The purpose of the paper is to reveal the names of the people responsible for the change and to show the documents they relied upon to bring about this change.
Our current Natural Health Product Regulations are the result of a citizen rebellion and the most extensive consultations by a Standing Committee in Canadian history. Citizens, experts, Parliament and Health Canada all concluded that it was not proper to regulate NHPs under the same set of regulations as chemical drugs.
Health Canada’s Self-Care proposal is to go back to what did not work and to what caused citizens to rebel: the regulation of natural products and chemical drugs under a single set of regulations. The new proposal will do the exact opposite of what the Standing Committee on Health, the Government, the NHP industry and consumers agreed on.
The Paper outlines that there is no evidence or reason to support the Self-Care Framework. The only call for public consultation made it clear that NHPs would not be affected. Because the sole call for public consultation made it clear that NHPs would not be affected, there was zero public input concerning regulating NHPs as Self-Care Products.
The Access to Information Act (ATI) requests from Health Canada by Deane Parkes from 2017-2018, reveal insights into how the proposed new self-care regulations were developed. Through these requests, Health Canada provided materials, all of which were given to Shawn for review and analysis.