Advocates warn that Health Canada’s sweeping natural product regulations will decimate the industry

“Many small and medium sized natural health product (NHP) companies will not survive these changes,” reads an opening statement written by constitutional lawyer Shawn Buckley in a discussion paper on Health Canada’s 2023 regulatory initiatives.

The changes come from Health Canada’s “self-care framework” which was first launched in 2017 by then health minister, Jane Philpott.

There were four Health Canada employees responsible for the introduction of this framework: Simon Kennedy, Paul Glover, Anil Arora, and Pierre Sabourin, according to Access to Information documents acquired by Buckley.

The regulations amending NHPs would be implemented in three phases. At the end of these phases, the natural health community will be subjected to the same powers and regulatory penalties as chemical drug companies.

Fines for noncompliance could see the natural health companies subjected to extreme $5-million dollar a day punishments that they could never afford.

These are not massive, pharmaceutical oligarchs that we’re talking about.

But why? Is the risk really the same?

According to Professor Ron Law, a risk analysis expert who prepared the following comparison using mostly Canadian government statistics – Canadians are 14 times more likely to be struck by lightning than to die from a natural health product.

“They are 428 times more likely to die from bicycling than to die from a natural health product; 714 times more likely to die in a school bus accident than to die from a natural health product; and 1,071 times more likely to be murdered than to die from a natural health product,” the report reads.

Buckley further says that Canadians are being subjected to shameless propaganda and gaslighting to support international trade decisions that have nothing to do with health.

“When the Government tells you to be “afraid” because of a risk, you must compare the risk with other risks to get perspective.”

The same goes for Health Canada’s proposed amendments to chemical drug agile licensing – a move that prioritizes chemical drug innovation over the health and safety of Canadians, as detailed by retired pediatrician Susan Natsheh.

“This new pathway allows for novel therapeutic products which have unknown side effects and implications to bypass that traditional route and access the public as long as the Minister of Health and Health Canada has evidence to support the conclusion that the associated benefits of the products outweigh the risk,” Dr. Natsheh told Rebel News in an exclusive interview.

If a company has the means to determine the end through financial pathways then they can cover their bases.

But as Buckley puts it for NHPs, they simply do not have the means to stay afloat under Health Canada’s harshly proposed constraints.

The Natural Health Products Protection Association (NHPPA) is prompting Canadians to get involved in pushing back against these intrusions by visiting their website and subscribing.

An advocacy campaign has also been launched by the Canadian Health Food Association (CHFA) called Save Our Supplements.