HEAL Committee Meeting

STANDING COMMITTEE ON HEALTH

COMITÉ PERMANENT DE LA SANTÉ

EVIDENCE

[Recorded by Electronic Apparatus]

Thursday, February 5, 1998

• 0909

[English]

The Chair (Ms. Beth Phinney (Hamilton Mountain, Lib.)): I call the meeting to order. I'm sorry we're a little bit late. This is meeting fourteen of the Standing Committee on Health, a study of natural health products.

Perhaps I could explain a little bit. We have some media here this morning; Global is here, and will be leaving as soon as I've finished talking. There are two students from Carleton University who are doing their thesis or their final paper on this committee and the work we're doing, on the same topic.

The CBC has asked to be here; they want to film some of the speakers, and also some of the speakers that will be in the second unit after 10:30. They have agreed to be as unobtrusive as possible and will not do any interviews during the committee meeting, nor will they ask anybody to go outside or anything. If we take a break and you're outside, that's fine. They will try to stay back and not bother the flow of the meeting.

• 0910

I am sure that the witnesses here are quite pleased to have the extra publicity and to let the public know that the consumers are being represented at our committee meetings. So we welcome the media and we welcome the witnesses today.

I think we'll go in the order you appear on the agenda; that will be the easiest way to do it. We have three groups represented this morning: Citizens for Choice in Health Care, the Health Action Network Society, and Canadian Health Coalition, all of whom are concerned with the interests of consumers on the topic we're working on here.

We'd like everybody to keep as close to five minutes as possible. Please realize that we only have an hour and a half, and the longer you talk beforehand, the fewer questions we can ask. Probably what you want to say will come out in the questioning anyway. So please keep your comments and answers as concise as possible. Each member gets five minutes. It includes their questions and your answers, so you may get cut off if your answers ramble on.

We'll start with Mr. McMaster. He's from Citizens for Choice in Health Care.

Mr. Robert McMaster (President, Citizens for Choice in Health Care): Thank you, Madam Chair, and my thanks to the committee for this opportunity to present.

Citizens for Choice in Health Care is a grassroots consumer health association, each provincial group of which is independent. I'm here representing the Ontario organization, which is the largest. Our groups are active in many theatres, provincial and federal, working to extend and protect consumer access to safe, beneficial, and low-cost natural health products and therapies. Though it is published independently, the publication Natural Affairs, which has been sent to committee members, is generally reflective of our thinking.

Citizens for Choice in Health Care was a founder of the Canadian Coalition for Health Freedom, who presented to the committee on Tuesday. We have been at the centre of the campaigns and policy works of the coalition, along with the many other organizations that comprise it. Our collective findings and recommendations are contained in the white binder you received. A further statement of the specific views of Citizens for Choice will be sent to you at a later date.

It is our opinion that the many regulatory impediments that restrict citizens' access to natural health products should be removed. Our motivation for this rests on two premises: first that people own their own bodies and should have the authority to meaningfully act on the health choices they make, free from paternal interference by the state; second, we believe it makes for good public health policy to promote natural health products where they deliver increased benefits and consumer satisfaction at less cost than conventional medicines. If Parliament makes the reforms we hope for, this will provide relief to taxpayers burdened by the rising cost of conventional care.

We endorse the conclusion of the advisory panel and the coalition that natural health products should be regulated separately. There is no scientific, therapeutic, or common sense basis for confusing vitamins with common foods or pharmaceutical drugs. You don't have to be a rocket scientist to understand that broccoli, ginseng, and Prozac all belong in different categories.

Along with the panel and coalition, we favour a separate authority within Health Canada to administer the regulation of natural health products. Citizens for Choice believes that the simplest and most efficient structural arrangement would be to have one directorate for foods, another for drugs, and a third for natural health products.

Consolidating all the regulatory functions for natural health products would lead to significant reductions in operations elsewhere. These savings, combined with the elimination of unnecessary regulatory practices, will mean we can enjoy better services for less money.

We also strongly agree with both the panel and coalition that any new regulatory authority must be led and staffed by persons knowledgeable in this field. The lack of personnel within Health Canada having expertise on natural health is a scandal. The joke in our circles is that since they can't even spell homeopathy they have no business regulating it. As this committee is beginning to appreciate, there is a wealth of well-informed lay, business, and professional persons who can be called upon if needed.

There is another reason why new blood must be brought in. It has been our experience that there are some personnel at Health Canada so hostile toward natural health that they exercise their authority in an openly partisan way. Almost everyone in this business knows what it is like to be on the receiving end of outrages inflicted by civil servants who don't even try to conceal their vendetta. We are not among those who demonize the Health Protection Branch or its staff, many of whom we hold in the highest regard, but if some of the dinosaurs over there aren't moved out, then anything Parliament may decide will be undermined.

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As a consumer group, we have two additional concerns we want to address. On the issue of safety, we urge the committee not to lose sight of this fundamental fact, that natural health products are by far the safest category of medicaments, the vast majority of which have been scientifically verified by the largest and longest-running open clinical trial in history, human experience. On this basis alone, all documented natural health products should be in the public domain. For these, the default position should be innocent until proven guilty, which would be exactly the reverse of the current situation, in which every vitamin and herb is regarded as an impending thalidomide. Only if there is specific evidence should a product be restricted. In these cases the burden of proof must rest on the regulator.

There are, however, some natural health products which though generally safe are not appropriate for some: children, seniors, expecting mothers. Many health conditions have specific requirements. It is proper that a new regulatory authority will act accordingly. This can best be done by permitting suppliers considerable latitude in labelling and making supportable claims or publishing product monographs. Structure and function claims are not enough. Consumers need to know at the point of sale what the likely therapeutic actions are for any product.

The other issue that concerns us as a consumer group is the question of product honesty. We would like to have greater confidence that the products we buy actually contain the advertised ingredients. We need to have regulations that will put an end to incidents where random sampling of retail products reveals an unacceptable discrepancy between what it says on the label and what is actually in the bottle.

We also want to see an end to the dishonest practice of some manufacturers putting negligible amounts of popular ingredients in products they prominently advertise to unwitting buyers. This practice of selling sizzle but giving no steak is called “fairy dust”. We hope this committee will recommend to Parliament that any new regulator identify and stop all such abuses.

Finally on the question of efficacy, when it comes to health there is no single absolutely correct position on anything. It is the subjective satisfaction of the consumer which is the critical measure. This is exactly why consumers must be allowed to exercise conscious choice in regard to products and therapies. We are the final arbiters.

Therefore insofar as the regulators are dealing with claims, efficacy, and benefits, they should be limited to expressing an official opinion. They should not be permitted to force their partisan views on either the public or the industry as they do now through such devices as schedule A, which should be repealed. Consumers and health professionals will be the best judges of their own interests when they can freely weigh the evidence and opinions in the open market.

Yesterday, after this committee finished, I bought the daily newspapers and was reading the New York Times. There was a lovely article about a study released yesterday in the New England Journal of Medicine, a very authoritative study done by Harvard, a study of 80,000 nurses over 14 years. It verified quite convincingly the use of dietary supplements at levels above the RDRs for a variety of conditions, especially cardiovascular health.

While I was reading it, CBC news was on. Their medical reporter, Bernadine Healy, was commenting on this. At the end she made an editorial remark which I think is relevant to this committee. She said at the end that in consideration that there were so many studies of this nature coming out all the time, it was time for doctors to have, as she put it, “a more humble attitude” about the use of dietary supplements, “since they have been so consistently wrong on this matter all along”. I think and hope this is also appropriate to our regulators.

Thank you.

• 0920

The Chair: Thank you, Mr. McMaster. Ms. Hancock.

Ms. Lorna Hancock (Executive Director, Health Action Network Society): I would like to start my presentation with a regret. My regret is that just before I came yesterday, one of our older directors said to me, “Give them hell, Lorna. Just pretend they're all naked.”

Some hon. members: Oh, oh.

Ms. Lorna Hancock: I really regret that she said that.

As you know, my name is Lorna Hancock, and my colleague is Cathrine Gabriel. We are both principal officers of the 18-year-old Health Action Network Society.

I would like to thank you for the opportunity to share our thoughts, but I have another confession. I was very reluctant to come here. We only agreed to come a few hours ago. I hesitated for a number of reasons, and I want to share those reasons.

Our members are individuals seeking information on how they can help themselves to either maintain their health or improve their health through alternative health choices. The last time we recognized and questioned a number of their product choices disappearing from the shelves was 1994, and within weeks we had a visit from an auditor with Revenue Canada. Fortunately, we were given a clean bill of health.

Last year the health product choices available to Canadians continued to diminish. Once again we sought clarity. We invited representatives from a range of perspectives to participate in three different forums in Vancouver.

Without the help of the media, who were suspiciously silent, there were 900 people at the first event, 1,700 at the second, and 1,100 at the third.

When Health Canada made the mistake of sending a fax to the wrong place—we found out that they had spent a small fortune having the June 2 forum transcribed, because it was on somebody's desk within hours of the public vacating the hall—in addition to the fact that Revenue Canada paid their second spontaneous visit this summer, yet still giving us a clean bill of health, it does make one wonder about government's desire to have open dialogue on this topic. It has a furtive feeling about it, doesn't it?

Another reason for my hesitation to participate deals with my perception of the agenda, and what I feel is the real agenda. In my opinion—and I speak only for myself; every one of our members has a different perspective—this whole foofaraw is fueled not by the need to serve the 42% of Canadians who use alternative medicine but by the $500 billion carrot promised to industry through the development of “nutriceuticals” and functional foods.

According to the author I've listed at the bottom of this page, a nutriceutical is “any food or food ingredient considered to provide medical or health benefits”. I guess that means every single food item that exists on the earth, which would include water. Why confuse everyone? Let's just call it food.

Further, you tell us that you would like to see how it is done in other parts of the world. Well, some understanding of this is spelled out in another government report, which identified Canada's regulatory framework as the major impediment to success of functional food manufacturers in both the domestic and international markets. Apparently it isn't a good thing that foods and dietary supplements be classified as drugs under the Food and Drugs Act. In order to make the big financial returns, these nutritional products cannot be called food or a drug, so they need a brand new category.

There are other reasons. The media release of October 4 says:

Health Canada Minister Allan Rock today called a halt to new regulations coming into effect January 1, 1998, for natural health remedies in favour of a full public review.

I'm asking you, where is the full public review? Do the handful of organizations that have been invited to make submissions here come close to representing the thoughts and wishes of the public, or are the interests of big business what's being represented?

What about the systematic dismantling of the inspection labs of the Health Protection Branch? What independent research can we possibly hope to have that will check the research supplied by industry?

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Once again, the pharmaceutical industry is pushing Health Canada around, and I do not understand why we, the people, allow it. According to one senior scientist, the drug company reps have the nerve to threaten and insult them and state that if they, the scientists, do not fast-track their drug applications, their jobs will be eliminated. I say, what nerve!

So I wasn't coming. Although I knew in my heart that you were good people working hard to understand, I just didn't trust the process here. I thought, why participate if the outcome is already predestined? After all, you don't bite the hand that feeds you.

If we get a chance later this morning, I have two short stories I want to share with you.

I have my colleague here, Cathrine, who was a lot more positive than I was, and she had other things to say. So I turn the floor over to her.

Ms. Cathrine Gabriel (Executive Administrator, Health Action Network Society): As I hear Lorna's objections to participating in this process, I am reminded of the very diverse membership Health Action Network Society has developed over the past 18 years. We have representation from manufacturers, wholesalers, distributors, importers, retailers, health care practitioners and much more. But by far the largest percentage is represented by consumers, without whom all of the above would cease to exist. So the consumer voice must be heard, respected and given full consideration in this process.

If you, the members of the committee, will take the opportunity to watch the videos that we are providing as part of this presentation, you will see and hear what other consumers have to say.

As Lorna mentioned, we had three public forums held in Vancouver that drew capacity crowds. We've brought copies of the videos for you and also provided you with transcripts of the two most recent ones in your packet that you have.

You will note in the question period that there is a general consensus that there is no need to change the regulations surrounding natural products because the regulations that are entrenched in the Food and Drugs Act should already protect consumers from unsafe products and fraudulent claims. The act simply needs to be fairly and evenly enforced.

You will note that consumers have questioned the creation of additional categories for nutritional supplements, querying whether that would favour only industry and not the Canadian consumer. Our hope is that you will not form premature conclusions and recommendations to bring this issue to a hasty completion, but that you will make more room in your program to hear directly from consumers before this regulatory issue is completely and satisfactorily resolved.

When you watch these videos, bear in mind that your final recommendations will be delivered to Canadians such as the hundreds who attended these public forums, only there are millions more across Canada.

Please remember that you are elected representatives of the people—may their needs be met. Listen to the people who voted you in and do the right thing on behalf of the men, women and children of Canada. We anticipate that you will put consumers and accountability first, before industry.

Thank you.

The Chair: Thank you.

Before I go on to the other two speakers, I would like to make a comment, because Ms. Hancock made some statements that are quite disturbing.

I want you to know the committee will listen to everything you're saying. It will all be recorded. It will be there for the public to hear, and if you find that you have any repercussions later as a result of appearing here, we'd like to know.

Ms. Lorna Hancock: Thank you very much.

The Chair: I just wanted to clarify that. If something has happened before that doesn't involve MPs, but another level of government, we want you to know you are here because we want to hear what the public has to say. All right?

Ms. Lorna Hancock: Thank you.

The Chair: All the media will be leaving now, but I wanted to clarify that.

Mr. Joseph Volpe (Eglinton—Lawrence, Lib.): Madam Chair, I have a point of order.

I know we won't have an opportunity to address a lot of these issues until a little bit later, but there's been kind of a refreshing frankness about the way some of the positions have been stated, and we accept that because we have an open committee. But I must confess, as well, that there's kind of a disturbing criticism about the department that the department won't have an opportunity to address immediately.

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In fairness, what we are hoping to get is all the issues that are important from your perspective, and if these are criticisms that develop from that on a procedural basis, we will deal with them. It's a bit unfair, because department officials can't appear here and have an opportunity to address some of the language that has been attributed to them. They are not dinosaurs. I think Robert McMaster indicated there are some very fine people. If they have an intention that's directed for the public good, because we have a different approach to a problem does not necessarily mean there is malice behind some of their decisions. They operate within a regulatory framework. Your job, as I see it, is to make us aware of the shortcomings of the regulatory framework so we can make the appropriate recommendations to satisfy the needs you think are not being met.

The Chair: Mr. Volpe, I think we should go ahead.

Please feel free to say whatever you're thinking, whatever you're feeling. That's what you're here for. Ms. Connor.

Ms. Kathleen Connors (Chairperson, Canadian Health Coalition): While we do not have a brief to share with the members of the committee, we have brought a copy of a press release. I don't know if it has been provided to members of the committee, but it is available and it will form the basis of our presentation. In addition, there is an attached document from Health Canada on food-program-affected projects, and it will serve as a reference point.

