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NATURAL HEALTH PRODUCTS CRISIS SUMMARY
The Chinese translation of this Crisis Summary is available here
WHY ARE WE LOSING OUR NATURAL HEALTH PRODUCTS?
Health Canada is implementing what they call the Self-Care Framework. When fully implemented most of our natural health products will be gone. The natural health practitioners we rely on will also be gone. Health Canada will be responsible for people losing their livelihoods and, their lives.
In the meantime prices are going to skyrocket.
We need your help to stop Health Canada.
The summary below gives you a bird’s eye view of the problem.
Read this Discussion Paper for an in depth look at what we face.
HOW ARE THE NATURAL PRODUCTS WE RELY ON BEING TAKEN AWAY?
There are some immediate Health Canada initiatives we need to stop.
Health Canada is imposing new fees on natural health businesses that will drive many small and medium sized ones out of business. Their products will be gone.
Health Canada is also imposing stricter regulations on natural products that will be costly for natural health companies to comply with. This will also drive natural health companies out of business. Their products will be gone.
For the products that survive this, the prices will increase because the producers will have to pass on their increased costs. This takes the remaining products away from the poor and disadvantaged who cannot afford the higher prices.
The new fees collected by Health Canada will be used to create a new enforcement arm to impose the stricter regulations and to censor truthful health information. Producers and practitioners will no longer be able to publicly share truthful information about natural products. If you cannot be told a natural product can help you, the product might as well not exist.
If you and your family cannot be told the truth, you cannot make crucial health decisions.
Huge new fines to cripple and destroy the natural health community are being imposed. $5,000,000 a day fines that Health Canada told us were only appropriate for the big pharmaceutical companies have just been imposed on the natural health community. Your local health food store cannot survive a $5,000,000 fine. Your health practitioner, such as a naturopathic doctor cannot survive a $5,000,000 fine. These huge fines are not meant to punish, they are meant to destroy.
WHY IS THIS A PROBLEM?
Many Canadians are only alive today because of natural health products. Many more only enjoy quality of life because they manage serious health conditions with natural health products. It is reckless and dangerous to take these products away.
And we should have a choice. We should have the freedom to choose natural products. But Health Canada is telling us we need to lose this freedom because natural health products are so “risky”. This is a lie. You are fourteen times more likely to be struck by lightning than to be killed by a natural health product.
None of us would give up a single freedom to be protected from lightning and yet lightning is more dangerous to us than all the natural health products on the market.
We need protection from Health Canada, not from natural products.
WHAT IS COMING NEXT?
The next steps in Health Canada’s Self-Care Framework is to:
- limit the uses of natural products;
- take away the right to rely on the traditional use of products to get permission to sell them, and
- fully impose the chemical drug regulations on natural health products.
These three changes will fully destroy the natural health product community. Most of the effective products will disappear. We will lose our natural health care practitioners such as Naturopathic Doctors, Traditional Chinese Doctors, Homeopathic Doctors, Herbalists, Nutritionists, etc. These practitioners will go out of business because they will lose the natural remedies they use to help us.
HOW TO GET INVOLVED
The Natural Health Product Protection Association (www.nhppa.org) is leading a campaign to stop these changes and to protect your access to natural products and natural health care practitioners.
Please visit our website and sign up for our newsletter. This enables us to tell you about our campaigns.
Watch our campaign page as we will be launching regular campaigns to demand that our right to natural remedies is not taken away.
Donate! The truth is, that most campaigns fail because people do not support them financially. This campaign is too important for us to fail. Do your part.
Manufacturers and industry stakeholders, a minimum of $1000 + monthly for two years, would be ideal.
Public and practitioners, $25 to $100 a month for two years, would give this campaign legs!
Take Action!
When we ask you to participate in a campaign, participate.
“We” can make a difference, but “We” includes you.
We need you to stand up.
