Canada's Consumer Product Safety Act: 40 Days Later

by NHPPA
It has been some time since we have been in touch. As every one participating in this movement can imagine, the NHPPA has been overwhelmed with questions since the passing of Bill C-36 on December 15 2010. Everyone wants to know what can be done now; what should our next steps be?

At the same time, we have been asked about our core work protecting access to Natural Health Products (NHPs) and how we plan to approach the obvious threats posed by the 2004 NHP Regulations. We all know that the industry stands to see no reprieve from these inappropriate standards, since Health Canada plans to ramp up enforcement this year.

As most of you know, the NHPPA has publicly opposed two assaults on our rights and freedoms. Firstly, the ongoing drive to remove NHPs from the market through NHP Regulations in force since 2004; and secondly, the removal of the rule of law in the area of consumer products, heralded by the passing of Bill C-36. Different issues, yet both have their root cause in unconstitutional power handed to Health Canada.

To all of you who wrote, called and faxed, time after time in the last few weeks of 2010, thank you for your commitment to engage in the tireless activity needed to advocate for our rights and freedoms. We were bowled over with the ability of our supporters to express complex ideas so simply that your concepts reached Senate and are on the record. You created a shift in thinking among many of our servants in government. This will not be forgotten.

We needed your involvement for our work to be realized. Citizens are vital to give national civic muscle to the information we provide. We are all needed to help establish the freedom meme. Thank you to everyone who did not wait for someone else to speak for you. Thank you for moving out of your comfort zone to advocate on behalf of all Canadians.

If you have read the transcripts from each session, you'll know which Senators clearly motioned to have Shawn Buckley appear as an expert. On our website you can view all of the transcripts. Senator Day asserted, "Mr. Buckley is a very reputable constitutional lawyer and is highly qualified, probably one of the most qualified on this proposed legislation of anyone in Canada." Every email, letter and call made a difference. Our work, your actions, are on the record in Parliament. The transcripts clearly show an unprecedented coming together of organizations across the country as Senate recorded a 'tsunami' of correspondence. We all work from a slightly different perspective, but we have the rights of Canadians as our core values.

WHAT DO WE DO NOW?

We are flooded with calls, faxes and emails. The NHPPA wants everyone to know that, although we cannot respond to all of your emails individually, we are getting your communications. We encourage you to continue emailing us your thoughts as we move through the process that will challenge the decisions made by our government. We have a very real sense that everyone comprehends the gravity of the issues at stake.

NHPPA is asking that all NHP industry stakeholders and individuals, affronted by seeing this unprecedented threat that is gaining more ground each day, to join our effort.

We need you to write letters, send emails and visit your Members of Parliament. Again, and again, and again.

We need advocates to help alert the media to what we stand to lose; and what we have recently lost.

We need public protests and rallies to show, not only our solidarity, but to demonstrate the threat any government poses to its people when it forgets the principles on which it has been founded. The erosion of our constitutional freedoms must become an election issue.

In the meantime, and in the face of ever increasing abuses of bureaucratic power, the one powerful way to influence the future security of our nation is with a legal challenge.


GAME CHANGING

The game has changed and that means one thing. So must we.

In the area of consumer products, Canada's Consumer Product Safety Act has ensured that our Parliamentary system has failed to protect democratic principles and our Charter rights and freedoms. We now have unconstitutional legislation.

In the area of natural health products, The Natural Health Product Regulations have incrementally restricted stakeholders’ privileges and individuals’ rights to choose how they treat their own bodies. This, also, is unconstitutional.

Health Canada has gained autocratic powers in the passing of Bill C-36.

Health Canada continues to criminalize natural health products through the NHP Regulations as they are currently written.

Health food stores, NHP manufacturers and importers were recently put on (and off, and on) notice that Health Canada's enforcement deadline for compliance would take effect on a specific date. It means that Canadian retailers will stop purchasing products for their stores that do not yet have an NPN or EN (regardless of submission in the queue). Both domestic production and cross-border importation of unlicenced NHPs will stop completely. Retailers would be given an additional six months to 'sell out' of unlicensed products before Health Canada inspectors show up and remove these products for them.