As you may well remember, the Canadian Health Coalition is a broad-based coalition which has existed for many years. Our membership consists of seniors, labour groups, people in the health community, women's, low-income, and church groups across the country.

I come to this committee as a nurse who quite trusts the department, Health Canada, to ensure the safety of the products I use every day in my practice, be they blood, food, drugs—that they are safe not only for me to give but for the consumer to receive. It is with some trepidation—we do not do what we do today lightly—that we have to share some very legitimate concerns with the members of the committee. We have uncovered evidence indicating that senior management in the Department of Health have deliberately misinformed the Standing Committee on Health about cuts to Canada's food and drug safety research, and we feel it incumbent that you be aware of our concerns.

In their appearance before the Standing Committee on Health on December 9, the department's senior managers made a serious of deceptive statements dealing with cuts to food safety, research, food safety inspection, and the elimination of the Bureau of Drug Research, including the natural products division. If the Health Protection Branch is so concerned about the safety of natural products, why did they close the natural products lab?

What is the remedy for bureaucrats who deliberately misinform parliamentarians? At the very least, the health committee should investigate the decision to dismantle the Bureau of Drug Research and terminate 24 food safety research projects.

The assistant deputy minister of the Health Protection Branch testified at the Commons committee that these decisions strengthened the science base of Canada's health protection system; that the decisions were based on peer review, with an impact assessment; that research involving the detection of harmful food additives, deadly bacteria in seafood, and dangerous drugs represents, to quote the ADM, “cuts to basic science”, not safety research. We believe each of these statements is false.

Even more disturbing is the discovery that following Minister Rock's reversal of the cuts to the 24 food safety food programs in October, senior managers have still not replaced the vacant positions with research scientists. In effect, gaps in safety surveillance that endanger the lives of Canadians are deliberately maintained. We believe this is negligence bordering on the criminal.

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Are the senior managers incompetent, or are they deliberately dismantling the in-house food and drug lab capacity required to perform the legal duty under the Department of Health Act to ensure the protection of Canadians against hazards and fraud in the food and drug industry?

To deal with this crisis of accountability, we are here today to make some recommendations to the Standing Committee on Health:

Number one, conduct an immediate investigation of the Department of Health's performance of duty.

Number two, restore the budget to the Health Protection Branch to provide adequate resources.

Number three, fill all gaps in safety research immediately with qualified research scientists.

Number four, research the drug safety research labs, including the natural products lab.

And five, return the food inspection role to Health Canada.

We leave these recommendations for the committee for discussion and hopefully decision to follow up on.

I don't know if Mike has any further comments, but we would be pleased to entertain the questions.

Mr. Michael McBane (National Coordinator, Canadian Health Coalition): I have just one final comment, partly in response to Joe Volpe's observations about fairness of witnesses. We would urge you to call the senior managers and your senior safety scientists before you and get two accounts, and then you judge, based on the evidence, who's telling the truth.

What is the remedy for a bureaucrat who lies to a parliamentarian? That's the question before us, and it's a very fundamental question to Canadian democracy that we get full accountability. That's the minimum. That's an important role parliamentarians can play in examining this crisis before us.

We are faced with a situation where the pressures of industry are so powerful that even when the Minister of Health moves to restore the safety capacity, to perform his duty, he is thwarted by senior management. This is in a context where the Prime Minister recently has cut the feet out from the Minister of Health to pursue industrial interests for multinational drug companies. He cut the feet out of the Minister of the Environment to pursue multinational interests for the mining industry when he dissolved the environmental protection.

The Chair: Mr. McBane—

Mr. Michael McBane: So I would urge an investigation.

The Chair: We want to hear these concerns. We want also mainly to dwell on how we can improve the system that's there.

Allegations you'll have to contend with. You seem to know more about what people are doing than anybody else knows about the reasons for doing it, but you're making certain allegations, and I just suggest you be careful, that's all, for your own sake. I want you to say it, but we also want to dwell on how we can improve this, if we could have that. But we're glad you said what you said.

Ms. Judy Wasylycia-Leis (Winnipeg North Centre, NDP): On a point of order, one of the problems we're facing as a committee is that we've had a very brief opportunity to actually raise questions with departmental officials. We had one meeting set aside for senior bureaucrats to report to this committee. It was cut short due to the ringing of the bells. The presentation we heard left a lot of unanswered questions and a lot of concerns.

It's incumbent upon us, as committee members, to see if we can rearrange a time to have those same officials return so we can continue the discussion, and also for us to consider the suggestion to call some of the actual scientists from the food and drug research labs.

The Chair: We'll certainly consider that.

Mr. Joseph Volpe: Madam Chair, on a point of order, I think we're getting away a little bit from the intention of holding these hearings, but there are some statements that cannot go unanswered, and certainly to wait until the questioning period would do an injustice to it.

I'm assuming that Mr. McBane raised some rather rhetorical questions, but I'm going to attempt to answer some of those rhetorical questions as well.

This committee has always had at its disposal, and after its deliberations, the opportunity to call members of the department before it and ask them questions without any encumbrances. The fact that on occasion this committee's deliberations are interrupted by the bells in the House is just a function of the procedures in this place. It does not indicate that there is a reluctance to meet with department officials and to query them on the way the department functions, even in the minutest of detail.

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Without appearing to be defensive about some of the officials who have appeared before this committee, some of them have been grilled and all of them have responded under what I dare to say was very close scrutiny. And they have left the committee members with the sense that they have received full and complete answers to their questions. When that doesn't happen, the committee has an opportunity—and I stress this once again for members who haven't been around the table long enough to appreciate it. And if you'll permit me, Dr. Hill, I'll use your name, as you know that the committee can and does call members of the department to account.

If Mr. McBane and others think that members of the bureaucracy make decisions with impunity, let me remind him that they take an oath of office. They're sworn to perform their public duty. And what happens to those who don't perform their duties? Public officials are not any different from those in other bureaucracies and institutions, business and otherwise. If you don't perform your duties, there are consequences.

I shouldn't like the witnesses to think that they're coming before a parliamentary committee that is impotent as far as receiving factual material, is unwilling to listen to the experiences of others, and is unprepared to deal with the material before it. But I would like witnesses to appreciate the fact that we all are trying to work in a fashion that's not necessarily collaborative but is cooperative. And to address and attack people who are not here and in so doing attack the committee members' willingness to address issues is not part of the mandate of either witnesses or members.

So maybe, Madam Chair,—

The Chair: Mr. Volpe, I think both sides have been well expressed now.

Mr. Joseph Volpe: —we can go on and we can have an intelligent discussion about the products—

The Chair: Yes.

Mr. Joseph Volpe: —and the mandate of the committee. I think that would be much more productive.

The Chair: We appreciate what's been said. We would like to have some positive feedback so that we can improve things, if that's what you feel has to be done.

Mr. Hill, five minutes.

Mr. Grant Hill (Macleod, Alberta, Ref.): Thank you, Madam Chair.

And that did sound somewhat defensive, if I may say so.

Mr. Joseph Volpe: I could have been more aggressive if you would have preferred that style.

Mr. Grant Hill: To Mr. McMaster initially, when we receive information such as that you have given us, that one statement you made that some individuals in the department are openly hostile to the interests of the health food industry, I would like to hear names. I've actually heard this from other sources. I would like to know the names of individuals who have an agenda that seems hostile. Could you provide that, please?

Mr. Robert McMaster: There are two things I'd like to say at this time. And as I said in my presentation, we will be sending you a brief later and we will put what we have in that brief at that time.

First, whenever there is some newly developed area such as natural health, there is a lot of controversy and people have strong feelings about it. It is natural that regulators who are putting forward and having to undertake work that was mandated under an old regime or traditional or conventional knowledge are going to sometimes do that with what is perceived as too much zeal.

This doesn't mean that there's bad faith involved here; it just means that when it comes down to street level that can be very abrasive. There are a lot of examples and experiences and they occur on a street level, in stores or in companies where people have felt that some of the personnel they were dealing with were especially partisan. I think many other groups that come before this committee are going to give you specific information. That's my general answer. We have published some specific experiences in our magazine and we'll be doing so continually.

• 0945

The other thing that's important is that our experience has been that many companies and stores are very reluctant to come forward and provide the documentation they have that will confirm incidents because they are afraid of retaliation. This is very well known and very widely discussed within the industry. How much of that people are going to feel comfortable about coming forward with here is a little bit what Lorna said. Suddenly if people appear on your doorstep, that sort of thing, you're really not sure what's going on. I don't want to overblow this, but that does happen, and it makes people feel pretty skittish about what they're doing.

Mr. Grant Hill: But you will supply us with names of individuals that your organization feels are openly hostile in this area?

Mr. Robert McMaster: I think you need specific incidents that can be documented. I'm not going to name individuals just generally; it's specific incidents that you want to look at, something that can be supported. I think you're entitled to that.

Mr. Grant Hill: All right.

The second thing I'd like to address, to Kathleen Connors, if I might, the co-chair of your organization is...?

Ms. Kathleen Connors: My position is chairperson of the Canadian Health Coalition. Michael McBane serves as the executive coordinator.

Mr. Grant Hill: Is there a co-chair, too?

Ms. Kathleen Connors. No, there isn't.

Mr. Grant Hill: At one of the presentations you made there was another individual there who I thought was a co-chair with you.

Ms. Kathleen Connors: No.

Mr. Grant Hill: So the wife of the Deputy Prime Minister does not sit on your organization?

Ms. Kathleen Connors: Absolutely not.

A voice: That's a different organization.

Ms. Kathleen Connors: It's a different organization.

Mr. Grant Hill: My apology. I was trying to make a nice hook there between what you've said and the wife of the Deputy Prime Minister. I'm mistaken.

To the group who is less interested in a regulatory framework, how would you see natural health products regulated in the sense of safety and be sure we're not getting products that we're not expecting?

Ms. Cathrine Gabriel: Maybe I'll comment first. In that regard, I believe we can certainly concur with what Rob said regarding what is in the bottle as reflected on the label, GMP. I don't think any consumer would have a problem with that. They do want to know that the product is safe and not contaminated and at the level of dosage that it does state on the label. I think that would be already taken care of under regulations that now exist with GMP, good manufacturing practices. I don't know whether there's anything else that needs to be done in that regard.

Mr. Grant Hill: In terms of recommendations, then, how would you change what we have today? It's not clear to me what you'd like changed.

Ms. Lorna Hancock: Can I go back a second? I got the impression that you thought we didn't want regulation.

Mr. Grant Hill: No, I mean—

Ms. Lorna Hancock: I would like to suggest that there already is regulation, and the Food and Drugs Act has provision for that. I'm sorry, I can't quote the Food and Drugs Act, but my question is, why is that not enforced? You see, I don't understand why natural supplements are called drugs in the first place. That happened 10 years ago.

Mr. Grant Hill: What I'm after, then, is what would you see changed? If things aren't good now, I'm not sure what you would like to recommend.

Ms. Lorna Hancock: I would like to recommend enforcement of the existing regulations under the Food and Drugs Act. As Cathrine was saying, GMP covers things like what's in a bottle. Just enforce what we already have. Why do we have to change that?

Mr. Grant Hill: Would you change the natural supplement being defined as a drug? Is that one of your basic principles?

Ms. Lorna Hancock: If this were me, I would have gone back 10 years ago and reclassified it as a food ingredient. I don't see changing it from a food to a quasi-food, or a nutriceutical, or some continuum, or something in the middle.

Mr. Grant Hill: Because it's not harmful?

Ms. Lorna Hancock: Primarily, and if something were harmful, then any harmful ingredient should probably be a drug, but there aren't many. The few that are should be handled by qualified practitioners.

The Chair: Mr. Dumas.

[Translation]

Mr. Maurice Dumas (Argenteuil—Papineau, BQ): Have we reached the question period? I thought we were discussing a point of order, and I wanted to know whether Ms. Gabriel had finished.

The Chair: Yes, we are at the question period. You have five minutes.

Mr. Maurice Dumas: Good. Personally, when Mr. McMaster said that we own our own bodies, that bothered me, because that is exactly the argument put forward by smokers. I therefore think this is a dangerous thing to say, when we know the health costs of smoking.

• 0950

The second thing that bothers me is entitled "consumers first". Can we really think that consumers are always right, given the number of tactics used to make them change their mind?

[English]

Mr. Robert McMaster: I'm actually not familiar with that argument by the smokers. It sounds interesting. I don't think I'm going to surrender to them, though, what I think is the correct position, as we put it, which is that we do own our own bodies. I think that's not only a legal, an ethical, and a moral position, but it's also a political position. Our premise is that that is why we have those rights to make these decisions.

If other people and other constituencies and communities want to take that point and try to bend it to their purpose, they'll have to accept responsibility for that. But I can't concede any ground to them with regard to applying that appropriately to our circumstance.

The Chair: Ms. Bennett.

Ms. Carolyn Bennett (St. Paul's, Lib.): Thank you.

I have to go back to my humble family physician roots and comment on the effect, which was obviously anger. You have obviously been through a lot.

I feel badly that Lorna's presentation was around her antipathy about participating in this rather than actually helping us come forward with solutions. We know there's a problem or we wouldn't be here. I hope you will now begin to help us come up with some real solutions.

Articulating the problem is one part. Government always deals a bit better if you can come up with some real solutions, because then they can move quickly on that. Just articulating the problem leaves the problem with us, and we know the best solutions come from you and the people who know the most about it. That seems to have been some of the problem with the Health Protection Branch.

From Mr. McMaster's first comment that we obviously need product honesty, I think there is probably no one on the committee who doesn't agree with that. When we come to the efficacy, that's where we're going to need your help.

I would first like to know what solutions you would put forward. When we looked at the Australian products the other day, there were various levels of claims on those products, from “has been traditionally used for this”, to “has been used for that”, or “is used for relief of this”. There seem to be at least four levels on the various products. I would like some help with how you would see labelling versus claim versus drug—all of those things.

The other thing that continues to come back.... When you look at the Health Action Network brief, it does include the October 4 press release from Minister Rock. When you say “full public review”, I'm already worried that in your brief it says “a handful of organizations”. I'm very concerned. If that's the way these hearings are perceived by people like yourselves who are the advocates.... I feel that by the fact that you are here, you represent a huge constituency.

What do we have to do to change that perception? Granted, all of us could watch the video. Do you feel there should be public meetings, town hall meetings? What do you feel we can do to get around this perception that we've invited a few select people who are going to tell us what we want to hear?

Ms. Lorna Hancock: Seeing as how I was the one who started all this.... I have a feeling that there is a split personality here. Eastern Canada has a range of thinking and western Canada has a range of thinking. By that I mean there are a number of groups that, had they known about this.... They didn't know about this. Somehow we were invited, and that was great, but now that we understand, maybe there is room in the program to hear from more of these groups.

