Activism: August TO events

08/07/2008 TorontoChange.com News and In Focus

Events:

Hiroshima & Nagasaki Photo Exhibit

August 6 -11

THDC is honoured to announce that the City of Toronto has been selected to host the Hiroshima & Nagasaki Photo Exhibit to be held concurrently with 101 cities across the United States. THDC is also very pleased to present Setsuko Thurlow, Member of the Order of Canada and Hibakusha (Hiroshima survivor), who will introduce the exhibition.

Mayor Tadatoshi Akiba of Hiroshima will also offer a personal video greeting to the citizens of Toronto in mutual respect for the decades of work done by the citizens of Toronto and Hiroshima on global peacebuilding and the Mayors for Peace campaign pressing together in solidarity for the abolition of nuclear weapons. "Our goal is to create awareness of the destructive power of nuclear weapons," says Setsuko Thurlow, "and the 25,000 armed nuclear weapons of which are still threatening humanity today."

The Hiroshima & Nagasaki Photo Exhibit features pictures and educational facts about the devastation of nuclear war. The exhibit also displays dramatic drawings and paintings from dozens of Hibakusha survivors of their painful memories during the first moments on the ground after the 1945 atomic bombings in Japan with the urgent message "never again".

The exhibit runs from August 6th -11th, 2008 in conjunction with the "Paths to Hope" Peace Commemoration and Lantern Ceremony on Saturday, August 9th, 2008 at the Toronto Peace Garden, Nathan Phillips Square beginning at 6:30 pm.

[RSVP]

Infodrop Sunday At Dundas Square

(ain't gonna be no SPP, NAU, the war criminals are going to the clink. As for Bill C-51, well, they can use it for toilet paper. Time activists get over the paranoia foisted on them by the internet and ignorant lamestream media.)

Sunday Aug 10 1:00 - 6:00 PM

Come out in support of international Truth Action Day.

We are committed to making every Sunday at Dundas Square a place to meet and hand out information. We will be handing out fliers and DVDs to educate about

911 Truth / The Unjust Detainment of the Toronto 18 /The War Resister Support Campaign / The SPP and NAU / Bill C51 and Codex

We will be handing out dissent dollars and flyers around the downtown core. Join us and inform others about the coming North American Union agenda, 9/11, the coming police state and how it effects Canadians. We will also have several petitions to sign including the March On Ottawa Petition.

Fliers will be provided however it is recommended that you bring DVD copies of Truth Rising and The Nations’s Deathbed.

Meet at Dundas square at 1 PM this Sunday!

Come out in support of international Truth Action Day.
We are committed to making every Sunday at Dundas Square a place to meet and hand out information. We will be handing out fliers and DVDs to educate people about 9/11 Truth.

[RSVP]

Fluoride Forums - Is it time to stop water fluoridation in Toronto?

Monday, Aug11 , 7:00 - 10:00 PM

The following two Fluoride Forums are free and open to the public. All presentations will be followed by questions from the public.

Based on new studies that indicate that fluoride can damage the brain and other tissues, a panel of international scientists, doctors and dentists will explore the following questions:

Is it time to stop water fluoridation in Toronto? Do the risks outweigh the benefits? Are there safer ways to protect children’s teeth?

An evening Fluoride Forum Monday, August 11, 7:00 p.m. to 10:00 p.m.

25 Cecil Street at the United Steelworkers Union Hall (1 block south of College Street west and 3 blocks west of University Avenue) Walk, bike, take the TTC to Queen’s Park Station or drive. Free parking for first 50 cars.

The first major public presentation of new scientific evidence on:

FLUORIDE’S EFFECTS ON THE BRAIN

by Dr. Vyvyan Howard, MB CHB PhD FRCPath

Professor of Bioimaging, School of Biomedical Science, University of Ulster

President, International Society of Doctors for the Environment (ISDE)

Dr. C. Vyvyan Howard is a medically-qualified pathologist interested in infant and fetal toxicology and, more recently, in researching the toxicological properties of nanoparticles.
The evening forum will conclude with short presentations from a panel of distinguished international scientists and researchers including Dr. A. K. Susheela and Dr. Jennifer Luke on

FLUORIDE'S OTHER HEALTH IMPACTS.

Fluoride Action Network: www.fluoridealert.org

[RSVP]

Headlines:

Save the Internet

Net Neutrality in Canada is the principle that consumers should be in control of what content, services and applications they use on the public Internet.

It's a simple concept that has wide-ranging implications on how the Internet operates.
"When I invented the Web, I didn't have to ask anyone's permission. Now, hundreds of millions of people are using it freely. I am worried that that is going end" - Sir Tim Berners Lee.

It is our belief that the Internet is more than just the physical infrastructure over which it operates. It is a vibrant marketplace and an entirely new format for free expression, even a political landscape and a tool for free organization. Some ISPs in Canada however, are overstepping their role and cannot separate their participation in this network from their component ownership and commercial interests.

In order to protect the Internet from these increasingly invasive corporate interests, we are asking that the government define the rules for which ISPs may participate on the Internet and mandate the application and content neutrality of Internet access providers.

