Blue Like You

I have received numerous requests from concerned readers, friends and family to examine the implications of Bill C-51 - An Act to amend the Food and Drugs Act and to make consequential amendments to other Acts .

If you listen to some of the fear-mongering (note the ‘Nazi Germany’ reference) permeating the blogosphere, this Bill is designed to topple the natural health product industry, and even go so far as to "warrant action against a person who would give another person an unapproved amount of garlic on the recommendation that it would improve that persons health."

Uh-huh. The hyperbole is astounding. And it’s having the desired effect - Some Conservative bloggers have even gone so far as to abandon the party over this bill!

All this hype reminds me of the Urban Legends and other nuisance emails everyone gets warning that if they don’t forward this email to to five other people who need a hug, have cute pets, want to solve world peace or whatever else they’re told, then the universe will implode or at the very least they will have ten weeks of bad luck.

To me, this Bill is about safety and regulations - so that a natural health remedy actually contains what it says it does, and will have the benefit it advertises without unexpected side effects (eg.addiction)

Here is a portion of debate on C-51 from Hansard (April 30 @ 15:30):

Mr. Paul Szabo (Mississauga South, Lib.):
Mr. Speaker, Bill C-51 is a long bill of some 75 clauses and it affects a number of other acts.

Members are already receiving correspondence from their constituents concerning natural therapeutic products. It will be a very significant issue for the government and Parliament to address with regard to the implications of the bill to these natural therapeutic products.

One of my constituents specifically wrote about her son who suffers from Lyme disease and requires certain drugs. It is not that these drugs would cure the problem, but they help in terms of quality of life or in the ability to control the effects of the disease. It is a very serious situation, and I know the minister is aware of that.

At the outset, there must be a declaration of the government that the implications of Bill C-51 will not be draconian in regard to the pricing or availability of natural therapeutic products so those who believe that those products are necessary for themselves or their family members will continue to have reasonable and appropriate access with appropriate health safeguards.

Hon. Tony Clement :
Mr. Speaker, I am happy to address the member’s comments at this time. I state categorically and for the record, there is nothing targeted to the natural health products industry in the bill. There is nothing that is draconian in terms of the effects of pricing and availability in the bill. Indeed, we seek to ensure that natural health products are available to Canadians.

Of course we are always concerned about safety and efficacy, particularly safety. Natural health products, just as prescription drugs and certain other therapeutic products, have to be available in a safe way to Canadians.

I would say for a purveyor or manufacturer of a natural health product, if what is on the label is accurate and if what is claimed about the natural health product is accurate, there is nothing to fear from the legislation. Indeed, our government and our caucus want more natural health products on the marketplace for more choice for Canadians, but we will not stand by if there is a dangerous product .

I issue warnings practically every week about this or that dangerous product, some of which are natural health products, which can have an impact on cardiac arrest, strokes or liver damage. Things can have this kind of impact. We do not want those products available. We want Canadians to be warned and we want them to be safe …

Doesn’t sound all that nefarious, does it?

If you still have concerns, I would recommend that you call or write to your local MP as well as the Health Minister, Tony Clement. Talk to your health care provider and pharmacist. Try to get the facts from a variety of informed sources. Don’t rely on scare tactics and misinformation.

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Update : This article from the Globe - A Bill Worthy of Our Support - is about as balanced an assessment as I’ve seen so far: (The font size is very small, but it can be adjusted via the ‘view’ function in your browser.)

…Within minutes, critics - consumer advocates, industry, academics and journalists - pounced on the proposed legislation like a pack of wild dogs thrown a hunk of raw meat.

The new law, we were told, would:
-Weaken the drug review process;
-Allow for the rubber stamping of new drugs and turn Canadians into a nation of unwitting guinea pigs;
-Throw the doors open to direct-to-consumer advertising, transforming us into drugged-out zombies clamouring for every pill touted on TV;
-Place an unfair burden on the poor, beleaguered pharmaceutical companies by making even more onerous demands of them;
-Limit consumer choice by over-regulating "alternative therapies" as a sop to Big Pharma.

This type of criticism is legitimate, though many of these views are uttered by rote and don’t represent the law fairly. More concerning is that the piecemeal attacks obscure the big picture.

