Happy Canada Day?
Your Access to Natural Health Products Is Threatened ** This is a copy of an email from The Light Cellar Calgary and this petition is from www.nhppa.org and here https://www.charterofhealthfreedom.org/petition/?page_id=660 to the House of Commons in Parliament assembled. There is no time to lose to take action to keep our natural health care products and support our Providers.
Most of you are likely aware of the fact that Health Canada is on the fast track to remove our access to Natural Health Products. These include vitamins, herbs, supplements, and other natural products.
Shawn Buckley, of the Natural Health Products Protection Association (https://nhppa.org/) helped to successfully stop this back in 2008, but things have ramped up suddenly and drastically in the last few weeks and we have a limited amount of time to try to stop this again.
We are looking at the possible decimation of the Natural Health Products industry in Canada, with only a few very large companies able to afford the yearly licensing fees. Practitioners and businesses, such as the Light Cellar, will likely have to shut down and Canadians will be left with few affordable options to manage their health outside of using pharmaceuticals.
I recommend signing up for the NHPPA newsletter and reading through their email updates as the situation unfolds, attending one of the live calls (or watching a recorded one) where Shawn outlines the situation, and to start writing letters, as well as calling and asking to meet with your MPs.
If this is the first you are hearing of this, or you have only heard a rumor and or were not sure what to do, please read this email, sign up for the NHPP newsletter, sign a petition, and take some time to make your voice heard.
We have a petition at our front till in-store should you wish to come by and sign it. And as helpful as signing petitions or postcards are, because every bit counts, individually mailed letters (that you don't need to buy postage for), phone calls, and in-person meetings are more effective. If you type out a letter and print it off your computer, be sure to also include a handwritten portion on that letter for it to stand out and lend some more weight.
Please share this far and wide. We can turn this around, but time is limited to do so, and we need Canadians coast to coast to make their voices heard.
Below are the "Coles Notes" version of the Act that Shawn Buckley and his team compiled from the NHPPA website where you can find many more details https://nhppa.org/
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 all need to get involved to 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 stricter regulations and 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 the 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 are 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 healthcare 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." As you have read, Shawn and his team lay out the very real and dire reprecussions from Bill C-47 which already became law on Friday, June 23rd. So rather than asking our MPs to remove sections 500 to 504 from Bill C-47, we must demand they repeal those sections. Understanding the consequences of sections 500-504 of Bill C-47 is critical for any Canadian who uses natural health products, seeks services from natural health practitioners, and values their freedom to care for their body in whatever way they choose. Join NPHHA Getting Political
Past & Current Struggles with Bureaucracy in the Natural Health World Malcolm Saunders & Blaine Andrusek talk about past and current struggles with bureaucracy of the Canadian Government and Health Canada that want to limit your knowledge about and access to natural health products. This is a clip from one of our regular conversations Episode 9 of Wild Wisdom & Storytelling with Blaine the Herbman