By protecting Net Neutrality, we guarantee that pro-union sites do not get blocked, that ISPs do not charge anti-competitive 'preference' fees and that independent media can compete based on content, not pocketbook, with the largest of publishers.

It's time for the Canadian government to stand up and protect the future of the Canadian Internet.

[LINK]

Scientist Suicided as Anthrax Investigation Closes In

Bruce Ivins, a microbiologist at the US Army Medical Research Institute for Infectious Diseases (USAMRIID) at Fort Detrick, Maryland, reportedly committed suicide after ingesting prescription-strength Tylenol and codeine, as the FBI prepared to charge him in the anthrax attacks weeks after the 9/11 attack in 2001.

Ivins was part of the FBI team that investigated the anthrax sent in letters to the Senate's Democratic leadership.

In March of this year, Fox News reported: ""The FBI has narrowed its focus to 'about four' suspects in the 6 1/2-year investigation of the deadly anthrax attacks of 2001, and at least three of those suspects are linked to the Army'™s bio-weapons research facility at Fort Detrick in Maryland . . . Among the pool of suspects are three scientists '” a former deputy commander, a leading anthrax scientist and a microbiologist '” linked to the research facility, known as USAMRIID. The FBI has collected writing samples from the three scientists in an effort to match them to the writer of anthrax-laced letters that were mailed to two U.S. senators and at least two news outlets in the fall of 2001, a law enforcement source confirmed." It is now believed that the microbiologist in question was Ivins. The other suspects have not yet been identified. Although the FBI said the four Fort Detrick personnel were suspects, WMR previously reported that some Fort Detrick personnel were in a whistleblower status concerning knowledge of the perpetrators of the anthrax attacks.

[LINK]

(ps. Ivins did NOT do it!! He was framed and got tired of being harassed by the FBI.)

Forged Letters: More Evidence of False Ties Between Iraq and 911

Bestselling journalist Ron Suskind has revealed that the White House ordered the CIA to forge and backdate a document falsely linking Iraq with Muslim terrorists and 9/11 . . . and that the CIA complied with those instructions and in fact created the forgery, which was then used to justify war against Iraq.

Suskind also revealed that "Bush administration had information from a top Iraqi intelligence official 'that there were no weapons of mass destruction in Iraq – intelligence they received in plenty of time to stop an invasion.' ”

This is a stunning revelation in its own right. But what does it say about the government's claims that 9/11 was an attack by Muslim extremists which the U.S. government could not have anticipated?

Well, if the White House ordered the CIA to forge documents falsely implicating the people against which they wanted to wage war (Iraqis), and falsely linking supposed Al Qaeda terrorists with someone they had no connection with (Saddam Hussein), is it possible that a similar thing occurred as to who carried out 9/11?

[LINK]

TORONTOCHANGE EXCLUSIVE: VIDEO PROTEST FOOTAGE, JULY 26 @ US CONSULATE TO BRING HOME OMAR KHADR

TORONTO — Omar Khadr's family joined a crowd of supporters willing to brave thunderstorms and blustering wind at a rally on Saturday to press for the youngest Guantanamo Bay detainee to be transferred to Canada.

Members of the Khadr family, including younger brother Karim, 19, and older sister Zaynab, 28, endured the inclement weather along with the more than 200 supporters outside the U.S. Consulate in Toronto.

The Toronto-born Omar Khadr, now 21, was arrested as a 15-year-old after a firefight with U.S. Special Forces in Afghanistan in 2002. He is accused of throwing a grenade that killed a medic and has spent nearly six years in custody.

[LINK]

Khadr’s Lawyer: Dismiss Charges

A lawyer for Canada's only inmate at the U.S. military prison in Guantanamo Bay said Monday he has filed three motions to dismiss war crimes charges against his client on the grounds the U.S. government has illegally influenced the case.

Navy Lt. Cmdr. William Kuebler argues that "unlawful influence" exerted by the United States government has tainted the military commission charged with investigating Omar Khadr's case.

Khadr, a Canadian citizen, was only 15 when he was captured in a bloody firefight with U.S. troops in Afghanistan in July 2002. He was accused of throwing a grenade that killed a U.S. medic during the firefight. Now 21, Khadr is the only Western foreigner still being held in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, and is awaiting trial before the commission, scheduled to begin in October.

A spokeswoman with the Pentagon on Monday refused to comment on the motions, saying it would be inappropriate to do so because the motions are pending before the court.

In an e-mail sent to reporters, Kuebler said he is accusing Pentagon attorneys of interfering in the commission's disclosure process, alleging the U.S. defence headquarters pressured interrogators at the American naval base in Cuba to destroy their handwritten notes in case they were asked to testify about the treatment of detainees there.

He said Khadr's defence team has also filed a motion to dismiss charges against their client based on allegations that U.S. Air Force Brig.-Gen. Thomas Hartmann, the legal adviser to the military commissions, has applied "excessive interference" in the prosecution of his cases.

In May, Hartmann was barred by a military judge from participating in the first Guantanamo war crimes trial because he aligned himself too closely with prosecutors. That case, against Osama bin Laden's former driver, Salim Hamdan, went to jury Monday.

