Madam Speaker, it is always a pleasure to rise. My colleague from Peterborough—Kawartha talked about this being Groundhog Day, and it seems as if we are talking about this particular topic over and over again.

My colleague from Ottawa Centre, who spoke just a minute ago, was talking about the safety of these products. It is interesting, because the reason any health warnings were found about these products was that inspections were already conducted by Health Canada. Therefore, by grabbing more money from the small and medium-sized businesses that are actually producing natural health products for the benefit of Canadians, these changes are not going to make those inspections any better or any more frequent. I find that a bit fascinating.

The other thing that is absolutely fascinating is what we have on the opposite side of the House. We have a government that had a crazy experiment, a wacko experiment we might say, to actually decriminalize opioids, which we know failed miserably. Without the Conservatives on this side of the House actually stopping the Liberals, they were on the path to wanting to legalize drugs like meth, crack, cocaine, amphetamines and fentanyl here in Canada, in our backyards, in our school grounds, in front of businesses and in front of residences all across this country.

Thankfully, there was an incredible intervention by team Conservative. We were able to make enough interventions so that people realized how bad of an idea this was. The crime, chaos, drugs and disorder that have happened across this great country have been unfathomable. It is certainly something that Canadians need to bear in mind when we talk about the incredible want on the NDP-Liberal side to take away natural health products.

I know that many of my colleagues spoke about this previously, but I do think it bears repeating. When we look at the multitude of issues that have come before this House in the last two and a half years since I have been here, the issue that people have written to me the most about and approached me the most about, just walking along the street, in our own backyards, is really related to natural health products. Canadians have made it incredibly clear that they do not want the government interfering, as it wants to do, with their natural health products.

I know some of this is a bit repetitive, but I think it bears repeating. We know from statistics that over 80% of Canadians use natural health products on a regular basis. I listened with great interest when my colleague from Peterborough—Kawartha talked about how the impacts of the changes the government is on the road to making, without the intervention of Bill C-368, are a harm to female entrepreneurs. That cannot be said enough in this House.

We hear that Conservatives are against women and Conservatives are against women's rights. We hear this every single day. It is actually quite nauseating. We actually understand that, on the opposite side, the NDP-Liberal coalition members are the ones who want to undermine the health, well-being and financial success of female entrepreneurs. We know that 80% of businesses in the natural health products sector are small businesses, and 50% of these businesses are managed by CEOs who are females.

There is no better way for people to ensure their success in this world than to be their own boss. When someone is the master of their own destiny, that creates a security and a need for nobody else. From my perspective, my wife and I have been married almost 34 years. She is a female entrepreneur. When I look at her success and the satisfaction it brings her to know that she certainly does not have to rely on me and that she is incredibly successful, that is the kind of thing I would want for my daughters as well, and for any entrepreneur in this great country. They should be able to say they are the master of their own destiny.

When we look at the regulations that have also been brought in, the member for Ottawa Centre went on and on about safety, etc. I know he was not at the health committee when this happened, so maybe we can cut him some slack based on that. Interestingly enough, the chief medical adviser for Health Canada was at the committee and talked about some of the disinformative statistics that the member spoke about previously. When we pressed the chief medical adviser for Health Canada on where the statistics were, the answer we were given was “Oh, you can look them up in the database.” Of course, doing our due diligence, we attempted to do so. The conflated numbers they actually presented in no way, shape, or form reflect reality.

When we begin to look at this, the safety of natural health products is beyond reproach. Are there oftentimes difficulties in manufacturing? Yes. Health Canada, to its credit, has discovered some of those things, which is important. That happens in many different industries where the manufacturing process is studied to make things better by doing this, that or the other thing. That will be important to continue, but is it necessary to attempt to kill small and medium-sized business-based enterprises in this country? When these regulations continue, if the rest of our colleagues do not realize the importance of Bill C-368, what will happen is that this industry will die. Then what will happen?

We know that 80% of Canadians use these products on a regular basis, and they will continue to use them. When they continue to use them, that means they are going to have to buy them somewhere else, other than from the great Canadian industry that we have, which we know is incredibly safe. The regulations that exist here in this country at the current time, barring the changes that the NDP-Liberal costly coalition wanted to make in the last budget, are the envy of the rest of the world. We have heard that. We did much research on this last year, when we went through all this foolishness before. Australia said it wanted to adopt what Canada is doing because it is so great. The regulations are absolutely incredible. When we tell them that the costly coalition wants to meddle with the regulations, they ask why we would want to do that, as we have a great system now.

We look at increasing the cost of products by 50% to 75%, and we see 20% of small businesses in Canada having to close. We see some of the other kind of ridiculous regulations, such as increasing the label size to put more warnings, words and cautions, etc. The anti-plastic crew over here is increasing the amount of plastic that is going to have to be used to do it, at a cost of about $200,000 per product. It has often been said that this is regulation looking for something to regulate, as well as looking for another way to fuel the Liberals' ridiculous spending.

Let us look at another industry, the prescription drug industry. I know some of my colleagues briefly talked about this. We know that the prescription drug industry harms seniors every year. The cost to the Canadian economy is about $2 billion every year due to the harm created by prescription drugs. Do we hear the NDP-Liberal coalition saying that we need to have more regulations related to that? No, we do not hear that.

I think the other thing we need to know is the reason the government is going after this. The reason, of course, is related to an easy target to get more money to fuel its spending, which is costing Canadians greatly. We know that more and more Canadians, sadly, are going to food banks. We saw Food Banks Canada's 2024 report that came out showing that 50% more Canadians feel financially worse off compared to last year and that 25% of Canadians are experiencing food insecurity.

This is a bill to fuel the government's spending habit, which is a sad commentary on a government that is out of ideas and out of time. We will continue to see these things, which will negatively affect the health of Canadians and their confidence to make the right decisions about their health care at the right time on their own terms.

Stephen Ellis

$576,008.00