• 0955

They'll probably reflect much of the sentiment that I brought, which is it's not that you aren't terrific people, working hard, looking for solutions—I believe that wholeheartedly—but I think that there's a much bigger agenda here.

I recall participating in the hearings dealing with food irradiation about 15 years ago. It was a standing committee. It went right across Canada, and it was so exciting because everybody was participating. They were right in there. Then they came up with all these recommendations but the government of the day didn't listen to any of them.

So, as I say, it's not you; it's what's going on globally that concerns me—what is being orchestrated on an international level, the impact of free trade and NAFTA and the MAI. On one level maybe people think that this is great for business and develops in that way and that helps people, but on the other level it strips you of your sovereignty. So I have serious concerns about it.

Mrs. Carolyn Bennett: If this committee does not travel, are you saying that our whole piece of work would be sort of thrown out?

Ms. Lorna Hancock: I'm really guarded about answering that one. I'll bet you could come out with some smashing recommendations, some really great ones, but I don't know where they would go.

Mr. Robert McMaster: Madam Chair, could I respond to—

Ms. Lorna Hancock: My apologies, please.

The Chair: You don't have to apologize.

Ms. Lorna Hancock: I really respect all of you.

The Chair: Don't apologize.

Mr. McMaster, do you want to answer? Can you do it in about 10 seconds?

Mr. Robert McMaster: I want to refer you to the response that Mike Vertolli gave on Tuesday when he was addressing this efficacy question. Efficacy is an allopathic medical term. So it pertains to benefits that accrue from the use of drugs or medical or therapeutic agents according to that tradition.

The problem is that you've got a lot of different traditions and the same supplements or nutrients or herbs can be used variously by completely distinct and different systems. So you're going to have to have an idea about efficacy or benefit that takes into consideration all of those different ways of applying them.

The Chair: Thank you very much. You've indicated how difficult this is going to be. That's why we want your help as much as possible.

Ms. Wasylycia-Leis.

Ms. Judy Wasylycia-Leis: I'd like to thank all the presenters for coming before us today with a very in-depth look at this whole area. Although Carolyn Bennett says “We know the problem, so let's get on with it”, this is the first time we've actually had people before us making the links between what's happening in the natural health protection area and what's happening with respect to the entire regulation of drugs and foods. There are clear links and relationships.

Many have asked us the question, why is the government getting so tough and almost punitive in terms of natural health products, when in fact it's deregulating and privatizing in the areas of pharmaceuticals and food? Is in fact the big drug industry setting the agenda, and how will this impact on whatever we decide as a committee in terms of regulating in the area of natural health products?

It was said best by the two different presenters. Robert, in terms of the Citizens for Choice in Health Care, is saying that within the Health Protection Branch there is no support for and almost outright opposition to natural health products, so we need a separate regulatory authority with separate expertise. Lorna and Cathrine, from the Health Action Network Society, are saying that the system would be fine if there was a policy commitment to looking at these alternatives and if there was the political will to put in place a proper response to the current regulatory framework.

So it does beg the question for all of us, how do we go to the next step?

I think that unless we get to the bottom of what's happening in the Health Protection Branch and this whole agenda of deregulation and privatization, we can't really respond adequately in terms of a regulatory framework for natural health products.

What would your advice be to all of us? Whom should we get back in from the department? What witnesses would be helpful in terms of this approach? How can we carry out this full review of the Health Protection Branch in order to move forward with a proper regulatory framework for natural health products?

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Ms. Lorna Hancock: I'd like to put a little thought into that question and go back and prepare a serious list that we feel would help you address some of the comments you've raised here.

The Chair: Ms. Hancock, can you do that fairly quickly?

Ms. Lorna Hancock: Sure.

The Chair: The committee's not going on for months and months. We need to know if we need to call people back. So we need to have your suggestions.

Mr. Robert McMaster: There is a specific suggestion I could make. You need to invite here some of the front-line inspectors, not always just the senior staff from Health Canada. Invite some of the front-line inspectors who are out there on the streets. They're the ones who have the direct interaction with the stores, with the practitioners, with the businesses. Then invite the people at the business end, or at the practitioner end, to come in and say directly what they want, and what their experiences are. That's where you're going to hear and see some of what we all experience all the time, instead of just hearing from heads of associations and departments.

The Chair: Mr. McBane.

Mr. Michael McBane: To follow up on Robert's idea, we do have to get in food inspectors who used to work for Health Canada and who now have been shuffled over to Agriculture. You need to hear again from the senior managers and ask them to substantiate.

Your committee asked for the impact assessment study that resulted in the cutting of the 24 food projects. You were never given that. You will never be given that because that doesn't exist. You've been lied to. You need to pursue that. That's a witness you need to get back here. He has to produce that document.

I think it's also important to get the safety research scientists in, the people in the laboratories. Because I can tell you, the managers don't know what food safety research is, or any kind of safety research. They only talk about science research, basic research. They don't know what safety is. They are so compliant with the industry they have no idea what safety is. You have to hear from your research scientists directly, throughout the entire department.

The Chair: Lorna.

Ms. Lorna Hancock: Further to that, I think you also have to ask yourselves who pays their salary. Is there a vested interest here? For example, if they are independent, then personally I would trust them a little more in terms of their answers.

Dr. Chopra was interviewed on CKNW in Vancouver. He really went out on a limb to say how he felt about what was happening there. Someone who's willing to take that kind of a risk is who you want to listen to, because you're going to get the absolute truth from him.

The Chair: Ms. Connors.

Ms. Kathleen Connors: To follow up further, I think there has to be a recognition from this committee that when you bring in the scientists you need to hear from, these scientists, in order to provide pure, frank, honest and open testimony, have to be afforded some protection. Because they're blowing the whistle, and there's no whistle-blower legislation in this country for federal scientists.

As a government, you employ these scientists to work on your behalf. For them to be honest and forthright without risking their careers—and many of them have invested many years of personal commitment to an area that they feel very passionately about with respect to food and drug safety—that kind of protection has to be afforded to them, because they're going to have to criticize their employer.

The Chair: Thank you. You have given us lots of good suggestions.

Mr. Volpe, you're next on the list.

Mr. Lynn Myers (Waterloo—Wellington, Lib.): On a point of order, I would like to know where this is going. These are, in my view, very serious allegations, and I want to know where this is going.

The Chair: We'll discuss later as a committee what we're going to do with this. I think that's all I can say right now. They're giving us their suggestions. We've asked for an opinion and they're giving it to us. What we do with it will be up to the committee.

Ms. Judy Wasylycia-Leis: On the last point, very quickly, Michael McBane raised a very important point. We were promised a number of documents at that meeting with senior officials from the department. To the best of my knowledge, we have not received any of that information.

I would just raise the fact that we should try to get that and see if it will be forthcoming.

The Chair: Thank you. Mr. Volpe.

Mr. Joseph Volpe: Thank you very much, Madam Chair.

I would like to take us back to the question of safety and efficacy. I leaned over to my colleague and complimented Mr. McMaster on a response he gave a moment or two ago. I'd like to pursue that, if I can.

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Mr. McMaster, you indicated that the question of efficacy is a difficult one for all the stakeholders, as well as the regulators, to address because of the varying nature of the efficacies of a particular product within a particular culture or tradition.

How would you recommend that the regulatory body that is currently in place, or ought to be in place, deal with this issue, assuming that the question of efficacy is still an important factor as it relates to the use of herbal remedies and practices?

Mr. Robert McMaster: One other thing to say to you with regard to the question of efficacy is to keep this in the back of your mind at every point: one size doesn't fit all. You can take just about any natural health product of any variety, whether it's homeopathic, herbal, or in a vitamin form, and find that the amount that is appropriate for one group of individuals or one population is completely inappropriate for another. We know, of course, that this happens to a certain extent with drugs, and that's why there are such developed monographs and reference books, etc.

A lot of this material is available, of course, for natural health products, but it needs to be brought together. The various materia medicas and so forth need to be sanctioned so that those standard reference books then can be consulted not only by the public but also by industry and by practitioners. That variability is on top of the fact that there are different systems.

So this idea that you can just make one big rule regarding efficacy, and make everybody a square peg or a round hole and that's it, is not going to work. There needs to be some flexibility.

In the coalition, because we have so many organizations involved in that, we brought together through the fall all of the experts we could bring forward, from all of the health professional and medical groups, from the industry and from the consumer groups, to develop a fully worked-out answer for all of this. If you look in the coalition's binder you'll see that we sketched out not only all of the various criteria byt also the pathways, the appeal and due processes, structure, where you'd get the personnel and how we think that should be done.

We didn't have time to present that on Tuesday, but it is there. I won't try to summarize it now. I think the best people available worked for a long time to develop a very specific answer for that, so please take some time out to have a look at it.

Mr. Joseph Volpe: Most assuredly.

Tell me, do you think there is a sufficient reservoir of expertise available that would come from the marketplace to serve on the regulatory body at Health Canada?

Mr. Robert McMaster: Yes. We proposed specific mechanisms about how they could be drawn upon and how that might be done consistent with the way in which Health Canada works and the government generally prefers to operate.

Mr. Joseph Volpe: Does that recommendation include as well the “presence” of an instution, for want of a better word, or a body that could verify the qualifications of some of the people who would be moved toward the regulator?

Mr. Robert McMaster: We propose that within the structural changes we hope this committee recommends to Parliament be made within Health Canada there would be a supervisory body that would have the specific responsibility of seeing to it that expertise was brought to bear on all of the specific products, and also generally on categories of things, such as deciding which materia medica or pharmacopoeia was the appropriate one and how that would fit into the structure of Health Canada.

Mr. Joseph Volpe: I think you as well as your colleagues, Madam Hancock and Madam Gabriel, agree that we ought not to weaken the element of safety with respect to all of these products. I think you used the words “product honesty”. I hope I'm not assuming too much, but I assume that your colleagues as well agree that the consumer ought to be protected against unscrupulous practitioners who would fill a capsule or bottle or whatever with virtually anything.

Maybe you would like to answer this, Madam Hancock. Does the regulator, in your estimation, still have the obligation to ensure that all distributors of herbal products comply with generally accepted standards?

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Ms. Lorna Hancock: Absolutely—as it has all along. The ability exists right now to check the bottles that come down the manufacturing lines to confirm that there are actually 200 tablets of this much product and it's this kind of product. It already exists. So yes, I agree, safety is of the utmost.

Mr. Joseph Volpe: The committee has heard so far that many of the products on the market as well as many of the therapies associated with the use of those products are relatively new in the Canadian environment, although not necessarily new to those who practise the products. Would it be safe to say most of the products on the market today are not domestically produced?

Mr. Robert McMaster: Mr. Volpe, having been the science director for one of the major companies here in Canada for many years, I can tell you that's pretty much a split decision. Maybe about half the Canadian companies have contract manufacturers outside the country or they draw on materials that were manufactured outside the country and then they just do the packaging here in Canada. There are an increasing number, and you heard some of them yesterday, HerbTech, for instance, of Canadian companies which have the capability to produce state-of-the-art supplement products, but our base is not nearly as well developed as that of the United States and many products are made in Europe, especially the homeopathic products.

I wanted to say about honesty, this is not a GMP issue. All these things escape GMP. These are practices we would hope the regulators would look at and they are not currently looking at. I can tell you from first-hand experience, these things are happening.

The Chair: Mr. Elley.

Mr. Reed Elley (Nanaimo—Cowichan, Ref.): Thank you very much again for coming. I hope you will not feel your coming here today has been in vain, even though at some point you may have been reluctant to come.

It's interesting that in our discussions with people like yourselves, particularly those who are involved with consumer groups and those who are involved in industry itself, we have felt this level of frustration. Quite frankly, I think you're the first ones who have openly voiced that frustration, and I appreciate your candour and your freshness for doing that.

I'm going to ask you two very plain questions. One I want to ask of Kathleen and Michael and one of Cathrine and Lorna. They deal with the two levels of debate I think we're starting to see arise here. One is the issue of the Department of Health and the Health Protection Branch.

I would like to know this from Kathleen and Michael. What two good, solid recommendations would you make to change the system in the department to make it function better for the consumer? Then from Cathrine and Lorna, what two recommendations would you make to change the regulatory system that would make it better for the consumer? I think those are two fundamental questions dealing with two aspects of the debate we're hearing.

Mr. Michael McBane: Mr. Elley, those are good questions.

I think it's actually quite basic on the Health Protection Branch side. What we need is to get the resources back to perform the duty under the law to protect consumers from hazardous products and fraud in the food and drug industry.

What has happened in recent years is we have eliminated the budget for HPB. We have cut it in half, and we are still cutting. That's going to lead Health Canada to make cuts, and the people most vulnerable to those cuts are the research scientists in the safety labs, because nobody else in the department knows what they are doing. They are vulnerable. They are being cut, and I don't really think we know the implications of these cuts.

So it's simple. Get the resources back into HPB and actually get senior managers who understand what their duty is in terms of enforcing the safety of our food and drug supply. Right now there's an ethos within management that assumes their duty is to facilitate the aims of the pharmaceutical industry and the food industry. They will tell you that to your face. They have that in internal memos: “My client is the drug industry”. Well, we have a problem here with the mandate and the understanding of senior management. They don't understand the Food and Drugs Act.

• 1015

There are some basic questions. Some of it is budget, some of it is getting back to doing what the law says in terms of enforcing the Department of Health Act and the Food and Drugs Act.

Mr. Reed Elley: Kathleen, to you.

Ms. Kathleen Connors: Add to that the fact that the food inspection role has been moved from Health Canada to Agriculture Canada. It has to come back to Health Canada. It has to come back, because it's being administered under the Food and Drugs Act. If their work is being administered under the Food and Drugs Act, then have them under Health Canada.

We know Agriculture Canada is facing cuts too, and I am very concerned that cuts to Agriculture Canada will then see the elimination of those jobs in Agriculture rather than in Health. So bring them back under Health Canada and ensure that the food inspection role is fulfilled in order to fulfil the mandate of the Food and Drugs Act.

Mr. Reed Elley: Thank you.

Cathrine and Lorna.

Ms. Cathrine Gabriel: I can generally say that we concur with what Michael and Kathleen have said, but subject to discussion. We're taking in everything that's being discussed here today, and we can make some general recommendations, but to be a little more effective, we would like to go back and discuss this, make some more concrete suggestions, and have some suggestions back to you within one week.

Mr. Reed Elley: That would be great.

The Chair: Send all the material to the clerk and then we'll all get a copy of everything.

Ms. Cathrine Gabriel: We would be more than pleased to do that, and we will.

Mr. Reed Elley: Thank you.

The Chair: Mr. Myers.

Mr. Lynn Myers: Madam Chair, I have three questions.

The first one anyone can answer. Is there an international model we should be looking at as we proceed with this study on natural health products?