[LINK]

Security in Doubt after Edmonton Tragedy

Public Safety Minister Stockwell Day, speaking in Quebec City, said the issue of safety on buses may need to be examined more closely once the legal process of this case is over.

"We're never closed to looking at how Canadians can be more safe and more secure," Day told reporters in Quebec Thursday. "This particular incident, as horrific as it is, is obviously extremely rare."

Witnesses described a nightmarish scene inside the bus.

[LINK]

In Focus

The Military Vs The Internet

Amazing revelations have emerged concerning already existing government plans to overhaul the way the internet functions in order to apply much greater restrictions and control over the web.

Lessig also revealed there is already in existence a cyber equivalent of the Patriot Act waiting for a cyber terrorism event in order to implement its provisions.

Lawrence Lessig, a respected Law Professor from Stanford University told an audience at this years Fortune’s Brainstorm Tech conference in Half Moon Bay, California, that “There’s going to be an i-9/11 event” which will act as a catalyst for a radical reworking of the law pertaining to the internet.

Lessig also revealed that he had learned, during a dinner with former government Counter Terrorism Czar Richard Clarke, that there is already in existence a cyber equivalent of the Patriot Act, an “i-Patriot Act” if you will, and that the Justice Department is waiting for a cyber terrorism event in order to implement its provisions.

During a group panel segment titled “2018: Life on the Net”, Lessig stated:

There’s going to be an i-9/11 event. Which doesn’t necessarily mean an Al Qaeda attack, it means an event where the instability or the insecurity of the internet becomes manifest during a malicious event which then inspires the government into a response. You’ve got to remember that after 9/11 the government drew up the Patriot Act within 20 days and it was passed.

The Patriot Act is huge and I remember someone asking a Justice Department official how did they write such a large statute so quickly, and of course the answer was that it has been sitting in the drawers of the Justice Department for the last 20 years waiting for the event where they would pull it out.

Of course, the Patriot Act is filled with all sorts of insanity about changing the way civil rights are protected, or not protected in this instance. So I was having dinner with Richard Clarke and I asked him if there is an equivalent, is there an i-Patriot Act just sitting waiting for some substantial event as an excuse to radically change the way the internet works. He said “of course there is”.

[LINK]

The Death of a Scientist and the Bio War Mystery

It is Saturday morning, and as the skies darken, and the rains threaten, I am reading about biowar investigator Bruce E. Ivins who is said to have taken his life with a fatal cocktail of codeine and other drugs just as he was about to be arrested and charged with five cases of murder in connection with the still fully unsolved anthrax attacks of 2001.

The naming of Mr. Ivins, born in Lebanon (Ohio), not the Middle East, and a veteran employee at the U.S. Government's massive US Army bio weapons lab at Ft. Detrick, MD at least suggests, as many have long contended, that this was a domestic crime, not a foreign terrorist act.

The story, broken by the LA Times Friday got the full card monte coverage treatment by the New York Times on Saturday with acres of print. Is there any reason to conclude that we now know all the facts, or that the case is closed or even that Ivins was the guilty party?

The last man accused by the FBI Dr Stephen Hatfill went to Court and won a $4.6 million settlement in his suit against the FBI for violating his rights. His law suit against the NY Times reporting on the issue failed when the Judge ruled he could not prove the newspaper knowingly published false information. Clearly, the information was false then. How credible is the reporting now?

Ivins' lawyer Paul Kemp insists that it was FBI harassment and humiliation that led to the suicide. He also contends that Ivins would have been exonerated if his case went to trial. Obviously he was facing a long and costly legal ordeal contributing to his anxieties. One report said he did not have the money to properly defend himself.

The Washington Post reports that other scientists at the lab are skeptical about suggestions that Ivins is the man described in the NY Post as "DR DOOM."

Yet, colleagues and friends of the vaccine specialist remained convinced that Ivins was innocent: They contended that he had neither the motive nor the means to create the fine, lethal powder that was sent by mail to news outlets and congressional offices in the late summer and fall of 2001. Mindful of previous FBI mistakes in fingering others in the case, many are deeply skeptical that the bureau has gotten it right this time.

"I really don't think he's the guy. I say to the FBI, 'Show me your evidence,' " said Jeffrey J. Adamovicz, former director of the bacteriology division at the U.S. Army Medical Research Institute for Infectious Diseases, or USAMRIID, on the grounds of the sprawling Army fort in Frederick. "A lot of the tactics they used were designed to isolate him from his support. The FBI just continued to push his buttons."

Investigators are so confident of Ivins's involvement that they have been debating since Friday whether and how to close the seven-year-old anthrax investigation. That would involve disbanding a grand jury in the District and unsealing scores of documents that form the basis of the government's case against Ivins.

Congressman Rush Holt does not trust the FBI either. In a statement buried at the end of the Times story on page A10, rather than in the lead on page l where it belonged, he said, "What we learn will not change the fact that this has been a poorly handled investigation that has lasted 6 years and already has resulted in a trail of embarrassment and personal tragedy."

