Back in 2008, Scott Tips wrote an article called “Thunder in the North” outlining Bill C-51, meant to “modernize” the Canadian Food and Drugs Act. In this important piece, Scott ably analyzed the bill and made it plain just what sort of intentions were behind it, none of them good news for Canadians.
Granted, some of Canada’s laws could well use a dusting off, but the radical police powers granted to Health Canada were set to allow government agents to enter your property without a warrant, confiscate whatever they saw fit at your expense, retain it indefinitely, and fine or even imprison you for simple non-compliance. In addition, the range of effects on natural health products was ominous, in terms of Health Canada’s ability to stop consumer access to safe, effective NHPs at will by raiding health stores and manufacturers alike, all at the whim of the Agency, with suspicion passing for evidence.
Health-freedom advocates from coast to coast raised a royal kerfuffle over the bill, and ultimately, the vile thing died when an election was called. Undaunted, the Conservative government brought the bill back under a new name, this time as Bill C-6, the “Canada Consumer Product Safety Act,” and passed it off as a remake of the old “Hazardous Products Act,” instead of the Food and Drugs Act. The government attempted to masquerade the bill as being about faulty baby cribs and the like, and amended it to exclude its overall application to NHPs, in hopes that the health-freedom groups would stay home. Fat chance.
Bill C-6 passed and was headed for the Senate by the time they caught on; but once the intrepid Canadian freedom fighters got wind of the fact that clauses of C-6 could be moved piecemeal by a simple “regulatory change,” they sprang into action: the call to arms was raised, and within weeks, every Senator had received an unprecedented barrage of phone calls, faxes, letters, and emails, as over a million Canadians sent them a scathing piece of their minds.
What followed was an incredible war in the Senate. Every opportunity was taken by the government to discredit those with concerns; even the Health Minister herself testified before the Standing Committee hearings, in a stacked roster of 18 testimonials for the bill, and only one (lawyer Shawn Buckley) against, but the Liberal majority held fast against the Health Canada minions.
Harper’s next move was to solve all his problems in one fell swoop: he prorogued, or suspended, Parliament until after the Winter Olympics in Vancouver, which killed all unfinished business, including Bill C-6, but also afforded him the ability to appoint new Conservative Senators, ending Liberal domination of the Upper House with finality.
Ultimately, the Senate amended the bill to require warrants, but did not address the worst of its thorns: making Canadians subject to unspecified foreign authorities. Canadians and Americans need to become aware of the trap in this, and any other legislation, “authorities,” for which we may substitute the WHO, the WTO, NAFTA, and Codex Alimentarius. This is how our nations lose their sovereignty (or, more precisely, give it away), and cease to be themselves, incrementally, department by department. Then, these multifarious trade agreements-slash-enforceable contracts, which have become a tangle of terms and conditions, in a veritable gridlock, begin to collide with each other.
And what do you need when you have gridlock? A traffic cop, of course. Creating that gridlock condition has also created the need for a supervisory body, i.e. a global governance platform, and the end of our familiar constitutional rights in favor of “trade”: the financial benefit of multinational corporations, including pharmaceutical ones.
Now, Bill C-6 has reincarnated as Bill C-36 and the battle will renew this Fall. True to its ancestry, first it decimates our rights, and then it lets in the wolves. And let’s be clear, we are all prey to the same wolves.
All those who value their health freedom must now recognize that when our sovereignty is given away, our health freedom goes with it, because without it we can neither make nor enforce our own laws if they step on the toes of a trade group. Never before have we needed to be more vigilant, as more and more foreign entanglements enable more and more freedoms to be removed, among them the right to eat natural foods and choose our medicines.
We are now fighting for our very lives.
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Shawn Buckley’s draft analysis of Bill C-36 can be read at: http://nhppa.org/?p=1079
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Canadian Dee Nicholson, of Toronto, has spent 15 years fighting for health freedom, and is a veteran of many battles against Health Canada and Codex Alimentarius. A prolific writer, Dee has authored several books as well as many articles exposing the ways in which our governments are ceding national sovereignties in favor of global controls, putting profits ahead of people and their right to choose natural health. She was a public-relations specialist for many years before turning to activism, and a second career as a life coach and metaphysical counselor.