Then, Health Canada announced that this enforcement would be delayed "until further notice." This reprieve was short. The deadline has been imposed again.

Industry associations working with Health Canada cannot be commended for this brief pause in assisting the dismantling of their industry. Work which has been done for stakeholders to comply, embraces Health Canada's 'smokescreen' and forwards their influenced policies, even if this was not the original intention. We know that many of those who have attempted to co-operate with the regulations were hesitant to do so but considered it the wisest option.

We now find ourselves with two separate and equally troubling realities to merge. The spread of bureaucratic power and the results of classifying natural health products as drugs.
 

Things move fast in politics and, just as the government’s attempt to bring in Bill C-36 under the radar took many by surprise, Health Canada’s move to ramp up enforcement of the NHP regulations came hard on the heels of the passing of Bill C-36. In fact, there is stirring of a new Bill C-51 poised to appear at the House of Commons.

And with that, our focus right now must be back with our core purpose, protection of access for NHPs.
After taking some time to consider our options we conclude that the best course of action is to press for a legal challenge.
 
We will also consider how to roll-in the inevitable consequences we asserted in our Bill C-36 accountability campaign.
 
"The end of law is not to abolish or restrain, but to preserve and enlarge freedom. For in all the states of created beings capable of law, where there is no law, there is no freedom." --John Locke


NHPPA'S 3 PART PLAN | PART 2

A legal challenge has been part of our 3-Part Plan for some time. We have no choice but to start court proceedings to have the Natural Health Product Regulations declared unconstitutional.

Any confidence we may have had in the systems that govern us has been eroded. The idea of negotiation is lost. The process, the system and the bureaucratic interests are infinitely flawed. More industry and public ‘consultations’ with Health Canada will take us nowhere. The strategies the industry, public and politicians have been using to date have only kept Health Canada at bay. We need to change our tactics and use the law, while we still can.


PROCESS IN LEGAL ACTION

The full anticipated progress of this challenge is laid out in our 3 Part Plan where you will see that the actual trial is some way off. But we are beginning.

CLICK HERE to see the steps to launch the legal challenge.
 

COST OF LEGAL CHALLENGE. LAST LINE OF DEFENSE.
 
By working with us, you allow us to invest in the critically needed legal resources and provide the country with an alternative.
 
It is not a short process; nor is it inexpensive.
 
We are beginning a national fundraising drive to collect the dollars we need, not only for our daily operations, but to file the lawsuit against Health Canada.

Virtually everyone wants to see a legal challenge started.

This is no small task, we need a legal team big enough, and skilled enough, to take the case to Canada's supreme court. Our president, Shawn Buckley has been interviewing firms and lawyers who he feels can do the job, and guided by him, NHPPA is preparing our team of experts. In order to do this we need to finance the selected legal team to move through the entire complicated and exhausting process.

The Department of Justice has unlimited funds and resources. We have our supporters.

CLICK HERE to find out how a small group of individual Canadians and industry stakeholders can offer successful opposition through Federal court action with the NHPPA.

Remember, a lawsuit is a significant public statement to make. This action, designed to compel attention, will pull public, political and legal focus to issues of increasing government control.

Co-operation with consultancy initiatives and attempts to communicate reasonably with our elected representatives have not worked. It has been over a decade since the public demanded wider access to NHPs. Health Canada’s interpretation of this demand, accepted by government as the wish of the people, demonstrated a betrayal of what was promised.

We have to keep up the fight, and raise the stakes, because there is no alternative. This must never be given up. This is about persistence and refusal to give up when we know what is right.

We believe that the Canadian public and Natural Health Product industry do not have to compromise.

Protecting access,  
Natural Health Products Protection Association
 
#2-953 Laval Crescent, Kamloops, BC V2C 5P4 P: 250.377.4930  F: 250.377.4990

E: info@nhppa.org  W: www.nhppa.org & www.charterofhealthfreedom.org


Join NHPPA on Facebook | Follow NHPPA on Twitter | Watch us on YouTube