According to another report, FBI investigators had conducted 9100 interviews, sent out 6000 grand jury subpoenas and conducted 67 searches. They also traveled to "many" unnamed countries. They would not disclose their case against the late Mr. Ivins. He saw himself as a fall guy or patsy. Was he? Who else and what else was behind this attack on news outlets, US Senators and the postal service employees who died.

[LINK]

Featured Films

The Fluoride Deception

In this video, Christopher Bryson, an award-winning journalist and former producer at the BBC, discusses the findings of his book The Fluoride Deception.

[LINK]

Iraq For Sale

Iraq for Sale: The War Profiteers is the story of what happens to everyday Americans when corporations go to war. Acclaimed director Robert Greenwald (Wal-Mart: The High Cost of Low Price, Outfoxed and Uncovered) takes you inside the lives of soldiers, truck drivers, widows and children who have been changed forever as a result of profiteering in the reconstruction of Iraq. Iraq for Sale uncovers the connections between private corporations making a killing in Iraq and the decision makers who allow them to do so.

[LINK]

Terrorstorm

Alex Jones Documentary - Throughout history, criminal elements inside governments have carried out terror attacks against their own populations as a pretext to enslave them. TerrorStorm reveals how, in the last hundred years, Western leaders have repeatedly murdered their own citizens while posing as their saviors.

[LINK]

Endgame

Alex Jones Documentary - Never before has a documentary assembled all the pieces of the globalists' dark agenda. Endgame's compelling look at past atrocities committed by those attempting to steer the future delivers information that the controlling media has meticulously censored for over 60 years. It fully reveals the elite's program to dominate the earth and carry out the wicked plan in all of human history.

[LINK]

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Canada complicity in

STEPHEN HARPER WANTED FOR TREASON AND WAR CRIMES. STEPHEN HARPER , YOU ARE WANTED FOR TREASON AND WAR CRIMES. come out now you coward.

Category: News & Politics

Tags:

new world order north american union SPORTS stayner nau harper bush war crimes

Whistleblower information on Jack Layton from Connie Fogal !!

NDP leader JACK LAYTON betrays CANADA on "deep integration"

Location: Windsor
Date Listed: 05-Jun-08
Event Date(s): 01-Jul-08

THIS IS A WHISTLE BLOWING!!!

CAN YOU HEAR IT? !!!

Bet you can't wait to celebrate CANADA DAY with Jack!

NDP leader JACK LAYTON was a guest speaker at the 30 May 2008 "model Parliament
for North America" held in Montreal City Hall last week, organized by the North American Forum on Integration, and also featuring SEPARATIST guest speaker, Gilles Duceppe.

Search google for these key words:

"jack layton", NAFI, "Friday May 30 City hall"

This organization, the North American Forum on Integration, operates from offices at the French University of Montreal on Montreal soil, is co-planning the end of CANADA and of the Canadian Parliament.

But Jack Layton, who pretends to be AGAINST "deep integration" of Canada into the US and Mexico has NEVER told his electorate about this organization or HIS PARTICIPATION IN IT.

Moreover, at his NDP web site, Layton maintains an itinerary of his speeches and events. He was delivering CANADA to the globalists at lunch time on 30 May 2008 for NAFI in Montreal, but he has listed only ONE activity on that same date, when he also delivered a speech to the Canadian Labor Congress. Why has Layton NOT DIVULGED his participation in "continental integration" to his Danforth constituents and to his NDP Party's members all across Canada? Why does Layton maintain an e-mail campaign PRETENDING to oppose "deep integration"
while in fact he is promoting it SECRETLY?

Jack Layton, in Canadian Parliamentary Hansard which he published at his NDP site, accuses Paul Martin of a "hidden agenda" of "deep integration", but Layton himself IS IN ON IT.

WHY HAS JACK LAYTON HIDDEN HIS REAL AGENDA FROM HIS CONSTITUENTS?

Layton has a "Continental Integration" subject tab at his NDP web site. That section of his site says NOTHING about the NAFI forum on integration, NOR about his participation IN IT. Search his NDP site, NOT A WORD on NAFI's existence.

Want to find out MORE about the criminally illegal integration of CANADA into the US and MEXICO scheduled for 2010 or sooner?

Want the TRUTH on Canadian unity and the criminal SCAM of so-called "Quebec Secession"? It is and has always been a SCAM to "deep integrate" Canada into the US and Mexico. Every rabid separatist from the PARTI QUEBECOIS and the BLOC QUEBECOIS is behind the bogus new Parliament for North America, and Layton is in WITH them, as are the Conservatives and the Liberals.

Search GOOGLE for "HABEAS CORPUS CANADA DOT COM" and make sure to READ the Grounds page and the Statement of Purpose.

Also visit YOUTUBE and look for crazyforcanada where I have posted a video on the SCAM in English and in French. The straight jacket in the video is for a good reason: on 31 October 2007, I was criminally assaulted by municipal POLICE after my landlord changed the locks on my apartment WITHOUT A LEGAL PROCEEDING and confiscated my law books and research notes on the annexation of Canada to the US and Mexico. The Police said, "we think you're a bit mental" because of my web site, HABEAS CORPUS CANADA, and forced me into an ambulance by physical assault, and off to a Hospital, which is SOVIET-STYLE INCARCERATION of this
Canadian Sovereignty activist.