Second, is there a component for training and education of people who recommend and/or sell these kinds of products? Is there a role for training in whatever form?

And third, Mr. McMaster, going back to something you said at the outset of your remarks with respect to the separate regulatory structure, I think in answer to other questions you started to get at what mechanism or what ideas you have with respect to what should happen there. I'd like to hear more about that.

Mr. Robert McMaster: Thank you, Mr. Myers.

The answer to the last part is that we do believe, as does the advisory panel and as does the coalition and all of its constituent groups, that there should be a separate category for natural health products. Neither the panel nor the coalition at this time has put forward a specific structural model where they think that ought to fit into Health Canada.

It is the opinion of our group as a component of the coalition that it ought to be a directorate. We think it's very simple. But you can take the principles for a unit or an entity, as it were, both from the panel and from the coalition, which are quite well developed, and you could probably cast them into a bureau or any other entity. There is a variety of ways you can do that. You will have to make that decision. That's just our own opinion on that matter.

Internationally there are, as I think Mary Wu pointed out yesterday, some serious advantages to a number of the different international models. She mentioned the U.S., Australia, and Japan, but in Britain, for instance, there is a British herbal pharmacopeia; in Germany there are the Commission E Monographs; and in France and Germany in the European Economic Community they have the most developed way of regulating homeopathic products.

So I think you want to cut and paste a little bit. Each place has tradition; they're strong in some areas, weak in others. When you hear Loren Israelsen—I'm looking forward to hearing Loren Israelsen—he'll tell you what they went through as legislators in the United States. I think that will be very germane to what the committee says.

As far as the training business goes, that's being done privately, but interestingly quite a number of groups have been doing it. The College of Naturopathic Medicine has been involved with the Canadian Health Food Association to develop a training program for the personnel who work in health food stores, so they can get some proper training and some certification they can put up so you can say this person went and did this.

I think the Academy of Nutrition is also doing this, and some other private colleges are beginning to move in that direction. As you know, this of course is fraught with a little bit of difficulty, because it's a provincial issue. But yes, a lot of that's happening.

Mr. Lynn Myers: I think Ms. Hancock wants to respond.

Ms. Lorna Hancock: I have a couple of comments. Your first question was on the international model. I don't have an answer this second, but I will think about it very carefully with others.

• 1020

Second, you were asking about regulations surrounding training, and I just wanted to clarify the question. My answer is that our organization is really made up of consumers. We don't represent a vested interest, we're not funded by any interest, just people. So when the answer comes back it will come back from that perspective.

Mr. Lynn Myers: I think that's an important perspective.

Ms. Lorna Hancock: It is very important. Thank you. So within the week we'll try to answer these questions seriously and hopefully to your satisfaction.

The Chair: Thank you. I wanted to let you know we're going to extend the meeting so that we give you your full time.

I want to make a comment about myself. I felt yesterday as if I was getting a cold, so I went to the drug store last night. Normally I would come out with a normal drug product for a cold, but last night I came out with two bottles of natural products and one bottle of the stuff I would normally take. I just wanted you to know we are listening. I'm not 100% sure it's working, but I've got enough stuff in me that something should happen.

I have a question I would like to take this opportunity to ask. Just for the committee members to know, when I ask questions like this it's quite often because the researchers need material to broaden what they're working on.

On the issue of natural health products, has the Canadian Health Coalition canvassed its members, determined their view on the existing regulatory system? And if you have, how many people responded?

Mr. Michael McBane: You're asking the Canadian Health Coalition?

The Chair: Yes. But if anybody else wants to answer, if you've got a list, if you know if 1,000 people responded or whatever, I'd like to hear from you.

Mr. Michael McBane: I think the other networks are more directly....

Mr. Robert McMaster: I can tell you something about the Canadian Coalition for Health Freedom, which we belong to. That is made up of consumer and business groups: for instance, the various Citizens for Choice in Health Care, the consumer wing; the Canadian Health Food Association represents the suppliers and the retailers; and there are about 20 different health professional organizations, ranging from the Canadian Complementary Medical Association, the Canadian College of Naturopathic Medicine, right the way through all the herbal groups and so forth. Those are the associations we answer to. That's also our expertise base that we draw upon, so we kind of almost meet in permanent session, as it were, and it has probably been the most rewarding research enterprise I've ever been involved with. That's why you got such a fat white binder on Tuesday.

The Chair: And a lot of other letters from you, too, as a matter of fact. But I'd like to know figures. Do you have a figure, such as 500 people or 1,000 people out there, not executives necessarily, but individuals? You say you're representing the consumer. Do you have any statistics, such as 5,000 of our people say this, and it is the people themselves who have said it? Or is it the executives of these organizations who are saying this?

Mr. Robert McMaster: Actually, you got our stuff during the election campaign with nearly half a million brochures that went out last spring. So that was our attempt to go to our grassroots—

The Chair: You're not answering the question, Mr. McMaster. Do you have a—

Mr. Robert McMaster: That's the best statistic of that sort I can give you. Offhand, I don't know the membership make-ups of the various associations. That can, of course, be obtained.

The Chair: Has there been some kind of study or questionnaire done that goes directly to the individual person who is using the products, or is it all done through the executive public?

Mr. Robert McMaster: So far, most of the work gets done through the various associations, sure.

The Chair: No, not the work, the results from the questionnaire is what I'm trying to get. I just want to know if it exists.

Mr. Robert McMaster: No, I'm not aware of anything that extensive.

The Chair: Okay. Lorna.

Ms. Lorna Hancock: As I mentioned in our material, we have 5,000 members. We were invited a week ago.... We certainly haven't consulted with those people.

The Chair: I mean forever, any poll taken, a year ago or any time. Do you ever send questionnaires out saying—

Ms. Lorna Hancock: Yes, actually we do. The questionnaire we sent out to our membership was to define who they were. We have a copy of that we could send you. It was a—

The Chair: I'm presuming that you don't have what I'm asking for. But it's all right. I just wondered if it existed.

Ms. Lorna Hancock: However, as Cathrine was pointing out, we really have a very bright bunch of members and we hear from them all the time. We have a lot of correspondence from them. Is that what you're looking for, some thoughts and feelings?

The Chair: I just wondered if there was a poll done or if you'd done a survey at all. It's okay.

Ms. Lorna Hancock: These are excellent.

Ms. Cathrine Gabriel: We haven't done an official poll. I interviewed a few members before I came, but that was just a handful, because I didn't have much more time. But on my desk I do also have a stack of letters; we've invited people to respond to how they were feeling. So I do have a lot of letters actually that have been written over probably the past year that we've collected.

• 1025

The Chair: That's a problem I have too. I have a huge stack of letters. Some people say not to change anything, that everything is perfect and they feel safe and protected. Another person will say to change everything. Somebody else will say to make a certain change. The comments are quite diverse. I just wondered if you had any stats.

Ms. Kathleen Connors: From our coalition's perspective, while we have not done a poll of over two million members, we have discussed the issue of the role of the Health Protection Branch as it relates to the variety of issues that we've raised. We've made reference to the fact that there are church groups, seniors, labour groups, the women's network, anti-poverty organizations and coalitions at the provincial and national levels. We have received a mandate to proceed today in raising the concerns we have about the broader issues around the Health Protection Branch.

The Chair: I understand that. I'm just wondering if there is one directly to the people.

Monsieur Dumas.

[Translation]

Mr. Maurice Dumas: I wouldn't want our witnesses to think that I was hostile to them in my initial questions. I am pleased that you came to appear before us this morning to shake things up a little. We know that the Department of Health is not always innocent, and I am wondering whether you really think an inquiry into the Department of Health could be held immediately, as you requested.

Do you think you could manage to have such an inquiry set up, Ms. Hancock?

[English]

The Chair: Just a minute, Mr. Dumas.

Ms. Lorna Hancock: I'm sorry, but I don't speak French. Were you looking at me?

Mr. Michael McBane: The Health Coalition made that recommendation.

[Translation]

Mr. Maurice Dumas: I think Mr. McBane spoke, but I believe Ms. Hancock read that, and that is why I asked her the question.

I will therefore repeat my question: do you really think you could get an inquiry into the Department of Health?

Mr. Michael McBane: I think this is the responsibility of the Health Committee. That is part of your mandate, is it not?

Mr. Maurice Dumas: Yes, as an opposition party.

[English]

The Chair: Do you have any other questions, Mr. Dumas?

[Translation]

Mr. Maurice Dumas: No, that is all.

The Chair: Thank you.

[English]

Madam Caplan.

Ms. Elinor Caplan (Thornhill, Lib.): Thank you very much. I really appreciate everyone's attendance.

I'd like to approach this a little differently. I'll start with a series of questions that start with “What's the problem?”

It's my understanding after listening to you—particularly to Lorna—that part of your presentation is that the problem is how the present act is being applied. Is that correct? You don't really think there's much change needed except for the present act to be properly applied.

Ms. Lorna Hancock: That is correct.

Ms. Elinor Caplan: That's what I heard.

I'd like to share with you my perception of what the problem is, and then perhaps others would like to jump in. The problem with the Food and Drugs Act as I understand it is the role of the regulator or the government. As it is under that act right now, the role of the regulator or government has three components. One component ensures the safety for consumers. The second ensures the quality of the product. The third is on the issue of effectiveness or efficacy, the honesty and the claims that are made.

Under the Food and Drugs Act, foods cannot legally make claims. Only drugs can make claims. So the minute a food product or a natural product makes a claim, the regulator moves in on the basis of the safety, quality, and effectiveness of the claim and imposes the same regime or threatens to impose the same regime as the regulator has for drugs. I see that as a problem, because in the whole area of natural products the issue becomes whether the same test should be applied because there may not be the same risks.

• 1030

The reason we are here at this time is that the Food and Drugs Act doesn't address the needs of consumers, making sure they have freedom to choose products. They want to decide if they are going to be helpful to them—what the benefits are—and they are telling us they would like to have those products available. They want to know they are safe and they want to know they are of good quality, but they don't think they want the regulator, the government, imposing the standard of rigorous testing on those things where there isn't a high risk of harm. That's my understanding of what the problem is and why we are here today.

Does anybody want to comment on that, if you think I'm wrong or I've missed some part of it?

Ms. Lorna Hancock: I think you have a real dilemma on your hands. It's the whole thing having to do with claims. Personally, I think the safety is there. I think the problem is uneven application of the law; and there are a number of people who would reflect that opinion.

Your next comment was on quality. I think we have the ability to do that already, if it's properly administered.

The next one is the claims. You know, where I have difficulty with that is that whole thing about research. I'm not sure if you are aware of the.... It just came out in the New England Journal of Medicine this month. It's all about who funds the research, and conflict of interest. In other words, it's back to the comment that you don't bite the hand that feeds you. What they have here is science, theoretically double-blind science, which actually supports the drug product in the end.

So that's where the dilemma is. It's actually in the quality of the research. I think science is great, but vested-interest science—

Ms. Elinor Caplan: I think where we are at right now is we agree that if there's a problem, it has to do with the required research, the quality of the research, the desire for evidence on the benefits of those products that may have a low risk. I've heard you say very clearly that if it's high risk there should be warnings, and if it's dangerous consumers should have that information. Do you agree?

Ms. Lorna Hancock: Yes, I do.

Mr. Robert McMaster: I think you are addressing one of the core issues here, so this, we hope, will be productive.

The reason people take natural health products is that they have some therapeutic benefit. That's why they are taking them. However, if you even imply a therapeutic benefit to a natural health product, you have removed it from the possibility of being designated as a food, for which you could make no claims. At the same time, you have put it in the same bin with reduced exogenous pharmaceutical agents, which they are not. So you have a problem. If you wish, as we think must be the case, to provide information at the point of sale—and that's a safety concern—then you are going to have to permit some kind of claim. Well, you've just made it not possible for it to be a food.

So you are in the position we were in a year and a half ago, when we were scratching our heads, trying to figure out what we should recommend. What do we want? We know what we don't like. We want to know what we want. That's why we arrived at the position of the third category. We followed the American model and we followed the Americans' logic. They have been through many of these same issues before. You want to make a claim. It's not going to be a food, but we don't want it to be a drug. Guess where you arrive at?

Ms. Elinor Caplan: Then the question is what is the role of government in protecting the public interest with something that falls into another category where there is a low risk of harm? We've all agreed if it's dangerous, if it's risky, then there should be intervention and protection. The question is if we agree a third category is needed, then what is the role of the regulator? If you could give us an answer to that, I think we would be on the road to finding some solutions.

Ms. Lorna Hancock: I'm sorry, but I do not agree with that.

Ms. Elinor Caplan: You don't agree there should be a third category?

Ms. Lorna Hancock: No. That's a personal comment.

• 1035

Ms. Elinor Caplan: Let me tell you what happens if you don't have a third category. If you don't have a third category, then it's either a food and you can make no claims, or the minute you give people information about a claim or a benefit that might accrue from something in a bottle that looks a whole lot like a pill, a whole lot of people will say “we don't really think this is a food, it's a natural health product or a remedy or a traditional product”. You then get on the slippery slope of what's required if it's a drug on the issues of not only safety and quality but of proving and requiring the research to make sure its claims are legitimate. So do you want that regime imposed on natural products?

Ms. Lorna Hancock: I really have to think about the comments that were raised this morning, and I think we should go back and think about it.

Ms. Elinor Caplan: Good.

The Chair: Judy.

Ms. Judy Wasylycia-Leis: Thank you. If you don't mind, I have four questions. I'll try to go very quickly, and the panellists can pick and choose what they'd like to answer.

Further to the chair's question about polling, the polling results we heard about on Monday from panellists, pertaining to the population as a whole, suggest that close to 50% of Canadians either take some form of natural health products or believe in their therapeutic value. Do you think that high level of support poses a real threat to the big pharmaceutical companies, the big brand-name companies, PMAC and other organizations? Is that part of the problem we're dealing with?

Second, I was quite shocked to learn that the food research centre has not been fully reconstituted in terms of the promises made, and based on the senior managers' testimony at our meeting in December suggesting that the labs were up and running. I'm very concerned to hear that and would like to know what evidence you have to support that and how we can raise it further.

Third, I would like to just touch briefly on the food inspection issue because you seem to be saying we have a reduced capacity in the food research centre. We now have fewer food inspectors through Agriculture Canada and they're using a self-regulatory system for the food industry more and more, as opposed to front-line active, pro-active inspection. Are we able and prepared in this country to deal with a widespread crisis in the form of a virus spread throughout the country? Are we prepared for any kind of health crisis, given all of those cuts and changes?

Fourth, I know Lorna and others said they would think about this and get back to us in terms of what we should do as a committee and who we should hear from. My understanding is the suggestions made today are that we need to hear from senior managers again; we need to hear from front-line inspectors in the food and drug research area and how they inspect in terms of natural health products; we need to hear from the food inspectors in Agriculture Canada; we need to hear from food and drug scientists; and we need to get the documents that were promised us by officials last December. Is that correct?

