Bill C-51 should be scrapped, not ‘amended’

Ron Gray – Leader of the Christian Heritage Party

Health Minister Tony Clement is engaging in sleightof-
hand with his proposed “amendments” to Bill C-51 (an act to
amend the Food and Drug Act and to make consequent
amendment to several other acts). Modifying a definition doesn’t
really amend the draconian powers the proposed new Act gives
the government over health foods and natural medicines.
A bit of background is necessary:
The dominant form of medical care in North America,
allopathic medicine, was primarily adopted because of the
influence of one man—and he was not a doctor—who in 1913
was given the authority by John D. Rockefeller to administer the
profits of the newly-created Rockefeller Foundation. That
foundation, created to shelter part of the huge Rockefeller
empire from America’s new Income Tax Act; the Foundation’s
profits from sheltered shares in Standard Oil (now Exxon) were
to be used for two purposes: education in the poorer regions of
the American South; and medical research.
The administrator of the funds visited Leipzig, in
Germany, to learn how medicine was being practiced there. He
found doctors commited to surgery and pharmaceuticals, so that
was the kind of medicine to which he committed the Rockefeller
funds. The only North American school teaching that kind of
medicine at the time was Johns-Hopkins; so they got all the
money. It didn’t take long for other university medical schools to
learn how to access the Rockefeller millions: they quickly
adopted the Leipzig model. The graduates of those schools
became the founders of the American Medical Association.
Thus did allopathic medicine come to dominate health
care in North America. The irony is that John D. Rockerfeller’s
personal physician was a homeopath—as is Queen Elizabeth’s
personal physician today.
Bill C-51 is, at its core, an attempt to force natural and
traditional medications into the same regulatory framework as
pharmaceuticals. If Vitamin C, for example, is declared a “drug”
and required to have a DIN (Drug Identification Number), only
Big Pharma can afford the laboratory research necessary.
Of course the government agencies have a role to play
in protecting the public; but the way to do that is not by handing
the protection role over to Big Pharma and the food
conglomerates, as this government has been doing. The CHP
would instruct Health Canada to make the public and the
medical profession aware of dangerous or mis-labeled products,
so Canadians can make informed choices about their own health
care; and to prosecute manufacturers who make or import mislabeled
or dangerous products.
But Bill C-51 is a veiled attempt to hand control over
traditional and natural health products to Big Pharma and the
Health Canada bureaucracy.
The Conservatives have had a very friendly relationship
with Big Pharma. One example is Ken Boessenkool, Stephen
Harper's close friend and policy advisor for years, who is now a
registered lobbyist working on behalf of Merck Frosst Canada.
Remember how this government handed $300 million to Merck
for a campaign to make young girls in Canada guinea pigs in
tests of an HPV vaccine? Lifesite News reports that in the USA,
that campaign has been associated with at least five deaths in
just over a year—not to mention thousands of reports of adverse
effects, hundreds that were deemed serious, and many that
required hospitalization.
That’s not the regime that should regulate Canadians’
health care, and they should certainly not be handed a monopoly
on vitamins and natural health products. It’s worth noting that
thousands of people die every year from the use (or mis-applied
use) of potent pharmaceuticals. But as far as I’ve been able to
find out, no one has ever died from natural health products.
Bill C-51 should be scrapped, not “amended” as the
Tories propose; because even as amended, it still gives the
government the hidden power to define vitamins and health
foods as “drugs”, and impose excessively draconian regulations
on them.

PO Box 4958, Station E Ottawa ON K1S 5J1
Vol 15, No 31 This Communiqué may be copied August 12, 2008