The excerpt below is from a report intended for Members of Parliament delivered on behalf of concerned Canadians in all federal ridings. This report is a preparation for conversations with constituents who are asking to have the current Natural Health Product Regulations suspended, reviewed and revised. The report was written by the Natural Health Products Protection Association, a non-profit organization dedicated to protecting Canadian access to natural health products.
Executive Summary: The Problem
Many Canadians are rattled at the increasing number of natural health products (NHPs) unavailable due to the 2004 Natural Health Product Regulations currently being implemented. Health Canada denies that the industry is being downsized; however, their last quarterly report ending December 31, 2010, shows that 45 percent (21,383) of the product license applications submitted since 2004 have failed the licensing process, resulting in refusals of natural product numbers (NPNs).
Licensing failures are only part of the measurement of lost products. Retailers have lost access to over 20,000 products freely available in other countries such as the United States. There are also a large number of products that either have been or will be removed without trying to get through the licensing process because it is too cumbersome. These lost products will not show up in the licensing failure statistics.
Health Canada has repeatedly stated that their foremost consideration for the regulations is consumer safety. However, less than five percent of the refusals have been based on safety. This means that NHPs rarely fail the licensing process due to safety concerns. A comprehensive statistical analysis of information from Health Canada, the Canadian government and non-governmental organizations found that the relative risk/chance of dying from an NHP was less than one in 10 million. Health Canada cannot support policy or rationalize outcomes of the current regulations based on safety concerns.
In 1998, the Standing Committee on Health endorsed the wishes of Canadians to enjoy increased access to NHPs. Instead of enjoying increased access, we face a crisis consequent upon the regulation of NHPs as a subset of drugs. Drug-style regulations are reducing our access. These regulations deem all NHPs to be illegal.
Assumed to be unsafe and fraudulent, only those NHPs that meet onerous conditions can remain on the market. There is no mechanism to prevent Health Canada from making the conditions more onerous.
Since health is a provincial jurisdiction, neither can the agency rightfully claim legal authority over NHPs. Each province has autonomous authority over health care unless a risk becomes sufficiently significant to be regulated under criminal legislation. At that point only can a health issue be controlled at the federal level. The onus is on Health Canada to demonstrate potentially criminal levels of risk. No such risks exist for NHPs.
The Government of Canada has not done a single risk analysis to determine the risk of removing tens of thousands of NHPs, which have been safely accessible for years, from Canadians who rely upon them by personal choice for the maintenance of health. In short, the NHP community is being dismantled by drug-style regulations designed to restrict access to NHPs.
The central problem with Health Canada is that the agency enforces the same legislation that it creates, while being in relationships with many of world's wealthiest corporations. The inadvisability of creating a situation where conflicts of interest are not only possible but likely is the reason we do not ask the police to write our laws. Many Canadians also see a disconnect in court decisions allowing access to "unlicensed products." We have no right to treatments of our choice if Health Canada ignores the spirit of our court decisions guaranteeing personal choice.
With this in mind, since the provisions of the Natural Health Product Regulations are demonstrably disproportionate to the need for protection, Health Canada's basis for control fails to meet the criteria necessary to justify pre-empting Canadians' rights to life, liberty and security, guaranteed in Section 7 of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedom.
Due to sustained nationwide opposition from the NHP industry and consumer sectors, we ask that enforcement of full compliance of the Natural Health Production Regulations be suspended, pending review by the Standing Committee on Health.
For all intents and purposes, NHPs were unregulated until 2004. Even now, most of the products that Canadians regularly purchase in health food stores are illegal and non-compliant with the current regulations. Suspending the Regulations would not suddenly create an unregulated environment. Indeed, there would not be much of a change at all. All that would change is that the NHPs that Canadians have been relying on for decades would stop disappearing pending a review. Health Canada would be in the same position as it was prior to 2004. It could take targeted action against products where there was a legitimate health risk.
Promote this action starting today. For more information on what consumers can do, we have an action plan at www.nhppa.org.
Charter of Health Freedom Petition Update
Since the official launch of the Charter of Health Freedom in September 2008, the Natural Health Product Protection Association (NHPPA) has been receiving petitions from across Canada in support of the Charter.
As of summer 2011, the NHPPA has 75,359 petition signatures. Three million signatures is the goal.
Here's how you can make a difference: Download the petition from the Charter of Health Freedom website at www.charterofhealthfreedom.org. You can also download a printable version of the petition in either letter or legal size. Then get your family, friends, colleagues, classmates and customers to sign the petition.
Send your petition to the NHPPA at #2-953 Laval Crescent, Kamloops, BC V2C 5P4