Mr. Michael McBane: I think it would be very helpful for members of the committee to visit the labs in Tunney's Pasture. I found it very informative myself, because when I toured the labs and saw the decommissioning, I went to the CBC national television and said “You should come and see what they're doing”. It phoned Health Canada and Health Canada said “There is no decommissioning”. That was the official position of the department until the Minister of Health recommissioned them. But these managers said they were never closed. I think you need a fact-finding visit to these labs to talk to the scientists about what projects are not currently being staffed.

In terms of dangerous viruses, we are sailing in the dark here in terms of....

The Chair: I don't think this has anything to do with natural food products, but keep your answer very short.

Mr. Michael McBane: I'm answering the question in terms of the safety of our food.

On the detection of vibrio species in seafood, you should ask the food division what our capacities are to deal with an outbreak. I was told that the scientist has retired, they've never replaced him, and therefore we can't have an emergency response. It could develop into an epidemic by the time these managers get their act together to replace the lost researchers.

I think you need a fact-finding visit. It's very informative. Don't just listen to the managers; tour around and talk to people.

• 1040

Ms. Kathleen Connors: I want to address Judy's first question about the level of public support for use of natural products in one form or another, and whether this is a threat to the pharmaceutical companies.

Let's be honest here. We've been quite frank. Certainly from our perspective that is a reality issue. Market share is bottom line with industry. If there is the reality out there within the Canadian public that the traditional way of treating ailments is through seeing a physician and having a drug prescribed, and Canadians are looking at other alternatives, then that is a threat to market share, to profit margins, those types of things. Where has the pressure come for some of this investigation? That's a reality that you as a committee have to recognize.

The Chair: Ms. Hancock.

Ms. Lorna Hancock: You mentioned the figure of 50% of Canadians. That is why we brought these videos. These are the people out there who offer the kind of questions and information.... So I suggest you watch these.

The Chair: Thank you very much.

The last question will be from Mr. Hill. Then we'll have a five-minute break before we listen to the other groups. Mr. Hill.

Mr. Grant Hill: Thank you.

I'm sorry I was dragged out in the middle of this. I actually went and presented the health freedom amendment in the House, which is my attempt to try to bring some pointed effect to this issue.

Perhaps I can ask you to make a comment about this. This is a different approach. It says that if there is no harm proven scientifically, no side effects, and no contamination, the regulators should leave products alone, used in the proper dosage. As I say, this is an approach that is quite different from the traditional one, which in some cases may mean larger bureaucracy. It would also leave much of the regulations alone I think needing, as we've heard from many of the groups, expertise in the areas to decide about harm, side effects or contamination, individually.

Does this sound like an approach that is appealing to the group you represent?

Ms. Cathrine Gabriel: Yes. I defer back to our own position, that we will take back all this information, digest it, and come back with some strong recommendations.

My thought on that is, who is going to be the judge of what degree of harm, or non-harm, it is going to represent? Who is making the decision on that? That is my question.

I know we have to be brief, so I'll leave it at that.

Ms. Lorna Hancock: We will give it serious thought and report back to you.

Mr. Robert McMaster: The principles you've just stated here are ones we certainly do agree with. We hope they will find their way, in one form or another, into the committee's findings.

Our concern, and I think I share this with Cathrine, is whether the current regime would be capable and competent enough to be able to implement those principles as the current set-up is. My opinion is, no, they wouldn't. So we would need a general reform that would take into consideration these ideas that you've just spoken to.

Ms. Kathleen Connors: I think, Dr. Hill, you are well aware that the Canadian Health Coalition has taken a position in the past around many issues with respect to deregulation and privatization and contracting out. I think we can't blanket endorse or reject. There has to be a balance found.

I say that based on the fact that the first recommendation we made to this committee was that there be an investigation of the Department of Health, particularly the Health Protection Branch, around the duties. If you do that investigation then you will be equipped even more to make the kind of recommendations and proposed legislative changes necessary to meet and provide balance in this country.

Mr. Grant Hill: If a product isn't harmful, should it be regulated? That's the basic question I'm asking you.

• 1045

Ms. Kathleen Connors: How are we going to determine that it isn't harmful? If the food labs are gone, how are you going to determine whether it's safe or not? That's my response to that.

Mr. Grant Hill: We'll try to give everybody a kick at the cat.

The Chair: Do you want to ask another question?

Mr. Grant Hill: I'll give Michael an opportunity to speak.

Mr. Michael McBane: This is a key point. We have shut down the natural products lab and we're concerned about safety. Does this add up to anybody? We're destroying the lab capacity across the board and the ADMs. and the directors general are telling you “We should contract this out. This is great.” Well, the only thing wrong with that is it's not true. You can't contract it out and therefore you will never be able to know if there's a dangerous product.

One of the machiavellian things about closing food safety labs is that it's going to take 20 years to realize there are all of these cancer deaths as a result of contamination in the food system. But no one will know because the lab's gone. It's perfect.

Mr. Grant Hill: I've been involved with this issue for a long time now, listening to people who have been affected. Plenty of inspectors came along to take progesterone cream, which was natural, off the market. All kinds of regulations have been directed toward removing products from the shelves in Canada. My wish is to see products available to people in Canada if there is no harm, if there are no side effects and if there's no contamination.

If anybody thinks that's the wrong approach, talk to the individuals who use these products. They tell me “Get out of our faces”, and that's the principle behind which the health freedom amendment is based. Argue that with the people who use the products. You will lose your argument, I guarantee.

The Chair: Thank you very much for appearing today. We appreciate it. We are serious when we say we want to know of anything you think up next week and of any repercussions arising from your testifying here.

We'll break for five minutes and then we'll be starting again.

• 1047

• 1101

The Chair: I call to order the second part of our fourteenth meeting. I would ask that the cameras and the mikes be taken out of the room now, please.

We have three groups represented now: from the National Coalition for Health Freedom, we have Miriam Hawkins; from the Citizens' Voice for Health Rights, Debbie Anderson and Randy Gomm; and from Friends of Freedom, Shirley Skinner, Susanna Davis, and Trueman Tuck.

I think you were all here earlier, so you sort of understand how we run the committee. If you can keep your dissertations fairly short, it gives the members more time to ask their questions, and then you can get out what you want to say while they're asking you the questions.

We'll go in the order in which we have you down here on the agenda, so we'll start with the National Coalition for Health Freedom. Miriam Hawkins, go ahead.

Ms. Miriam Hawkins (National Coalition for Health Freedom): Thank you very much, Madam Chair and members of the committee.

The National Coalition for Health Freedom was present before the health committee in April, before the election was called. I would like to resubmit, if necessary, our submission at the time, which addressed the need for natural substances, medications, and so on, natural products, to be made available and to be available. The mandate of the committee at that time was substance abuse. No report was made by the committee. I would refer you as well to a very substantial file that your clerk has kept from that time, which will give you some background. I've also brought a lot more background of newer material that is from international journals, some Canadian publications, and so on.

I think one of the problems is there's a fair degree of ignorance on the part of the general public about the safety of these substances, and I think the focus of this committee's work in terms of how to establish a regulatory framework for regulating these substances is first of all.... To me, it's highly inappropriate to be spending limited and precious resources redesigning something to solve a problem that doesn't really exist. There really isn't a problem in terms of the safety of health products. They're well known.

I was going to bring for the purposes of demonstration five or six such books, which outline very clearly what products do and what products don't have any kind of long-term deleterious effects if overused, or if used by pregnant women, and so on. These things are well known and well documented. They're available everywhere. But I think generally people think there's something to be afraid of because these are things that you generally would go to your herbalist or your naturopath or read books to find out, and many people don't.

• 1105

It's a new kind of emerging self-treatment on the part of the Canadian public. We know that it was growing at a rate of 24% in the last year. People are taking control of their own health. This may be why we see an interest on the part of the government to regulate, but I doubt it. I think that what we really have here is something that is really not an issue.

I think what we should be focusing on is what the Health Protection Branch should be doing, which is protecting consumer safety. There's a huge amount of evidence that the Health Protection Branch speeds up the approval of drugs and does not monitor the safety of drugs that are being used by the Canadian public. People are dying and are sick because these drugs are not safe. The fact that we have foods that have pharmacological effects.... What we need is an amendment to the Food and Drugs Act that would allow these substances to be exempted from classification as drugs.

Our Food and Drugs Act obviously has to be amended. These products in fact are so safe that.... I mean, we have a 40% cut in health transfers to the provinces by this government. This is a lot of money that we've lost in the system. Why do you think people are turning to natural medicine? They finally figured out this is how they can save money; this is how people can keep themselves well.

This is what the federal government should be doing: not only should they bring back the lab, they should take some of the money from the Medical Research Council. We spend $8 per person in Canada on medical research, as opposed to $66 in the States. We should be taking some of that money that we have saved by closing down so much of our federal government and we should be finding ways to save some of these health dollars in terms of educating people on how they can improve their health, stay out of the health system provincially, so that that 40% cut in transfers in somehow made up for. We're taking away from people's health by cutting the money to the system, and we have to make up for it.

We should be increasing the amount of education and research in terms of these health products, but what we really should be doing is looking at what the Health Protection Branch is doing wrong.

Some other issues that I think should be brought up.... Our Health Protection Branch has responsibility in protecting public safety when it comes to food additives, genetic engineering, and the use of pesticides on foods. All of these things are within the purview of the department. In fact, instead of protecting Canadians from various agricultural chemicals we have approved 300 different chemicals for use on Canadian crops. This is not public health protection. We have a huge list of side effects from drugs, problems from pesticides. The Health Protection Branch is creating health problems. They're creating deaths, sicknesses from side effects, and unknown and untold numbers of health problems from all of these agricultural chemicals and genetic engineering. Let's look at what the Health Protection Branch should do. It's doing the very inverse of what it should do.

Why are we here worrying about natural health? It's because it's cutting into the drug companies' profits. It's obvious to everybody; it's obvious to every Canadian, to the taxi driver who took me to the airport. It does not take a brain surgeon to see that this is what's going on here. We have international trade agreements. We have harmonization imminent. Do Canadians understand or know anything about the MAI? Why has Canada not listed food and drugs among its 52 country-specific exemptions?

Is this committee, as members of Parliament, aware of what the MAI means to Canada? Does anybody understand the implications of free trade on our ability to regulate food and drugs at all? This could be a complete waste of time if the MAI allows international capital to do whatever it wants in terms of food and drugs. Do we have sovereignty in this area? One of the only ways we can get around the MAI is to say we've been doing this all along. We can say we were already enforcing these kinds of things before.

• 1110

In a way, anything that's done.... What is it, April when you guys are going to sign this thing? The provinces don't know what it is. Canadians don't know what it is. It's being negotiated in secret. Does any of the work of this committee really have any ultimate—

The Chair: Just for your information, we did have a session on the MAI and its relevance in the health area. We asked both sides to speak to us, and they did.

Perhaps you can go on with your statement.

Ms. Miriam Hawkins: It concerns me that we're not legitimately pursuing the mandate of this committee, because we're looking at very minor issues of whether or not.... I brought two giant briefcases full of stuff that talks about what you can use Saw Palmetto for.

We know that Monsanto has just come into agreement with IBM. They're going to map all the genetic structures of all the plant materials that are now being used. This is exactly what's going on. There's a huge push on the part of the pharmaceutical internationals to map the genes. They want to do this in the next couple of years. They want to do the human genes and they want to do the plant genes. They're going to synthesize them. Everybody is synthesizing the genetic material of plants. They've been doing it for years. About half of the drugs we have are from plants. Once we get the rest of them figured out, won't it be handy to have them?

Oh, the safety issues—we've got to worry about how safe they are. Oh, is there dandelion in the other thing? No, there's never been a problem. There isn't a single reported case. The only thing you can even remotely say is that people who were taking something down in the States.... A few people were hurt by taking pseudo-ephedrine with caffeine, and this is now being touted as the reason it's unsafe.

There is no safety concern. If you guys want to talk about safety, let's look at all the people who died. Why do we have the blood products being inspected once a year?

The Chair: Ms. Hawkins, we're very interested in this, but could you please isolate your comments to what we are studying here? If you have any suggestions—

Ms. Miriam Hawkins: I would say—and I have brought enough evidence that I think should be supportive of this position—that the Health Protection Branch should be protecting our health, that natural products are not a threat. All of these substances, the vitamins, with appropriate labelling.... What we need is labelling. We need cautionary labelling. I want to know if something is genetically engineered. I want to know if pesticides have been used on it. This is what I want to know as a consumer. I don't know anybody who doesn't want this. It's only normal that I should want to know what the side effects might be.

The side effects of all of these natural products are well known. Most of the research has been done. There have been hundreds and hundreds of studies done. There's a herbalist who says there are 600 plants that should be on a safe-to-use list. One of the first things we can do is just let these 600 plants go free, so that we can then use these plants with impunity because there are no side effects, no risk of harm. All we need is cautionary labelling on the rest.

To me, the issue is about the role of the branch in testing. I'd say yes, let's allow laboratories across the country to conduct tests. Let's have producers submit samples of their substances on a regular basis, perhaps quarterly, to private labs in the local areas where they are so that there's a system in place run by the private sector that would allow small companies and large to have their products tested in a level playing field. The federal government would do some random testing perhaps. They would maintain an agency.

Canada had the world's best collection of natural herbal medicine in the world. We destroyed it. Why? Why did we break the beakers and the test tubes when we got rid of the labs? Why did we throw them out and smash them? If we couldn't give them away we smashed them.

There's a role for the federal government in protecting public safety. Let's not worry so much about these natural medicines. Let's look at where the Health Protection Branch should really do more to protect public health. If they're going to approve 300 pesticides and agricultural chemicals.... Oh, isn't that funny that in fact Agriculture Canada gets tens of millions of dollars from these companies and now they're going to do the testing. This is not a good thing. This is called conflict of interest. Certainly there are mandates for risk assessment and for policy development within every ministry, and we are not following government guidelines on risk analysis.

• 1115

The Chair: Thank you, Ms. Hawkins. We'll stop you there. You're well over your time.

The next group is the Citizens' Voice for Health Rights. We would like you to keep it down, please.

Ms. Debbie Anderson (Citizens' Voice for Health Rights): My name is Debbie Anderson. I'm here today with my partner, Randy Gomm. We're representing Citizens' Voice for Health Rights, a true grassroots consumer organization. Basically we're dedicated to educating Canadian citizens and to motivating them to reclaim their rights to these herbs that have been taken off the market or put into the drug category.

My three main points today are: why we believe the supplements should remain in the food category; the fallacy that we believe is behind the third category; and what does it take for us to get a full public investigation into the Health Protection Branch?

