Finance committee  Actually, I view this as a blank cheque. In fact, if you read it carefully, it doesn't have to be for good health outcomes. It can be just for broader public policy, so there's really no threshold. You would think that if you were going to interfere in the doctor-patient relationship....

Finance committee  It's not that simple.

Finance committee  You know, the minister could put in the Gazette, part 1, today that he's making a regulation that all nicotine products are adulterated if they have flavouring. He could give it a 30-day comment period and publish it again in the Gazette, part 2, and now you're finished. The minister could make an order under section 27.3 that nicotine products basically can't be promoted for any use that isn't approved and go after companies.

Finance committee  Are you referring to the comment that we need to protect youth from nicotine products?

Finance committee  My biggest concern is that if you accept.... I'm not here to debate whether or not we have a nicotine patch problem for kids, although we are using emotional language and referring to kids and we're saying “vulnerable”, which makes it really hard to resist. Why doesn't the government, the minister, under paragraph 30(1)(a), pass a regulation saying that any vaping product is adulterated if it's flavoured?

Finance committee  Anyway, Bill C-368, if that passes, is not really going to have much of an effect on this. It's just going to move natural health products back to the regular drug category, where they're not subject to such strict provisions.

Finance committee  I actually think that we're even conflating the issues. If we're asking if the existing powers in the Food and Drugs Act are too broad, I would say they are, because there's a real danger with a regulatory authority that is there for drug approval having any powers that would interfere with the doctor-patient relationship, which is based on a completely different set of information and with a different purpose.

Finance committee  Well, it's really not going to have a whole lot of impact. Basically, in the last budget, Bill C-368 snuck in fundamental changes to the Food and Drugs Act that move natural health products into the therapeutic product category. The therapeutic product category was created by Vanessa's law back in 2014 to basically say that we have a class of drugs, chemical pharmaceutical drugs, with a risk profile that's extremely high, so we actually need to give the minister more powers to address that risk.

Finance committee  Okay. The minister can make this order. What this is about is that this is a shopping list to basically exempt the government from any liability for the next pandemic. Health Canada could be liable for adulteration, for the DNA contamination, for their own messaging for fraud and for unsanitary manufacturing, and they had a problem with non-doctors promoting things—

Finance committee  Thank you for that question. I can tell you that we're really a consumer organization and we get a lot of feedback from ordinary citizens. Citizens were already really upset with what happened last year, because the same thing happened, and now this seems to be a trend. There is actually a concern—and I share the concern—that we're really circumventing the democratic process.

Finance committee  Thank you, Mr. Chair. I'm here to address division 31 of the bill, which includes changes to the Food and Drugs Act. As I give my opinion to this committee, understand that I'm of the opinion that the messaging by the government, the Minister of Health and Health Canada on this issue is actually fraudulent to the Canadian people.