eighty per cent of what Health Canada does, including the entire Natural Health Products Directorate, is outside of federal jurisdiction. The Bloc have been the greatest champion of keeping the feds out of provincial jurisdiction of any part of this country, and I'm surprised they would allow the Natural Health Products Regulations and/or Bill C-51 and Bill C-52 to intrude upon exclusive civil property. There's a dozen things it's intruding on.
There won't be time for me to go through our paper here, but we've identified in here the 12 reasons that no party and no member should support Bill C-51 or Bill C-52. It ties into getting rid of the Natural Health Products Regulations, it ties into going back to the standing committee reports and getting this committee to do an update of that wonderful report.
Dr. Grant Hill, who I worked very closely with, is highly respected. He introduced a private member's bill to create reverse onus to try to get control of Health Canada. Judy and Grant and others that were involved with me at that time, including the Liberals, all knew that Health Canada was out of control. There's no administrative review process for Health Canada, there's no police internal affairs process and we have documented cases of criminal activities that the RCMP will not investigate, including what was raised here.
So we're requesting that this committee reconvene the same type of format that they did in 1998. The victimized small businesses, the victimized consumers who are suffering because of this bureaucratic nonsense that exists illegally in Health Canada, we would like the opportunity to bring this out into the open again, as was done in 1998.
Thank you very much.
Hon. Hedy Fry:
It was on mandatory reporting of adverse--Mr. James D'Astolfo:
Yes, it was on adverse reports for health professionals. We believe it's up to the patient to tell their provider that they are taking natural health products. But at the same time, we need to provide tools so that health professionals can talk with their patients effectively about natural health products and identify for them and work with them on reporting adverse reactions and on whether the product is safe enough and won't interfere with other treatments they're getting.I think it's very important that health professionals are mandated to report to Health Canada, with support and education coming from Health Canada, to try to deal with adverse reaction reporting.
Mr. Trueman Tuck: May I add to those last questions? I have my mike on. I had an answer to those questions, too.
Mr. Lui Temelkovski: Half a minute, 30 seconds.
Mr. Trueman Tuck: Okay, that's tough.
From a consumer point of view, the consumer wants to be able to make informed freedom of choice. The whole regulatory system is geared to the assumption that the drugs are safe and properly risk benefited and everything.
I actually co-authored a book called Death by Modern Medicine with a naturopath and a medical doctor that you can look up. We proved that in North America the most heavily regulated professions, nurses, doctors, and pharmacists in the most heavily regulated facilities, hospitals and care homes, in the most heavily regulated products, prescription drugs, were killing seven jumbo jets a day, and I can provide scientific evidence to this committee. We've used it in court. We've commissioned a risk study that I'll provide every member.
The whole paradigm that there's some big bogeyman that consumers have to be protected from is not only out of federal jurisdiction, it's a violator of our most basic human rights. Thank you.
Ms. Penelope Marrett:
At the same time, I think we need to make it clear that in the legislation that exists today, there is no separate category for natural health products. There was a recommendation in the 1998 report, but in the current Food and Drugs Act, there is no separate category.Mr. Ian Stewart:
On behalf of Truehope, a third category is not only sought after, it's necessary. How can a vitamin-mineral supplement, which we typically would take just to maintain good health, fit into the categories that exist today, when a vitamin-mineral supplement has a profound therapeutic value to correct disorders that are typically treated with medications?We don't fit in either category, and our struggle through this whole process is to maintain our purpose and to continue what we do to help people, especially those on the threshold of suicide, those who have tried all other treatments within the medical model and have failed. We do take those people and get them turned around. So how can we fit into the categories that exist today?
Aside from that, the big concern for us is not just the category but the abuse of process within the categories, and the means by which we can address those concerns and that evidence that comes forward during the process.
Mr. Trueman Tuck: It's very important to understand that the U.S. had this same issue in the early 1990s and they resolved it by creating in 1994 the Dietary Supplement Health and Education Act and they basically recognized exactly what Truehope has just said, that the vitamins had a powerful, necessary and positive...and it was so powerful a movement as it was in Canada that in 1994 it was put through both the Congress and the Senate with 100% consensus and that's what we were hoping in 1997 when we invested the time and money, as over a million consumers and tens of thousands of small businesses, we were hoping that with the 1998 report, they did start the legislative renewal, by the way. I attended one of them. We thought that we would get a harmonization of this category with the U.S. third category that was food and that was appropriate for what we had. That did not happen and the regulations came out of the blue and sabotaged it.
The second question, from a consumer point of view, we feel that we need to be able to make informed freedom of choice and the point has been made around the table that doesn't mean having a federal bureaucrat telling me that I can or can't take a product, but it does mean that the federal government has a responsibility to provide me the statistics so that I can make informed choices from evidence-based statistics of what's likely to harm me, what's likely to kill me or my family or loved ones.
Thank you.
Mr. Patrick Brown: Is enforcement currently adequate, in your opinion, Peter or Trueman?
Mr. Trueman Tuck: Basically, what happens is that...I'll confess, okay, from Health Canada's point of view, I'm a criminal because I have a family business, Tucksdiscountvitamins.com. I import from the U.S. kava kava, alcarnatine, which is on Schedule F, and our group of small businesses which has included Truehope, Strauss, Bell Lifestyle, BIE...we have a group of businesses. Four of our businesses have faced Health Canada in massive criminal trials over the last five years. Our small businesses have invested over a million dollars in legal fees to basically tell Health Canada that if they can't convict us of a criminal offence in front of a jury, they have no federal jurisdiction, so they should leave us alone.
So, in the U.S., the Dietary Supplement Health and Education Act--I got it right that time--we did a study. If you go to New York State, you have about 70,000 products on the market. So when they started these illegal health regulations...we complained to the SREG by the way for three years that within the SREG- the Scrutiny of Regulation committee--these are illegal and outside the criteria and that committee hasn't heard any of this in three years either.
posted by Chris Gupta on Tuesday May 27 2008
URL of this article:
http://www.newmediaexplorer.org/chris/2008/05/27/bills_c51_52_standing_committee_on_health_input.htm
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