With regard to the supplements remaining in the food category, these are exactly what they are—foods. As Miriam has said, the problem is that big business has ruined the quality of our foods. We have so many pesticides and chemicals and our soils are so depleted that we can't get the nutrition our bodies require. The scientific evidence is in. It's just not possible unless you can buy certified, organically grown food, which unfortunately not all of us have access to. So our next option is dietary supplementation.

I've been a supplementer for almost 20 years. I am a mega-dose supplement taker, and the closest I've come to harm is maybe trying to gobble too many capsules at once in my rush to get out the door. We need these products. They are food. They're putting into our bodies what we're not getting from the foods, what we're supposed to be able to get. Unfortunately we can't, because profits supersede the health of the public.

At the turn of the century about 90% of the food available went from the farmer to the table unprocessed and unpackaged. Today it's the other way around: 90% of foods in the supermarket are dead, packaged, refined and stripped of their nutrients. They're full of sweeteners and preservatives, and now they're full of genetically altered grains and vegetables that they don't even want us to know about. And we're supposed to survive on this? We're not cars, you know!

We definitely need these supplementary products. They are our foods. To allow them to go into a drug category to be regulated so that they become more costly because all of a sudden these unnecessary tests.... Again, the studies show they're safe. There are no records of deaths from dietary supplements. Yet we have hundreds of thousands of deaths from pharmaceuticals all the time.

With regard to the third category, we feel it is also unnecessary. Why do we want to duplicate another bureaucracy that's basically going to be regulated from the industry point of view? A lot of these people who are pushing for it, the more vocal people, tend to have a little self-interest. This is the pharmaceutical industry coming at us again from another area.

If you check out some of these big companies, they have direct ties. There are company mergers coming from Germany and they're also waiting to come at us from another angle. We view it as their fall-back position. In the event that the consumer outcry over trying to regulate these drugs was so immense—which obviously it has been—they still had the fall-back, the third category. That still allows them to carry on with their plan while they gradually move it over to drugs anyway, which is what is happening in the United States.

Reference was made to DSHEA, the Dietary Supplement Health and Education Act down there. At one time they viewed it as a victory. However, if you talk to them now—and by “them”I mean the true grassroots movement, the consumers—it is not a victory. In fact they are viewing it as a Trojan horse. Because it's been taken out of that food category—even though it's still a subcategory of it—they've removed it to just the point where there's enough of a crack that now they have the dietary commission on labels trying to put it into the over-the-counter category. It really has not been the victory they thought it would be.

With regard to the current regulations, as mentioned earlier, yes, sections 4 and 5 of the Food and Drug Act now do protect consumers with respect to all of the issues with regard to safety, to contamination and to what's in the bottle. It's all there. It's just that nobody is enforcing it. It's very lax in that area, but very over-regulatory with regard to herbal supplements. As mentioned, they have enough inspectors to run out there and take products off the shelves, but other things are virtually unnoticed.

I brought a tape here, which I'd be more than happy to leave. It's by The Fifth Estate and is called “In the Heart of the Matter”. For any of you who are really concerned about seeing the truth as to what's going on in our Health Protection Branch, you have to take a look at this tape.

• 1120

Ladies and gentlemen, we're talking about the future of our children and your grandchildren. We're getting sicker and sicker all the time, yet with all these modern advances in health and technology we don't seem to be able to stop it. We are getting sicker. There has to be a reason. We're not getting what we need in our bodies, and this tape is evidence of it.

The Chair: Could you leave that with the clerk, please, and any other information any of the groups have.

Ms. Debbie Anderson: You bet I will. I also have the two videos from Health Action Network. If somebody wants to see the way people from the consumers feel about the third category, you must see these.

I also have here a petition. These have been collected just in the last couple of months. I haven't counted them. I will be leaving them. These are all consumers who do not want a third category and they do not want their products regulated as drugs. They want the freedom to choose them. They haven't caused any harm. Why do we need extra costs? It does cost. It's going to cost us more to buy them if we add this level of bureaucracy.

The other thing is we would like to see a public investigation. With the mercury amalgams, the flouride, the genetic engineering, various different things going on, it's time we took a look at what is actually going on there.

Before I close to allow my partner the opportunity to speak, I just want to read something to you. This is from the Food and Drugs Act, section 4:

No person shall sell an article of food that

(a) has in it or on it any poisonous or harmful substance;

(b) is unfit for human consumption;

(c) consists in whole or in part of any filthy, putrid, disgusting, rotten, decomposed or diseased animal or vegetable substance;

(d) is adulterated; or

(e) was manufactured, prepared, preserved, packaged or stored under unsanitary conditions.

Section 5 states:

(1) No person shall label, package, treat, process, sell or advertise any food in a manner that is false, misleading or deceptive or is likely to create an erroneous impression regarding its character, value, quantity, composition, merit or safety.

(2) An article of food that is not labelled or packaged as required by, or is labelled or packaged contrary to, the regulations shall be deemed to be labelled or packaged contrary to subsection (1).

Obviously we don't need another regulatory body. All we need is to have the present ones enforced.

Thank you.

The Chair: Mr. Gomm.

Mr. Randy Gomm (Citizens' Voice for Health Rights): I would like to reiterate the last comments by Debbie Anderson.

I talked to the CEOs of a couple of large national supplement companies and I ran the idea by them. I said if sections 4 and 5 of the Food and Drugs Act, which Debbie just read, were properly enforced, how would it affect the industry? Both of them responded that the industry would clean up its act overnight. They said right now, with the labs being shut down and no random testing, it really is a free-for-all.

I'm a consumer, the same as the rest of you. When I buy a bottle of something I want to know that what is on the label is in the product, or inside the capsules. So I'm all for random testing the government would do, or something. For most consumers that's the big push for the third category: we need these extra regulations to ensure quality control and safety. We're saying the regulations are there; just start enforcing them. Then we could be reassured that what is in the bottle is on the label, and vice versa.

Concern is expressed by consumers that these products are being regulated into a third category. They feel this would restrict their access and increase the prices of the products that are available.

Some organizations are recommending this third option to the committee. Unfortunately, a number of these groups have vested interests and some large companies behind them. Employees of these same companies have become executive members and media spokesmen for these organizations. Strict regulations under a third category would benefit these companies, for they could afford the tighter controls, while many of the smaller companies will go under. Even the present system of DIN numbers and proposed established licensing will put many small companies out of business. More unnecessary regulations would just create a monopoly for some of these larger companies.

A similar situation has happened in some of the European countries where they have a third category or tighter controls. We're talking to the consumers over there, and they are very restrictive with the products they have. With the products they can get, the limits are, for example, 250 milligrams of vitamin C, just ridiculously low levels; and they are very expensive.

What we fear here is going the route of the third category is allowing extra regulations to take place where these large companies can handle it and the smaller companies go under and we have this monopoly.

• 1125

The advisory panel on natural products has just put an interim report before the committee—I believe on February 3. As a consumer group, we were very concerned. Even when the committee was formed, we wondered how the members of this committee were appointed, who decided this person's going to be on and that person's going to be on. As a consumer group that vehemently opposes the third category, we were bothered that we didn't see anyone on this committee who also strongly felt, as many consumers do, against the third category. Instead, we saw many members of the Canadian coalition, which openly has always supported a third category, on this committee.

So when the committee gave you its interim report as of February 3, we already knew what the outcome was. We knew it was this third category with continuum, because most of the people who had gone into the committee had already publicly said this is what they'd like to see. It has therefore been very hard for many consumers we're involved with to accept the recommendation of this advisory board, because they're asking where the consumer opposing this third category out there on this advisory board is.

In closing, I listened to the presentation by Citizens for Choice in Health Care of Ontario. In the last week I've been in contact with Citizens for Choice in Health Care in Victoria, Vancouver, Alberta, Winnipeg, and Saskatchewan. None of these organizations support a third category. I'm hoping the committee will also give them the opportunity to make a submission.

The Chair: Thank you.

Friends of Freedom, I don't know which order you want to go in. You can decide.

Ms. Shirley Skinner (Friends of Freedom): I'm Shirley Skinner, and I'm with Friends of Freedom. We are a grassroots organization concerned about the long-term freedom of access to natural health products. We are centred in eastern Ontario and our members are from three stakeholders' groupings: concerned consumers, natural product business owners, and complementary health care practitioners. I'm representing the concerned consumer.

I'm a very concerned and very disturbed consumer of alternative medicine. I'm a diabetic, and I also have lupus. I have been diagnosed as having it for the past probably six or seven years. I'd like to know why some of the products that I have to use have been banned from the market, such as Tyrosine, chromium, DHEA, melatonin—and that's just to name a few of them. I use most of these for my illness.

The drug of choice that they want to put me on for my illness is Prednisone. If you don't know anything about Prednisone, it's one of the most dangerous drugs on the market. If you are allergic to it, you can be crippled if you take it. Once you take it, it's too late because you're already crippled. You can die from it.

I really resent that a body here in Ottawa, or the Health Protection Branch, can say to me that I can't have these products because it doesn't deem that they're good for my health. I know they're good for my health. I've used them for years. DHEA is a wonderful product for my illness, but when I go over to the United States to bring it back here to Canada, I'm considered a drug pusher. They will seize my car at the border, they will seize my house, and they will call me a drug pusher. I want some answers as to why this is happening in Canada.

I resent this. I think it's absolutely horrible that I have to be considered and put into this category. I can't get it in Canada. I have to sneak it across the border. Why? Just about eight months ago, I could buy it off the shelf here. What was the big concern for it being banned? I still take it. Some of these products I have taken for twenty years. I have no side effects from them; I'm not ill from them. But I certainly will be ill from the side effects from the medically chosen drug they want me to take for my particular condition.

I know a girl who has been crippled from taking Prednisone because she had an allergic reaction to it. Like I say, though, by then it's too late. All these drugs are dangerous, yet I have never had a side effect from any of the alternative medicines I've used.

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Also, I don't put this onto OHIP. They don't have to pay for me. It costs me somewhere in the neighbourhood of between $400 and $600 a month for all the alternative medicine I take for the various illnesses I have, but I don't push that onto the taxpayer or onto OHIP.

I think this is terrible. Something should be done about it.

I also resent the fact that Pro-Gest Cream has been taken off the market, because it was another wonderful product.

When is the other shoe going to fall? When are the rest of these products, very good for people like us, going to be taken off the market? I will die if I don't have these alternatives. I'm not fooling, I will die, because I have so many allergic reactions that I'm terrified to use that drug. What is going to happen to me if I use that drug? Yet there is no other drug out there on the market they can put me on for this particular illness. I have systemic and I also have discoid.

Ms. Miriam Hawkins: It's a natural progesterone from yams. I don't know if everybody on the committee is familiar with some of the details about this kind of stuff. I just wanted to say that because I have a feeling people wouldn't even know what it is.

Ms. Shirley Skinner: I think the average consumer should have the right to choose what they want to use for their own body and for their own health. I don't want somebody making decisions for me about my health. I don't even want my doctor to make decisions for me. I want to be the one who makes the decisions, because I'm the one who is taking it and I know whether I'm sick or I'm not sick, and what helps me and what doesn't help me.

I thank you for letting me present my views.

The Chair: Thank you very much.

Mr. Tuck.

Mr. Trueman Tuck (Friends of Freedom): My wife and I operate a small natural products business in Kingston and Belleville called Tuck's Discount Vitamins. We started our family business about two and a half years ago and now employ about eight people. Like many Canadians who were used to secure jobs, we were both laid off from jobs within about six months of each other and were forced to go into this world of self-employment and the vicious circle it sometimes can be.

Over two years ago I asked Health Canada for a specific written list of prohibited natural products, explaining that in order for me to carry on business properly I had to know in advance what the rules were. It seemed to me at the time a very practical and very simple request.

I have since then met with my three local members of Parliament, Peter Milliken, Larry McCormick, and Lyle Vanclief, and asked for their assistance in getting a copy of this list. I've met with Joe Fontana and Tony Valeri and asked for their assistance in getting this list. Last October I met with the Minister of Health and asked him for a copy of this list. I have been in touch with his office on a regular basis, following up on getting that list. To date I have been unable to get any written list of natural products that are prohibited in Canada; and this has created a very serious financial problem for my business.

Can you imagine living in a society where the police or enforcement agency makes the rules on a daily, ad hoc basis, without any documentation? Well, in Canada the health police currently rule this way and affect thousands of businesses such as myself. The health police interfere in my business and have caused at least a 15% reduction in my sales as a result of my not being able to restock a product I'm selling.

Pro-Gest Cream is an example. It happened in May. I was selling $400 to $600 a month of that product. I ordered it. It didn't come in. I called the supplier up and asked why not: oh, the government interfered with it again.

Unfortunately, DHEA affected me as well. I was selling it. I got a letter from the Health Protection Branch last September telling me—I'll provide a copy to this group—that DHEA is a prohibited product, the same as cocaine and heroin, and if we continued selling it they would deal with us in the same way as they would with a cocaine or heroin dealer. Pretty scary stuff.

With melatonin it has cost me $1,500 a month in sales of the product I was selling, a product I'm no longer able to get.

The financial impact is enormous. There's the loss of sales you have spent money and time building; 15% to 20% of my sales. There's the loss of opportunity to sell new products people are hearing about in the States. What happens in a town like Kingston is terrible.

I have a customer who buys $200 or $300 a month from me and who it has taken me two or three years to develop as a client. All of a sudden I'm no longer able to provide two or three key products, such as the Pro-Gest Cream, the DHEA, the melatonin.

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So guess what happens next. They go over to the States and start smuggling. So the customer who would have spent $200 in Canada on quality-controlled products bought from Canadian manufacturers now goes to the States. I lose the customer. It hurts me as a retailer and it hurts jobs. You end up with a real quality control problem because you have no idea what's going on. You lose tax revenues, and we're paying for people in the Health Protection Branch to make us suffer this way. There's really something wrong with this. I have kept documentation of every incident I've had over the last two years, and I will come forward with that documentation to every member of this thing.

Then there's the other issue that spins off this. Two years ago I did what most small businesses do and booked a radio contract with a Kingston radio station to advertise my business. The first ad I submitted was on gingko, a nice simple little thing that has been used for thousands of years. The radio station came back to me and said it couldn't run the ad because there was a censorship mechanism on the media across Canada and every single food or drug product that had any claim of good health benefits had to be referred to Agriculture Canada and the Health Protection Branch. I said that was a bunch of bullshit. It said “We agree with you, but they have us by the short and curlies because of the CRTC process and we don't dare defy them”.

Every single week of my life I live with the Health Protection Branch interfering with my living. I have to tell you, my wife and I are struggling. Our life savings are on the line and it's very aggravating. So that's my story.

The Chair: Thank you.

Ms. Davis.