The stark reality is that the existing Food and Drugs Act is dated, toothless legislation that has not been meaningfully amended in half a century. The status quo is indefensible …

…Bill C-51 - all 62 pages of legal jargon - provides no shortage of material for nitpickers with an agenda.

But, when all is said and done, it does a pretty good job of balancing competing demands and it should ultimately do a pretty good job of protecting consumers ….

Ironically, I found that link off this site . Well, at least they included one voice of reason.

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Additional links - Natural Health Products - Health Canada .

Natural Health Products Directorate - Health Canada.

Interesting tidbits here - How long before C-51 moves past the Blogsphere? - NetNewsledger.com

(Is it a conspiracy among the bureaucrats at Health Canada?)

Ezra Levant has highlighted Mark Steyn’s appearance on today’s MDL.

If you care at all about the future of free speech in Canada, this is a must-watch.

Saturday Update : SDA - Lucy, look what you started!

Paul Wells’ latest piece in Macleans (Generation Harper ) is one for CPC supporters to savour. It seems that Stephen Harper is outperforming Stephane Dion in the race to resonate with the under-40 ‘wellsprings of new voter support’. This according to Frank Graves of Ekos research. Also, there is the beginning of a trend among Canadians to self-identify as conservative over liberal:

...Graves identified two big trends emerging. One is a steady, marked shift in Canadians’ political identification from liberal to conservative. That’s obviously bad news for the federal Liberals. The other trend looks less menacing: the emergence of two broad cohorts of under-40 voters, one broadly left-leaning, the other more conservative. Since they’re about the same size they should more or less balance out. Except both of these groups of younger voters have their own generational quirks, and so far Stephen Harper’s Conservatives have had better luck reaching out to "their" young voters than the post-Paul Martin Liberals have to "theirs."

Please read the whole article and feel free to comment below. Conservative readers may wish to relax with an accompanying glass of Merlot.

For my Liberal readers, I would recommend a bottle of Tums.

Christina Blizzard’s column in today’s Sun exposes the flaws with Dalton McGuinty’s approach to navigating Ontario through the current rocky, economic seas - Killing Niagara fruit business .

Against all prevailing wisdom, McGuinty has adopted a policy of cherry-picking his pet projects instead of implementing the corporate tax cuts and incentives that are proving so successful in many other provinces. And as we all know, Federal Finance Minister Jim Flaherty has been urging/begging/cajoling the Liberal Ontario government to change its approach for months now.

Well, now Dalton McGuinty is in the position of having to justify why he abandoned fruit farmers and cannery workers , at a time when we are being urged to buy locally - and especially in the current crisis of world food shortages:

…The CanGro canning plant in St. Davids is the last cannery east of the Rockies. The company has announced the closure of the plant, throwing 120 people out of work.

Worse, though, it affects the future of farmland in the Niagara Peninsula. Peach and pear farmers now have no place left to process their fruit, so 1,200 acres of peaches and 800 acres of pears are going to waste.

It is so bad that farmers are ripping out fruit trees. Some are replanting grapes for wineries, and some fruit of course can be sold fresh. But at a time of world-wide food shortages and when there is a move to consume locally grown produce, the loss of this last cannery is alarming…

And here is the problem with cherry-picking :

… "The government is not in the business of canning , but we are in the business of looking to see how something could work," Pupatello said.

Well, heck, the government doesn’t build cars, but they’ve put $100 million into Ford, $76.8 million into Daimler Chrysler, $235 million into GM and $85 million into Toyota. They don’t build airplanes, but they put $2.85 million into Devtek Aerospace in Kitchener and $10 million into Diamond Aircraft of London. They don’t make soap, but they gave Procter and Gamble in Brockville $3 million .

They don’t make breakfast cereal but they gave $9.7 million to Kellogg’s. They don’t make steel but they gave $6 million to Dofasco. They don’t make breath mints, but they gave the Tic Tac factory in Brantford $5.5 million — and this leaves a bad taste in your mouth. ..

It sure does leave a bad taste in your mouth - especially after you consume that tin of peaches imported from China.

A very bitter taste.

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Update : McGuinty ties tax cuts to new deal from Ottawa - Star .

Brantford Expositor - Niagara fruit industry deserves equal protection .

Sunday Update : Sandy has a great post here - Niagara’s tender fruit industry WILL persevere!