Look for my blog: crazyforcanada on the internet for the story on that.

Whistleblower's letter on Bill C-51, health TYRANNY

Open Letter to Prime Minister Harper -- Re Bills C51&52, Helke Ferrie


KOS LOGO and address
June 15, 2008

793'rd
anniversary of the Magna Carta



The Right Honorable Stephen Harper
Office of the Prime Minister
80 Wellington Street
Ottawa, ON, K1A 0A2

Dear Mr. Prime Minister,

The Globe & Mail has on its masthead the following statement made by an 18'th century British political thinker known only by his nom de plume, Junius: "The subject who is truly loyal to the Chief Magistrate will neither advise nor submit to arbitrary measures." It is in this spirit that I am writing to you about the proposed bills C-51 and C-52. Nobody knows who Junius was; he might have been anybody, as indeed I am – just a Canadian who is exceedingly alarmed and cannot help but feel protective towards this great nation in the face of a public health emergency.

These two bills not only dramatically fail to address this crisis in public.

When a government falls into error, only the governed can correct that. It is my view, that in a parliamentary democracy it is the duty of the citizen is to pay careful attention to government and to offer correction to government policy when necessary – but to do so only if able to provide supporting evidence to show that government health, but actually threaten to increase this emergency to unmanageable levels, if passed. I am approaching your government in the spirit of Junius to advise against arbitrary measures and also to express clear resistance to such arbitrariness is in error. In a democracy we neither want government to shoot off their mouths, nor should we be allowed to do so either.

This book provides, I hope, that most significant supporting evidence for the contention that C-51 and C-52 are totally unacceptable, are impossible to amend, and must be withdrawn.

I should introduce myself first: For the past twelve years I have been researching medical politics and writing for various venues on a monthly basis. I also occasionally publish books written mostly by medical professionals who are especially concerned about environmental and nutritional medicine. This summer I am releasing Dr. Shiv Chopra's memoirs. Entitled Corrupt to the Core - Memoirs of a Health Canada Whistleblower . It is introduced by MP Paul Dewar (NDP), lawyer David Yazbeck, and three recipients of the Swedish Right Livelihood Award, namely public health scholar and oncologist Dr. Samuel S. Epstein, physicist Dr. Vandana Shiva, and Maude Barlow of the Council of Canadians. Dr. Chopra's book covers his four decades as a Health Canada regulator during which he determinedly fought to uphold the Food and Drugs Act and follow its Regulations, in order to protect the Canadian people from unsafe drugs.

As you will recall, he and his colleagues, Drs. Margaret Haydon and Gerard Lambert, managed to have that Act obeyed, against all political odds, so as to prevent bovine growth hormone (rBST – a carcinogen) from being passed in our food supply. For that service to the public, as you will also recall, they were fired in 2004 on grounds of insubordination by your predecessor, then Prime Minister Paul Martin.

At that time, given your campaign promises of transparency and accountability, many of us, myself included, had hoped and actually expected that you would take the necessary steps to reinstate these scientists and support them in their exercise of due diligence on behalf of public health. However, on May 20'th this year, the Canadian Association of Journalists listed you as the top nominee for this year's Code of Silence Award for "having muzzled cabinet ministers, civil servants, and particularly professional scientists." Then you closed the data base for freedom- of-information inquiries, a research tool meant to help Canadians keep their governments accountable and transparent.

Most governments, once elected in sufficient numbers to form a government, only partly fulfill their campaign promises. In general, the electorate is as forgiving of the human inconsistencies in our friends and loved ones as they are of broken government promises. However, when the inconsistencies become too overwhelming, the relationship breaks down, usually irreparably, and the injured party resorts instinctively to self-defense. We may have reached that point.

These glaring inconsistencies between promise and action in your administration make it hard to trust the stated intent of bills C-51 and C-52; they are not difficult to understand. If passed into law, they would pose a threat to public health, the rule of law, and the freedom of scientific research. Both bills, to my mind, display an equally unparalleled disregard for the spirit, and most probably also the letter, of Canada's Charter of Rights and Freedoms. The public has been repeatedly told that the government has only good intentions with regard to C-51 and C-52. Now, it seems to me that the contract between a people and its government cannot possibly ever be carried out on the basis of trust. Laws are guarantees.

Pronouncements of intent mean literally nothing.

The most recent attempt at calming down the tens of thousands of angry Canadians who have made themselves heard since April 8, has been a proposal to amend C-51; this was presented by the Honorable Tony Clement on June 9, 2008. Those amendments appear to be of dubious parliamentary legality, as pointed out by MPs Marlene Jennings in her e-mails, and as was stated in the House by MP Robert Thibault who suggested this was possibly Contempt of Parliament. MP Jennings wrote: "I've been an MP eleven years. It is the first time that I see such a thing! Normally, the government does not table amendments at committee stage, only after all the experts and witnesses have been heard."