Ms. Susanna Davis (Friends of Freedom): I'm representing the complementary health practitioner. I'm a nurse of some 30 years' experience. For the past 10 years I've been in private practice. I provide specialized nutritional counselling and programming for people. About 80% of my clientele are women. Many are senior citizens. I have quite a cross-section of income brackets. Many have been through the medical approaches and have come up empty and are looking for something else, so they come to someone like me.

I employ one full-time employee and one part-time employee and I have four associates who work out of my office. I'm definitely a functioning small business.

I'd like to address the natural progesterone cream issue and just tell you how something like that affects me in a practice. This is a product that has been well researched. It's a wild yam extract product. It's herbal, with excellent aboriginal traditional uses. It is employed as a way of supporting the endocrine system—our hormonal balance.

It's used by many women in the menopausal age group very successfully. It was well researched by a doctor who made a tour through eastern Canada with great response. Many women ended up going to their local pharmacies and asking their local pharmacists for this natural progesterone cream. There was an inquiry from the Nova Scotia Pharmaceutical Association to the Health Protection Branch wondering about this, and bingo, it was off the market because it was claimed it was a drug in the guise of a natural supplement. I had women in my office in tears because they couldn't get this product.

You have to understand of course that I'm a baby boomer, and many of you are too. We've been major guinea pigs and many women are aware of that. We're on birth control pills and there have been no long-term studies on this. We have no idea what we are doing to generations to come because of the overuse of hormones.

So there are a lot of women out there who have done their research. They've looked back. They're well informed. They've surfed the net and have the books that are out there. They want to explore the ways they can work with their bodies changing, without employing a synthetic drug that has a lot of side effects. Many women cannot take the pill anyway because the side effects are too onerous.

This is just one product that has been taken off the market. As a practitioner, I'll have great results with clients who are happy with their programs and then, bingo, we have to juggle around to find other things that may or may not work as successfully for them. It's very frustrating for the consumer.

As a practitioner I am very concerned about a number of things, which I have listed for you. On the labelling of the products, we've heard about this before. It's a major concern to me. I want to know what is in a product exactly, specifically and proportionately. I want to know the quality.

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I'm interested in vitality. I work with raising the vitality of the people who partner with me. I see my clients as the centre of a wheel, and there are spokes out on that wheel. I'm a nutritional programmer. I'm right there in one spoke. Their medical doctor is in another; their body worker may be in another one—a massage therapist, shiatsu, whatever. But the client is in the centre.

This is the new paradigm of health care. We're out of the paternalistic system. We have consumers who are very interested in being full partners in their health care.

So quality and vitality is very important. I want to know whether a product has been grown using organic farming methods. This is a very big concern to me as a practitioner and to my clients. I want to know whether herbal stock has been irradiated. It's a very common practice in the United States, where many of our products come from. It's a dead product if it has been irradiated. Has it been grown from stock where the seed has been genetically altered with other species or with chemical DNA? That's a very big issue.

That is one of the primary things our group in eastern Ontario wanted presented to the committee. They're not interested in this. They feel a big red alert about what we are doing to the long-term health of our Canadian citizens with that.

The range of safe-use dosages to be listed on the label and any applicable traditional-use statements that give some guidelines.... As far as I'm concerned, as a practitioner, that should be readily available information.

I'd like to see an Internet website that has the regulations, what it proves, what's readily available, why, what isn't and why. It has been enormously frustrating that we have not been able to get a list of restricted substances. This is totally crazy-making for us as practitioners and small business people.

I think the names, fax numbers, and e-mail addresses of regulatory agents should be available to the public. We should be able to communicate. My clientele want interactive government; I want interactive government.

I'm the daughter of an army veteran who was decorated by three countries in the Second World War. My uncle is a retired brigadier general. I was raised with some very specific values: take responsibility for yourself, be resourceful, be responsible in your community, and don't be afraid to fight for freedom. That was my family value system.

I think we're into a new paradigm. I don't think we need to have such a confrontational atmosphere. I really don't. I think the time has come. A new health care system is emerging from grass roots.

I personally was very pleased that this committee was established.

I also need to tell you that I wish I had a dollar for every person, other practitioners and consumers, who came to me and said, “Susanna, I'm really worried about you representing us at that committee. What may happen to you? Revenue Canada may come back down on you, or you may be investigated for something.” I would have had a nice little RRSP account.

What Lorna mentioned this morning is a very real thing out there. That is a cynicism and a lack of communication between government and the public. It's a sad state of affairs. I came anyway.

I totally support your remarks, Beth. I appreciate that this morning. That is something that's out there in the community.

Thank you for giving us time to present.

The Chair: Thank you very much.

Mr. Hill, would you like to lead off?

Mr. Grant Hill: Thank you for your candid and refreshing presentations.

There isn't a list of restricted products, because I have searched for it as well. In my view, there isn't a list because some of the restricted products are very difficult to justify, as to why they are restricted. I finally found out why DHEA is restricted. The department considers this to be a precursor of anabolic steroids. Anabolic steroids are bad for the population. Of course they are not a precursor.

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The scientific literature shows us that they are a substratum: if the body needs them, they're used, and if the body does not need them, they're not used. Most individuals who use these products know this. But there is no list, and Trueman, you'll probably die on your tongue if you wait for this list. It isn't there.

Ms. Susanna Davis: Vitamin B complex could be said to be a precursor to anabolic steroids.

A voice: That's right.

Mr. Trueman Tuck: And that raises a question that's been brought up, Dr. Hill. It's been mentioned many times that there's a hidden agenda on how they act on products and there's no due process.

We should have a written list of what they're upset about. We should have a reason why they're upset and we should have advance notice. I have suggested this numerous times. We should have a monthly notice sent to everybody saying we are concerned about safety. And there should be fair thresholds.

I have suggested to every Health Protection Branch person I've talked to that we use the common aspirin as a threshold. Aspirin has no DIN number in its old form, so I don't even know what it's doing on the market. According to FDA statistics, it kills between 7,000 to 10,000 people a year in North America. Plus, I have tested my pharmacies. I tested the Shoppers down the road here yesterday. I went in and asked about any side effects of aspirin that could cause problems and they didn't tell me that it will kill me if I have certain stomach problems. So I have suggested that there are more people killed in a week by aspirin than there are in decades by the thousands of natural products we are not allowed to sell.

One of the things is fair enforcement of published thresholds. If we have a dangerous product, then say that it has to kill 10 people a week or else we're not going to touch it, that it's going to remain a food, and if it has claims that it's good for our health, it's quite legitimate to show it. And we must have advance notice when they're upset with something, they must say why they're upset, and we must have an appeal mechanism.

Mr. Grant Hill: It's so difficult to tease the answers out of you, but could you each answer this question: If a product is not harmful, would you say to leave it alone?

Ms. Miriam Hawkins: In terms of harmful substances, we certainly need cautionary labelling. Maybe we should have a colour-coded labelling: green for perfectly safe, yellow for caution, and red for be careful under whatever circumstances. I think a very simple system of cautionary labelling would be sufficient.

Mr. Randy Gomm: I agree in principle. If a product is safe, it shouldn't have all these undue regulations. My concern is about who is going to decide. What body is going to decide what's safe and when it's safe? And there's a big danger there; it's just what we're talking about here. Obviously somebody is going to have to decide if this product is safe or is not safe. Who is going to be on that committee? That's my concern.

Ms. Debbie Anderson: Yes, I think I'd have to agree. I would want to make sure that it was a body of people who are definitely for the public interest, not the industry interest, and who are definitely non-partisan.

Mr. Trueman Tuck: We did a community think-tank on this exact issue, asking what our consumers and small-business owners and practitioners thought. We took a consensus, and the number one issue that came out of that meeting was that regardless of what the product or service is—it doesn't matter whether it's a food or a drug or a third category—there should be a classification of risk toxicity that's set on published international or Canadian standards based upon deaths and actual complaints and things.

We talked about a scale of zero to ten and the same logic you're referring to, that anything from zero to four was 100% safe and there was no need on the label for a cautionary; for four to six there was a cautionary; for six to eight there was a cautionary and a suggestion of direct professional involvement; and for nine to ten it was prescription by any health professional.

I emphasize the words “any health professional”. It's not just medical. There are specific therapeutic uses for AIDS patients and people where there was very.... Mammograms, by the way, would fall into that category, if you used a common sense approach.

So that was what our grassroots answer was. We didn't care what the product or service was or what anybody classified it as. It should have a toxicity rating and full disclosure.

Ms. Susanna Davis: My very deep personal bias is that if something isn't broken, it shouldn't be fixed. If something is working, it's all right. However, what I've seen over this year is that we have this Food and Drugs Act, and as was mentioned earlier, it has not been enforced according to the law. It has not been set.

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My concern is if there is not a third category where there is a specific body that knows something about natural supplements, the way it is right now, we don't have anyone in the regulatory bureaucracy who knows enough to implement even what the Food and Drugs Act is saying. That's my concern.

Ms. Shirley Skinner: As a consumer, if I go into the store and buy something, I want to know that I'm getting exactly what I'm paying for. I don't want anything that's been genetically altered, that's for sure. I would like to see our food labelled to say this is genetically altered.

I find that when I go to buy a specific product...and I've used everything. I don't think there's anything on the market as far as alternative medicine goes that I haven't used at one time or another in my life, and I have had absolutely no side effects from anything I have used personally, for my personal use. That takes in a lot of the health field.

I find this is utterly ridiculous. It's fine. It works just the way it is. Just as Susanna said, don't fix it if it's not broken.

I have an order that's being held up right now as far as customs is concerned, and yet it is a product I am able to send for. I'm not able to have it here in Canada, but I can have it for my personal use across the border. It's called Para 90, and it's for parasites. Why is this being held up at the border?

Mr. Grant Hill: You can only phone for it.

Shirley actually mentioned labelling of genetic engineering. Is there anybody who disagrees with labelling for genetically engineered foods?

A witness: It's major.

A witness: It's absolutely major.

Mr. Grant Hill: I'll just leave it there. That was quite a long time.

The Chair: Madam Caplan.

Ms. Elinor Caplan: Thank you.

I've heard some things that I think are important to put on the record.

First, the key is the confidence you have in the regulator that they have the expertise to be able to make judgments on these products. We've heard that as a repeated theme. You want to know that the people who are making the judgments about these products, whether that judgment is on the basis of its safety or its quality.... We heard about the quality control of the product, that what's in the bottle is actually what it is. There seems to be a consensus on that, and that's important.

Does everyone agree that there's a consensus?

Mr. Randy Gomm: I don't know if there's a consensus if you're talking about another regulatory body to do that.

Ms. Elinor Caplan: Let's say the same regulatory body.

Mr. Randy Gomm: Let's say the existing one.

Ms. Elinor Caplan: The existing one.

Mr. Randy Gomm: Let's say they started enforcing the laws we have.

Ms. Elinor Caplan: Let's say you take a look at the laws we have.

Mr. Randy Gomm: Yes.

Ms. Elinor Caplan: Are you confident that they have the expertise they need to judge these products? The answer is no?

Mr. Randy Gomm: Well, if they opened the labs and actually did some testing....

Ms. Elinor Caplan: You're saying with what exists today, you're not confident. So one of the things we have to consider in this committee is restoring or building the confidence that the regulators will have the expertise to be able to make these judgments.

Mr. Trueman Tuck: If I might, Elinor, there's a very widespread myth that affects the types of things we're talking about.

There is no health and safety issue with natural products in Canada. The products I lose on a weekly basis, which puts the stress on our business and our personal lives, are not being lost because of five or ten people dying that week from them. They're not being lost from consumer complaints. They're not being lost because there are any documented complaints. They're being lost because of anything that's perceived because of the Food and Drugs Act.

Ms. Elinor Caplan: Okay, Trueman, let me make this point. I think when consumers walk into your store, the expectation of Canadian consumers is that the product you're selling is safe and good quality, and that's because of the Food and Drugs Act. They believe the Government of Canada assures them that before your products are able to be sold, they meet those two tests.

Ms. Miriam Hawkins: But the DINs never meant anything. They never meant they were tested or anything. How are we going to restore public confidence in any of it? If the drug numbers were never—

Ms. Elinor Caplan: I'm not arguing the point. I'm saying when someone walks into Trueman's store, that's an expectation they have, just as if I walk into a grocery store or a drugstore, my expectation is that I'm getting good quality and safety or I'm going to be informed about it. If I go into a drugstore and there are certain products that are sold behind the counter, I know there is a toxicity or a danger. So I think consumers have that expectation.

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I was drawn to the Citizens' Voice for Health Rights brochure, which is before the committee. I noticed they had three options they were considering. I wonder if you would comment on this. They say that some herbs are highly toxic and should not be sold as foods. Then they say that is true, they believe some herbs are highly toxic and should not be sold, and they say, and I'm quoting now:

Just as there are poisonous mushrooms, there are also poisonous herbs. Section 4 of the Food and Drugs Act protects consumers from harmful food and herbs of all kinds. If a substance is safe for human consumption, then regulate it as a food. If it's not safe, then either (a) ban [it] completely; (b) regulate it as a drug; or....

—and they're presenting a third option—

(c) permit it to be sold with a precautionary warning.

I guess what this committee is hearing also is what that third option should look like, whether or not that third option within the existing framework is possible and would satisfy your concerns without another category, and that by having that third option we could then satisfy Trueman's request: Give us a list of the stuff that is not acceptable and why, and give us the rules, whether it is a food, a drug, or something in this third category that we have some concerns about but under certain conditions, with the appropriate labelling, should be able to be sold with minimal additional processing and cost for consumers.

Ms. Miriam Hawkins: Do we want all of these things that have a pharmacological effect to be considered a drug? This is one of our first problems. We have to amend the Food and Drugs Act.

I think the option of taking things that have a toxic effect and saying therefore it's a drug is kind of amusing, because in fact then that means what is a drug is something that's toxic, and that would actually be a good direction for the government to go. It really does reflect what is going on with drugs. Drugs really are the things we should be concerned about. But on the toxicity of herbs, I think the evidence will be borne out that it is only with inappropriate use that it becomes toxic. So does that become a drug? I say no.

Ms. Elinor Caplan: Then what is the role of government as the regulator in getting that information to people, on safety, on quality, on toxicity, the things you want to be warned about, on dosage? And frankly, how do we do that when the existing regulator doesn't have the expertise? You're telling us that you don't want another approach, a third category, so I'm hearing this.

Ms. Miriam Hawkins: We've been studying this since 1983 or 1986. We've been going back at this as a government again and again and again.

The Chair: You have to help us with an answer. Could you answer the question, Mr. Tuck?

Mr. Trueman Tuck: This came up with the previous group, and actually the answer is very.... I have been involved in this since the mid-seventies. I have over twenty years in many different roles with this.

The first thing I would like to ask this committee is why are the food and drugs in the same legislation to begin with? That's the first question to ask.

Ms. Elinor Caplan: My answer to that is—

Mr. Trueman Tuck: No, I'm going to answer your question, if I might.

