Canada Forfeits Sovereignty Over Food & Natural Health

by Dee Nicholson
Co Executive Director
National Health Federation of Canada

Hidden in the language of Bill C-36, the Canada Consumer Product Safety Act, is a clause which makes Canadians "subject to the dictates of foreign authorities", which are undefined but could mean anything from a foreign government to a trade association like the WTO, NAFTA, CETA, etc., to the United Nations.

This direct transfer of Canadian sovereignty to an unnamed foreign agency can happen at any time, without Parliamentary or public oversight, and it has happened before. In fact, at last month's G20 conference, Prime Minister Harper admitted the surrendering of sovereignty was occurring economically, and treated it as a "fact of life"; we find this astounding, given that Harper was adamant in recent years about protecting this same sovereignty, and had until that moment not breathed a word about the fact that instead, he was giving it away without our knowledge or consent.

What does this mean to the Natural Health Industry, and to Canadian consumers?

It means that at any time, a foreign authority can force us to alter domestic law in order to comply with our "international obligations" (another of Harper's favorite phrases, of late).

Witness the changing of US corporate tax law at the order of the WTO: are Canadian laws any less vulnerable? That means that the draconian supplement regulations of the EU (which force citizens to get prescriptions for vitamins at therapeutic dosages and potencies at outrageous prices) can be forced upon us via CETA, the "Comprehensive Economic and Trade Agreement" between Canada and the European Union.

They call it "harmonization": we call it a hijacking of our rights, by stealth.

Not that this is confined to the Natural Health market: Canada has signed ten trade agreements since 1994, and has a dozen more in the works. Far from being "social clubs", these agreements are in fact enforceable contracts guaranteeing that Canadians will comply with whatever these groups want. In the case of the World Trade Organization, we have one vote at the table, against over 190 others. Where does the citizen's vote count then?

This industry has been hit hard by Health Canada's well-demonstrated penchant to serve the pharmaceutical industry, despite its dismal record of disease, disability and death. Any reasonable person reviewing the facts of the matter would be forced to conclude that this agency is serving its pharmaceutical masters well, while eliminating the effective natural elements provided for our natural bodies by our natural environment. There is no profit in wellness, and they cannot patent what Nature provides.

It is time that all Canadians realized the extent of the damage to their freedoms represented by these multifarious foreign entanglements, because their health freedom is not the only thing that will go the way of the dodo bird if they do not become aware of the dark side of trade groups.

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