Worst of all, Health Canada arranged for so-called "stakeholder" meetings across the country to reassure outraged citizens about C-51; this exercise bordered on the absurd: people were invited to meet with representatives from the largest drug companies, who were co-sponsoring most of these events, in order to discuss public concerns about a government bill which is supposed to regulate those very companies. Just how scary can it get?

We are in the midst of a public health crisis caused by food contaminated with health hazards such as pesticides, genetically engineered food plants that we now know promote systemic disease, and pharmaceutical drugs based on fraudulent science and therefore having become the leading cause of death. This assertion is supported by verifiable, non-industry funded science from around the world - I was as amazed and shocked to discover this as everybody else.

I myself used to wonder if the "natural health crowd" was just a bunch of treehuggers , but it turns out the are all mainstream scientists, some even Nobel laureates, and many are outraged refugee scientists from the genetic engineering industry itself. Much of the evidence is presented in this book.

With regard to pharmaceutical drugs being the leading cause of death, this has been made public by the premier medical institutions in the world and since 1998 has been the subject of many research projects published in the world's "big five" medical journals, including the Journal of the Canadian Medical Association. In fact, this line of inquiry was first started, with the cooperation of the United States FDA, by Professor Bruce Pomerance of the University of Toronto. Ten years ago, he concluded that properly prescribed and correctly taken pharmaceutical drugs might be the fourth leading cause of death in North America. More recently, Johns Hopkins Medical School refined this research, largely due to the increasing death statistics which became available in the intervening years, so that now it is the leading cause of death, outpacing cancer and AIDS.

As reported in the CMAJ, in Canada, at least 23,000 people die every year from pharmaceutical drug-related problems; these are only the reported deaths. Both the FDA and Canadian experts believe the rate is much higher. Due to this constantly rising death toll, the CMAJ observed on January 4 and March 15, 2005, that Health Canada is not adequately monitoring the safety of marketed drugs and has "demonstrated a structural inability to do ongoing safety monitoring of new drugs and devices."

Unfortunately, bill C-51 does nothing to improve this situation because it doesn't even define safety, while the Food and Drugs Act, which supposedly requires "modernization", has very clear concepts of safety in its regulations - the very ones that allowed Dr. Chopra and his colleagues to identify those dangerous drugs they persistently opposed. The same is true for C-52, and both bills share the fact that they import into the regulation of foods, drugs, and hazardous products the wholly inappropriate concept of risk management instead of risk assessment. The difference between these two concepts is that the first assumes there will be a body count and tolerates some exposure to hazardous substances; the decisions to be made under such management have to do with how many bodies and how much hazardous contamination the government can comfortably get away with. Risk assessment, on the other hand, determines the level at which people are harmed – and then such substances must be banned.

Defining safety in both bills would result in a huge number of drugs and hazardous substances having to have their original marketing approval re-examined for purposes of assessment and potential withdrawal – as the European Union is doing now. Many would have to be recalled because the original approvals were not based on the available science and often granted under political pressure. In medicine, we even know with which ones to start the clean- up. The CMAJ told us so in their June 2, 2008 issue: they include especially the antipsychotics that Truehope so successfully replaced with safe natural products that also are so truly effective.

These and many other potent pharmaceuticals also end up in the water and are ingested by people for whom they were not prescribed – something C-52 does not even address. About 14 million emergency room visits take place in Canada annually only due to adverse drug events.

Given there are only roughly 30 million Canadians, this number is staggering and suggests that hundreds of thousands of people have more than one such experience per year.

It is my understanding, that government is mandated to manage health care with integrity.

Therefore, I was astounded when I read in The National Post on May 6'th, 2008, that your former communications director, Geoff Norquay, was directly involved with the lobbying efforts of pharmaceutical companies to restrict the availability of the far cheaper (and far safer because of proven post-marketing experience) generic drugs. I also find it hard to swallow that within a month after one of your close colleagues, Ken Boessenkool, registered as a lobbyist for Merck Frosst, your 2007 budget had $ 300 million allocated for their genital wart vaccine (marketed for cervical cancer) that has the highest rate of deaths and complications reported for any vaccine, namely Gardasil. This is very disturbing optics.

Not a single death is known so far to have been caused by a natural health product. One of the overheads I frequently show at lectures is a chart provided by the World Health Organization showing that the most dangerous thing one can do in an industrialized country is to be admitted to hospital, while the chance of being harmed or killed by a natural health product is the same as being hit by a meteor. What complicates this drug crisis further is the fact that pharmaceutical drugs are the source of enormous wealth and that Canada is one of the governments that has supported the increase of wealth from that source, not the decrease of the damage these products are causing .

Your policies appear are falling into that principal error Junius advised against; these two bills provide the evidence. That error is arbitrariness. It is defined in the Oxford English Dictionary as: "Based solely on personal wishes, feelings, or perceptions rather than on objective facts, reasons, or principles."

Throughout C-51 and C-52, all sorts of enforcement provisions are relegated to Orders in Council – away from public scrutiny, unencumbered by messy parliamentary debate, and certainly free from probing questions from the press. Most surprising, and absolutely unacceptable, are those provisions that have to do with foreign governments and regulatory agencies – in which Canadians had no vote. I doubt this is legal. Unless Canadians read the Canada Gazette regularly, they would not even know that some deal has been struck with a foreign regulatory agency and that those foreign provisions have suddenly become law in Canada.

This is incomprehensible in view of your own publicly stated concern about Codex Alimentarius, for example, in 2003 when you were supporting MP James Lunney's bill C-420. Yet, as Prime Minister, I found on Health Canada's website that as of December 7 of last year, a "confidential" agreement already exists for such regulatory cross-Atlantic importation with the European Union and the European Medicine Agency. The only thing that seems to be still needed to make this all legal is the passage of C-51.

The Honorable Tony Clement's attempt at introducing some accountability into C-51 by changing "may" to "shall" in C-51's section 20.4, so now "the Minister shall establish, committees for seeking advice" on complex issues of science in medicine, insults every Canadians' intelligence . Unless those committees are independently picked, and unless such exercises are open to the public, and unless the results are debated in Parliament, this proposed amendment does not at all ensure that the same old cherry-picking of suitable "tobacco scientists" won't continue to happen: in the provisions in C-51 the industry is included among those the Minister may pick from for advisory committees. However, it is the industry that is to be regulated . In any case, who cares if "may" is now "shall", because none of the Order in Council provisions have been removed, as they should be, if any transparency and accountability is to be guaranteed to the public.

The assurance that the government wishes to introduce a separate definition for natural
health products, reported in the national press for the past few days, amounts to nothing at all in practice: natural health products are still part of the overall regulatory intent of bill C-51; the Natural Health Products Directorate of Health Canada did not incorporate the 53
Recommendations given by the Standing Committee on Health a decade ago, and C-51 is not correcting that blatant disregard of its own government advisers; all natural health products are still regulated as a "subcategory" of drugs and assessed within the drug model of approval, as the Minister himself has written in his many e-mails to Canadians; and Schedule A still stands prohibiting most diseases from being treated by natural health products (contrary to the mass of mainstream scientific evidence showing that they can); and the (sadly) most lucrative of all disease groups (depression, acute anxiety, including bi-polar disorder) was deliberately moved out of the category of diseases which may be treated with natural health products – even though none of them are Prozac-deficiencies and the Truehope clinical trials have proven that even the most severe mental health conditions are ultimately disorders of nutrient absorption and nutrient metabolization. Telling Canadians natural health products will be recognized as a special category of its own means nothing unless that category is on par with the pharmaceutical drug categories and entered into law as a choice patients can make – which is what about 70% of us want.

The entire damage-control exercise undertaken in the past couple of weeks leaves a very bad taste in the mouth and will inevitably cause the public anger to increase, once everybody has figured out that they have once again been had.

That brings me to the reasons provided both by the Honorable Tony Clement and the information found on Health Canada's website regarding the necessity for these bills. The examples given are of a batch of fluoridated toothpaste contaminated with some toxic chemical .

A simple, classic contamination event that was cleared up without difficulty under the existing law. Yet, the daily poisoning of people and the environment with fluoridation continues unchecked – despite the scientific evidence . There is nothing in C-52 that could even begin to deal with this problem, nor is fluoride listed among the substances to be banned – as it should, if science was heeded or, at the very least, the precautionary principle was applied.

Also mentioned were cases of alleged liver toxicity caused by a botanical remedy derived from black cohosh, and the contamination of some herbal product with the active ingredient in drugs that treat erectile dysfunction. Canadians are supposed to believe that this immense legislative exercise is justified and prompted by these tempests in a teapot. Given the ongoing disaster of hundreds of deaths per day from Health Canada-approved pharmaceutical drugs, and given the fact that almost every drug listed in the CPS has some level of liver toxicity associated with it, these examples are like having an emergency room full of people bleeding to death while the government attends to a nosebleed, as a doctor recently said at a rally in Toronto organized to protest C-51.

You may be interested to know that the information your Health Minister used to defend C-51 is problematic. He was apparently relying on reports now about 4 years old, still posted on Health Canada's website (the links provided for verification purposes are no longer accessible), and still not updated or substantiated. So, I went to the National Institutes of Health, whose entry on black cohosh was updated on January 16 of this year and therefore is somewhat definitive. It turns out, that the NIH is currently funding a double-blind placebo-controlled cross-over study on this botanical for treatment of menopausal symptoms. Furthermore, the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists recommends it as helpful and safe in their most recent consensus opinion, cited by the NIH. It is so safe, that it is considered a food and unregulated in the US. The alleged liver damage occurred in people who were on all sorts of drugs, including teenagers experimenting with hard drugs at the time of sustaining liver damage; five died in Canada and one in Canada, but the information on the circumstances can no longer be accessed.

In light of this information, it will be difficult to convince menopausal female Canadians, who are well aware of the risk of cancer and heart attack from standard hormone replacement therapy with synthetic drugs, that C-51 is needed to protect us from black cohosh.

As for yohimbine, it has indeed many properties in common with the active ingredient of Viagra (sildenafil), but the fact is that it was first nature that created aphrodisiacs, then drug companies made the synthetic analogs. Consequently, it is not surprising that the more likely story behind this otherwise unimportant contamination event is a potentially embarrassing federal case brought by Strauss Herbal Co. against Health Canada.