So the first question is why are the food and drugs in the same legislation? If you separate the two logics and say okay, we have foods, why are we prohibited from making claims in foods? If we don't get our health from our foods—and this has been brought up here before—then where do we get it from? We don't get it from an instant drug that is synthetic and has all these nightmares, just because they're patentable and make a lot of money for multinational companies.

Speaking personally now, my recommendation would be to split the Food and Drugs Act. Have the foods put with agriculture, where foods belong. Have claims on the labels, like the Australian version. It doesn't matter whether it's an oil, a wheat germ in a whole form, a wheat germ in a pill, or whatever it is; if it has been proven by centuries or decades of use that this food helps our health and we want to take a concentrated form or a tablet form or a powdered form or a liquid form, we should be able to take that and know what organ or parts of our body it's helping. They should wholly be able to advertise, no censorship mechanism.

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Ms. Elinor Caplan: So the only issue then is the claims or the benefits that accrue. What I'm hearing from you now is that rather than saying status quo, don't make any changes, you're saying, well, maybe there need to be some changes, because the existing regime isn't working, and why are food and drugs in the same...?

I think this is a really important discussion for this committee to be having, because obviously there is a problem. We're here because the existing regime isn't working.

Mr. Trueman Tuck: But there is another reason we're here, Elinor. It is because the billions and billions of dollars we're spending on health care are not making healthier Canadian citizens. The report card on modern medicine and on patented medicine is a complete failure in any cost study.

Ms. Miriam Hawkins: Maybe we could just go back to the issue of claims. One of the things I learned from this spring's consultation on nutraceuticals and functional foods is that much of what's going on at the branch has been pushed by industry because industry wants to make claims on functional foods and nutraceuticals. When they make claims they make money, because not only are people going to buy the stuff, but they're going to buy more of the stuff.

I think to go down that treacherous path is to take people away from the health practitioners. I think we have to be very careful that claims don't get us into trouble.

Ms. Elinor Caplan: I agree.

I'd just like to ask one last question. It would be really helpful for the committee if we had a little more information about your organizations—how many people you represent and any specific details about the group—because we're getting a lot of names of organizations. It would be really helpful if we could have a list of the groups you represent, if you say you're a coalition, and how many people are members of your organization.

The Chair: That could come to the clerk.

Ms. Wasylycia-Leis.

Ms. Judy Wasylycia-Leis: I have a point of order, Madam Chair. How long will we be going?

The Chair: Ten more minutes.

Ms. Judy Wasylycia-Leis: I have four or five questions. I'll put them out quickly and you can pick and choose what you want to answer.

First of all, the concerns you've raised about the process are very legitimate. Some of us feel those same concerns, because we as a committee are mandated to do something as big and significant as look at the whole way in which natural health products are regulated. At the same time, we know there's a government-appointed panel that has made a clear recommendation that appears to be setting the agenda. So we're always questioning how we fit and if anything we come up with will actually be taken seriously.

There is also Miriam's point about what is happening internationally. Given that the government is buying into so many international agreements, how does that in fact matter? Is everything we're going to be doing meaningless in that context?

I think your point about the MAI is a very serious one, which we have attempted to deal with at this committee, but it was very brief and superficial.

In response to Carolyn Bennett's comments, the House of Commons subcommittee did not address the serious concerns and the fact that we can't rely on this NAFTA reservation for health care to really be sure that foreign investors and big multinational drug companies will not claim discrimination and unfair advantage if the government proceeds to bring in some new regulations or policies regarding this whole area. It's a very legitimate concern and we need to talk about it.

My second point is this question about the lists. I don't think we should simply say that if we can't get a list there's no such list. There obviously is a list. We as a committee have the right to demand any information that is out there. I think as a committee we should demand that the department produce this list of restricted substances and give us the full information so we can make that determination. As a committee we can't sit back and say, “They won't give us the list. We're going to have to accept that.” We have to demand it.

Third, you've addressed what the group this morning did, the concerns about what's going on in the Health Protection Branch, and you have reiterated advice to us to try to have a full investigation, a review, of what is happening in the Health Protection Branch.

Finally, I hear you saying that there is clear scientific evidence on a huge number of natural products, herbal plant remedies, that are proven to be safe. What we need to do as a government is to acknowledge that, but then put in place mechanisms within government to deal with the concerns you have about assurances of botanical identity—I think from reading the literature that's the right terminology—so that you have a way to determine if there have been pesticides used or irradiation or genetically altered seeds or products or whatever. We in fact need within government the capacity to have some scientific capacity to do that kind of overview and to ensure that what is in the bottle is what people are getting, that there has been no substitution, no watering down of the potency, and no other funny things happening, like genetic alterations.

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Ms. Debbie Anderson: And what you're saying there needs to go into the foods as well. We're trying to say they're natural supplements. I think that should go over to our foods. If we started enforcing the Food and Drugs Act, even in the supermarket, it would be very interesting to see what would happen.

Mr. Trueman Tuck: We'll give you two examples that came out of our think-tank in the community bases. One was that there are a lot of people with allergies to wheat products, MSG, and products like that. There's generally a requirement for that to be shown when it's a principal ingredient, but it's not shown when it's a secondary ingredient. Two people in our think-group have wives who have had an allergic reaction to it as a hidden ingredient.

Another thing that came up but is a really sacred cow in this country is milk. Milk is a food, but they make healthy claims with milk. I want to complain every time I see them making a complaint as I've lost another product. Why is there preferred enforcement against people like aspirin? Aspirin and milk are two classic examples of unequal, unjust enforcement.

Ms. Susanna Davis: Cheerios are being advertised as a cholesterol-lowerer, for heaven's sake. It's ridiculous.

Mr. Trueman Tuck: We had a medical doctor come in as a speaker in our community, and we had 200 people out to the event. He told us that if the cereal companies were forced to put nutritional things on their packages relating to the actual current needs of society, they would be recommending that you eat the carton and not the cereal.

A voice: There's more fibre in it.

Ms. Miriam Hawkins: I have something interesting that I'd like to share while I have a chance. I'll just quickly draw the committee's attention to an interesting list of the top forty banned natural supplements and the probable drug competitors that have caused these things to be banned.

Let's just get right to the point here. For example, if you're talking about kava kava, it's been used for thousands of years. It's an anti-anxiety drug competitor. You have gotu kola. It's pan-Asian, again with thousands and thousands of years of human use. Where was I? Was it gotu kola I was talking about for circulation and scleroderma drugs? Horsetail would be another thing used in osteoporosis, but of course you have the very dangerous osteoporosis drugs that are being used and promoted.

We have a long list of natural substances that do the job, but they're a threat to profits. You can't patent natural products. The only way to patent them is to synthesize them, which we know the drug companies are doing, because when you synthesize them, you can then start looking at how to patent them. That's what is going on. Once we restrict the most highly potent and pharmacologically effective natural substances, they're then taken out of the public domain and are put into a property and intellectual rights domain—and we know how favoured the patent rights of large companies are.

The Vice-Chair (Ms. Elinor Caplan): Thanks very much, Miriam.

The next speaker-questioner is Mr. Myers, and we've also had a request for one short question from Carolyn Bennett. The problem is that we are really running out of time, so maybe the two of you could split the next five minutes. Is that acceptable?

Mr. Lynn Myers: Yes, thank you, Madam Chair.

In terms of the Citizens' Voice pamphlet, I wondered about these statistics. Are they American or Canadian?

Ms. Debbie Anderson: They're American.

Mr. Lynn Myers: They are U.S. statistics.

I also have a very quick question for you, Ms. Skinner. You seem to have a lot of experience and expertise with the use of these kinds of products. How did you come to know what to use and how to use it? Who gave you advice? Or is that something you gleaned on your own?

Ms. Shirley Skinner: A little of both. I don't take anything that is “new” without going out and getting all the information, the books, everything I can possibly get off the Internet or wherever else I can possibly get the information. I study it, I read it, I think about it, and then I decide to try it. Also, I did see a health practitioner as well, so I have a combination of both.

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Before I took the DHEA for my problems, I knew it was good for me. I knew about it. I read about it. I studied it. And I still take the DHEA, even though it's been banned in Canada. I've taken it for a long time.

Mr. Lynn Myers: This is leading to an obvious question. Never mind your experiences of the holding up at the border and those kinds of things. Is there a role for government in making sure the people who recommend or prescribe, or whatever term you want to use, are in fact trained in some way and have knowledge and expertise in a way that is appropriate for Canadians?

Ms. Shirley Skinner: Yes.

Mr. Lynn Myers: And how best to do that?

Ms. Shirley Skinner: Well, I think the health practitioners who are out there do a fabulous job.

Ms. Miriam Hawkins: It's a provincial mandate.

Mr. Lynn Myers: But we're looking at it. We can say it's provincial versus federal, but we're looking at it. The reality is we're looking at all those.

Ms. Shirley Skinner: The health practitioners who are out there do a fabulous job. As a consumer myself, the number one thing I did was go to my doctor. My doctor diagnosed me as having systemic lupus and discoid lupus, so the drug of choice that they tried to push on me, as I said, was prednisone. I said no, because I had read about the drug. I knew about the drug. I knew about the side effects, and I said no, this is not for me.

So I went to a health practitioner and asked what I should do. She said you take this and this and this. So I did, and as I took it, I gradually got better and better. I take 20 various supplements a day as well as different things besides greens and all kinds of stuff like that. But some of these products are not available on the Canadian market. They have now been banned. So anybody who has the illness that I have can't get these products properly as a Canadian.

Mr. Lynn Myers: Thank you.

The Chair: Ms. Bennett.

Ms. Carolyn Bennett: I'm just still confused about the petitions that don't want a third thing. I'd just like some help with something like B-6. I believe that more is not better with B-6 and that there is some toxicity when you get up to the higher levels, so I would like some help. If it were a food, we wouldn't really have an opinion on this. If it's a drug, then it's very restrictive in what you do. How would you go about labelling it or selling it or having the health care store checkout person tell you you can take ten?

Ms. Debbie Anderson: Again, I rely on.... I don't go to anybody. I haven't been to a doctor in ages. I go and read about it myself and I decide for myself. I don't look at overdose. I take tons of these. I'm healthy and I take bucket-loads of these. These are my nutrition, because I can't get it from the food.

Ms. Carolyn Bennett: But say somebody wanted to come out with a one-gram product instead of 50 milligrams. Shouldn't the Canadian—?

Ms. Susanna Davis: You're talking about pharmaceutical B-6; you're not talking about a food-grown B-6.

Ms. Carolyn Bennett: But yesterday, when the Australian bottles came around, in terms of a vitamin supplement, if somebody wants to produce a pill that has 1,000 milligrams in it, when we know that's in the toxic level, shouldn't we as the Canadian government have some say about that?

Ms. Susanna Davis: Yes, but as a practitioner, I'm interested in what source it's from.

Ms. Carolyn Bennett: I'm just interested in—

Mr. Randy Gomm: If the levels were that high, as you pointed out here, and there's a toxicity concern, you could have a precautionary warning on there. It's the same as when we talked about—

Ms. Carolyn Bennett: But isn't that a third category?

Mr. Randy Gomm: No.

Ms. Carolyn Bennett: That's not food; that's not drugs.

Mr. Randy Gomm: No, it's food, but you're talking about toxicity here, and again, with herbs we're talking about the rare exception when these herbs are toxic. In those cases we can have precautionary warnings. As for the limits, it's no different from when you go to the store now and you could mega-dose on aspirins. Nobody's stopping you from doing that. So I don't understand why you want these limits on herbs. There are no bodies lying on the streets.

Ms. Carolyn Bennett: There's a dose on the aspirin bottle. It tells you not to take more and not to take it for more than three days without seeing your doctor.

Mr. Randy Gomm: Yes, but no one is stopping you from taking more. You could have precautionary warnings on things that are toxic.

Ms. Carolyn Bennett: I would say we would not be able to produce a two-gram aspirin tablet without somebody saying that's not good for Canadians.

Mr. Randy Gomm: You could put a warning on it saying it's toxic in a two-gram dose, and the same with a herb that's toxic. You could say, “Precaution: this herb in such and such a dose could be hazardous to your health.” We're talking of rare exceptions.

Ms. Carolyn Bennett: But if that's over in food, I'm not sure how I get to do that. I think I only get to do that if there's a third category.

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Ms. Debbie Anderson: The thing is that we had labs here at Health Canada, I believe, in 1990, for the actual herbal department. They shut that down in 1990. Is that not correct?

Ms. Judy Wasylycia-Leis: In 1991.

Ms. Debbie Anderson: In 1991. So you had people here who were very credible who were looking after that department, and it was shut down. What I find fascinating is you shut it down because you didn't need it; we never had any problems from the herbs. So we're creating problems that don't exist. There are no deaths associated with these products—zero.

Ms. Miriam Hawkins: I think one of the things you'll find is that the manufacturers of natural health supplements are producing what the public will buy, because the public that buys them is reading and going to their health professionals for the information.

As I say, I brought two giant briefcases of stuff, and I'm going to leave the committee with as many photocopies of various articles as I think might be helpful in getting a taste of what people are reading in the community. Every health food store is full of books and magazines. People are informing themselves.

Ms. Carolyn Bennett: Miriam, I am saying so far it's been the purview of reputable and responsible people. How do we, as the government, protect the public from having somebody come in with super-mega-something or other and promoting unhealthy practices?

A voice:

[Inaudible—Editor].

Ms. Debbie Anderson: The third category is industry, again, that wants to regulate this, and there are people in that industry, the pharmaceuticals, that are putting out synthetic stuff.

The Chair: Are there any other questions from any of the MPs here?

Mr. Trueman Tuck: May I answer that last thing briefly?

The Chair: Very briefly, and then we'll close.

Mr. Trueman Tuck: I would like to make a correction here. I am also a board member for the Canadian Coalition for Health Freedom. I'm a small-business owner. I am the fundraiser.

The rumour of the linkage to the Canadian Coalition for Health Freedom—this addresses what you're talking about, the third category, this negative. There's a confusion that goes on there, the citizens' opposition and some of the negatives. This was referred to earlier.

There is a belief that in one way or another, a third category is essential, because of the low, medium, and high-risk logic, which is valid, and most of us agree that logic is valid. Those of us at this side of the table will agree that 99% of everything that's off the market today are low risk and could be dealt with as foods, I think. That's where our common agreement is.

The area you're dealing with could be construed as a medium risk, which would have specific label requirements but wouldn't be a drug, necessarily, and high risk. Anyway, this is the advantage of the food and drug idea, splitting them.

The Chair: Excuse me; I'm going to stop it now.

If you have any other suggestions of how we could do this.... We would like to know how we could do these things that you want in order to make it serve most people the best.

I'm going to say thank you very much for coming. I'm sorry we're a little bit late.

[Proceedings continue in camera]