The federal budget’s Section 326 gives unprecedented power to the health minister to override Health Canada’s approvals of over-the-counter drugs, natural health products, and medical devices based on personal beliefs.
This change threatens the safety, innovation, and accessibility of essential health products for all Canadians. Stand up for your right to safe, approved health products!
ACT NOW to demand accountability and transparency in health regulations!
Buried deep in Bill C-69, the act implementing the federal budget, is an amendment — section 326 out of fully 467 sections — that gives the federal health minister authority to override Health Canada approvals for over-the-counter drugs (OTCs), natural health products (NHPs) and medical devices. According to Health Canada, the change means the minister can “take action to protect against potential health risks from unintended product use or adverse effects to health or the environment” if he or she “believes that the use of a therapeutic product may present risk of injury to health.”
And through a ministerial order the health minister could “establish rules in respect of the importation, sale, conditions of sale, advertising, manufacture, preparation, preservation, packaging, labelling, storage or testing of the therapeutic product for the purpose of preventing, managing or controlling the risk of injury to health.”
Why is Ottawa jamming a major increase in its health minister’s power into a federal budget? A big part of the answer is: to further current Health Minister Mark Holland’s crusade against nicotine pouches. Without this change in his powers, he was not in a position to over-ride Health Canada’s approval of nicotine pouches as a smoking cessation tool. The Liberals are giving him that power with section 326.
Empowering a minister to override Health Canada approvals based on his or her “belief” that something “may” present a risk creates a scenario ripe for ministerial abuse, with a health minister sidestepping Health Canada to regulate from a position of bias or in response to bad headlines.
The Liberals apparently fail to see that although the immediate justification for the change concerns nicotine any power given to a health minister today is a power that a future health minister, possibly of a different political party, will also be able to use.
Including natural health products in this new rule means vitamins, herbal remedies, homeopathic medicines, traditional medicines, probiotics and amino and fatty acids could all be restricted at the minister’s discretion. These are products 71 per cent of Canadians use, according to the government’s own estimates. In fact, because countless everyday consumer products are technically considered NHPs — certain toothpastes, antiperspirants, shampoos, facial products and mouthwashes, for instance — we all use them.
As for medical devices, they include but aren’t limited to: hip implants, pacemakers, synthetic skin, artificial heart valves, test kits for diagnosis, contraceptive devices, medical laboratory diagnostic instruments. This list of things the health minister will now effectively have veto power over goes on and on.
Giving the minister this veto erodes the traditional division between the government and Health Canada. Despite its many faults, Health Canada is a far better judge of what drugs and products should be in the Canadian marketplace than is any professional politician.
The increase in ministerial power also substantially raises the risk of launching new medical devices or OTCs in Canada. A company could bring a new drug to market only to have the health minister’s “belief that there may be harm” regulate it out of the market. Despite passing all of Health Canada’s checks and reviews, a new product would forever be one bad headline and the stroke of a ministerial pen away from being banned. Legal certainty supports product innovation. Ministerial discretion reduces legal certainty
What makes the change even more perplexing is that it covers most forms of contraception. The same political party that has been trying to persuade Canadians Pierre Poilievre wants to restrict access to contraception is giving his future health minister the authority to do exactly that. The cognitive dissonance required to hold both positions is, well, mind-boggling.
The federal budget’s Section 326 gives unprecedented power to the health minister to override Health Canada’s approvals of over-the-counter drugs, natural health products, and medical devices based on personal beliefs.
This change threatens the safety, innovation, and accessibility of essential health products for all Canadians. Stand up for your right to safe, approved health products!
Act now to demand accountability and transparency in health regulations!
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