As for the references to toxic heavy metals, the current Food and Drugs Act is perfectly able to handle those types of emergencies and has done so in the past; heavy metals are known to be toxic since before even that act was written and have been one of the reasons public health legislation began in the 19'th century.

Finally, the explanation given that we must protect people against contaminated foreign foods, from China for example, is really a good case of the mote in Chinese eyes and the beam making vision impossible in Canadian eyes: if the government was truly guided by published science of verifiable integrity, it would be our food supply that should be cleaned up from pesticides, genetic and prion contamination and the like, so we could sell it to Europe, where they don't want our food products; they have even defied World Trade Organization court rulings, when ordered to import Canadian foods because they know much of our food products carry the risk of cancer, the potential of Mad Cow Disease, and may increase antibiotic resistance.

Thus, neither the Health Canada website, nor the communications that have so far come from the Honorable Tony Clement, have given Canadians any reasonable justification as to why we need our Food and Drugs Act urgently modernized. In contrast to the non-information coming from the Health Canada website and the Honorable Tony Clement's pronouncements, one of your own caucus' MPs, Dr. James Lunney, whom you strongly and publicly supported in 2003 when he brought forward bill C-420 – a bill which was informed by a radically different spirit and completely unlike C-51 – made some real sense when he spoke in the House on June 9.

He read into the record the statement made by the members of the 39'th International Congress on Nutritional Medicine which was then winding up in Vancouver. It was a resounding critique of the intent and purpose of C-51, all of which still applies after the attempts at damage control by the Ministry of Health. It would so much more reassuring if bill C-420 were brought back to life and you, too, would return to the principles that you stated in your letter of support at that time.
This now defunct bill was one of the main reasons Canadians gave you a hesitant chance at running this country. Much of what you said before you were elected had the full support of the public; most of what you have done since, has not. Bill C-51 also shows a remarkable disregard for the independence of scientific inquiry.

Even clinical trials would be subject to the Minister's arbitrary powers, both in agriculture and medicine. Possibly this is the most appalling part of both bills: the cavalier readiness to manage even science as if it was a commodity. This lack of respect for the necessary independence of science is coupled with an equally cavalier attitude to the courts, as best illustrated in the Truehope case.

In December 2007, almost two years after you took office, Health Canada proceeded to raise accusations against Truehope Nutritional Support Ltd as if no court order had been given by Justice G. M. Maegher of the Alberta Provincial Court. The order required Health Canada to back off totally and for Truehope to continue its clinical trials involving the treatment of extreme bi-polar disorder in some 3,000 patients, and this order was given under the Criminal Code of Canada; Health Canada failed to appeal it because there were no grounds for appeal.

What should have happened, following the July 28, 2006, judgment, is that Health Canada should have immediately cleared the requisite natural health products used in this trial, especially in view of the fact that the astonishingly successful results of this trial had already been, and are continuing to be, reported in the leading mainstream psychiatric journals.

Your government may go down in medical history as having stood in the way of one of the greatest medical discoveries – how to treat successfully one of the most expensive and difficult mental health condition that affects about 18 million North Americans and costs $ 4 billion in direct medical costs annually.

The sense I get is that there is a misunderstanding with regard to what – for the want of a better term – one calls "job description". A Prime Minister is not a CEO. Members of Parliament are not shareholders. Citizens and the scientific enterprise are not stake-holders.

Canada is not a terrain for prospectors seeking a fortune. Most importantly, whatever happens in our national home is established by the courts, not by a Cabinet that misunderstands itself as being a board of directors. If Canadians agreed with such changes to the very essence of government, changes to the Constitutions will have to be made first – by public consultation.

Canada is first and foremost the home of some 30 million people who do not wish to be used as means towards ends that their elected government decides upon and then merely announce these decisions as Orders in Council in the Canada Gazette. It is not the job of government to redefine citizens into customers for enterprises chosen by government.

Some 97% of us do not want to eat genetically engineered food. The Royal College stated in 2004 that on no issue in the history of public polling has there been such overwhelming consensus as on the public's rejection of genetically engineered foods. Therefore, why does your government not immediately proceed to pass bill C-510 and C-448?

More than 70% of us prefer medical therapies that have been developed by mainstream medicine from substances that cannot be patented and which do not carry the demonstrated risk of organ and systemic injury or death. So, why does the government not implement the 53 Recommendations of its own Standing Committee on Health?

Some 83% of us do not want to have our regulatory systems harmonized with those of the US and Mexico (or any other country or regulatory agency such as Codex) as proposed by the Security and Prosperity Partnership (SPP). By what legal right or mandate do you support the harmonization of health care and health regulation with other countries and large corporations?

Parliament makes laws, not corporations. We did not elect those corporations and we are not even partners in this Security and Prosperity Partnership; in fact, we are deliberately excluded.

Following the February 23, 2007, SPP meeting in Ottawa, one of its members, Ron Covais of Lockheed Martin (the world's largest weapons manufacturer whose products are hardly good for anybody's health) told a reporter: "The guidance from the [government's] ministers was: 'