FREEDOM IN CRISIS LECTURE TOUR
An important personal invitation to owners, managers and employees in Canada’s natural health community.
We invite all NHP stakeholders from retailers to large manufacturers, small and mid sized producers to distributors and practitioners.
The NHPPA is asking that wherever you stand on the NHP Regulations issues and whatever approach you endorse that you come hear critical information from our president and constitutional lawyer Shawn Buckley. Stakeholders such as yourself are entitled to take ownership of what is going on by forming your own opinion. We want to have a conversation with industry stakeholders; to open lines of communication about the future of our industry.
People supporting the NHPPA’s work have been in the Canadian natural health industry for a long time. They are seeing the gross dismantling of a once vibrant industry, through the NHP Regulations, right now.
Others think we are a vital part of ‘softening’ the existing regulations by offering resistance and push back.
Some believe our interpretation is a hypothetical worst case scenario for the industry that cannot happen.
You may have colleagues in the business who have had their products targeted by Health Canada and removed from the market. Even if you haven’t yet personally experienced the devastating effect this can have on an NHP business, you are probably aware that this trend is on the rise.
It is no secret that over the past couple of years Health Canada has hired more inspectors, Health Canada is set to ramp up enforcement in 2011 and we hear from stakeholders that more products are being stripped from their shelves daily.
We ask you, and welcome you, regardless of your position to please join us. It’s important. We need to have the conversation now.
As most of you know Shawn routinely defends legitimate NHP stakeholders against Health Canada’s charges. Shawn has received special permission from clients under attack to share their stories publicly, from both the natural health industry and consumer product industry. He is adding the details of legitimate businesses in crisis to his already alarming lecture, covering the rights you have already lost and those you stand to lose. As our peers go under we think the best way to protect the industry is to bring the facts to your doorstep.
With the industry not consolidating its efforts for several reasons, some misinformed and others self-preservation; and many attempting to comply with Health Canada’s approach, the NHPPA has decided to produce legal advice for the next level of enforcement. This document has been created from Shawn’s work as a defence attorney and detailed knowledge of enforcement procedures. It is NHPPA’s Emergency Kit for Health Canada Raids. Specifically written for the NHP industry.
This kit will be available, free, at each Freedom in Crisis lecture. It includes an outline of your rights and obligations before a Health Canada raid on your business and helps you understand how to minimize damage during a raid. It will help you determine if a search is criminal or administrative; and offers advice for how to behave, depending on whether the police are present or not. It contains information on privacy laws, search warrants and obtaining advice. This guide can help you try to save your reputation and your business when the inspectors arrive.
If you would like the NHPPA to speak to you personally about details of products and businesses suffering the consequences of regulations right now, please do not hesitate to call or email. Within privacy guidelines, we can talk to about what we know. Then come and hear how and why this matters to you, your employees and your customers.
CLICK HERE to find out more about the lecture and tour schedule
Shawn will present the solution to the constitutional crisis, initiated by the NHPPA, which to date has been accepted by almost 55,000 Canadians. It’s called the Charter of Health Freedom. Again, a number of industry members have misunderstood the purpose of this proposed law. It has, in fact, been drawn up to completely reflect the rights and freedoms our courts have already defined. Its regulatory framework concepts will keep the industry from having products criminalized. It is a starting point that the NHPPA would like to bring to the policy makers at Health Canada.
Over half of the natural health products on the Canadian market in 2004 are now gone. That’s over 20,000. At last count, out of approximately 10,000 license refusals, only three (3) were due to safety concerns. The rest were denied based on failure to prove efficacy. Before the regulations started, there were a total of zero (0) Canadian deaths due to a natural health product on record. And now, six and a half years later, the total is…still zero.
You are a stakeholder in an endangered industry.
We encourage you to make the time to attend the lecture.
We encourage you to stay and participate in the open Q&A time after the talk.
There is no question that you have that need remain unanswered.
Please join us… for a change.
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CLICK HERE to read NHPPA’s 3 Part Plan
NO SURPRISE
It should not be a surprise to anyone paying attention that the NHP Regulations as they are currently drafted can only lead to the loss of the majority of NHPs that we have traditionally had the freedom to use. Under our current regulatory regime, all natural health products are deemed by law to be dangerous and illegal. The starting point is that all must be removed from the market. The only exceptions are those products that can overcome a number of barriers created by the Regulations. The barriers will change over time, but anyone thinking that changing them will solve the problem is missing what is happening.
The over-regulation of the NHP industry is not an accident. It is not a mistake. It is not due to any misunderstanding of the meaning of the NHP Regulations. The death of the NHP industry as we knew it is the inevitable result of the Regulations as they are currently written. Doing nothing, or trying to achieve minor concessions can only lead to the result we are witnessing unfold.
If natural health products are delivering the health benefits that Canadians taking them say they do, then we are participating in a dangerous game. We are also acting unethically by allowing our colleagues and peers to be put at risk.
The question is: have we had enough yet or do we need to lose more NHPs before we are willing to act? The only reason Health Canada has been so effective in taking NHPs away is the complacency in the natural health community. There has been no concerted effort to stop the regulations. Many do not know what to do. Many do not believe Health Canada can be stopped. Many do not believe Health Canada should be stopped. The NHPPA disagrees. The passion that we witnessed from Canadians who opposed Bill C-51 convinced us that we do not have to compromise. There is no reason why we cannot have reasonable and balanced regulations which protect our access to products we rely upon.
However, ask yourself. How many deaths and illness will Health Canada have caused by removing natural health products from the market?
FIRST: suspension of the current NHP Regulations. The loss of products must stop. We also don’t believe that trying to “tweak” the Regulations or getting Health Canada to be “reasonable” is realistic, given that even Parliament’s NHP recommendations were ignored. As long as natural remedies are assumed, without proof, to be illegal and dangerous, they will be restricted. We need to take the more reasonable approach prevalent in the U.S.
SECOND: we are seeking financial support for a Charter legal challenge of these NHP Regulations. We believe they are unconstitutional. The Regulations come under “criminal” law. We don’t believe that NHPs, which are safer than peanut butter, carry enough of a risk to be considered potentially criminal. We are also mindful that the government only backed down in the 1990s on the eve of the lawsuit.
THIRD: we are calling for the national adoption of the Charter of Health Freedom. The petition for the Charter is already one of the most subscribed to in Canadian history! Rather than being “reactive” to negative moves by Health Canada, the Charter creates a positive legal basis, which will enable the Government to protect us from actual risks, while at the same time protecting our right to make personal and informed health choices. The Charter is an appropriate regulatory framework created for the low-risk profile of NHPs.
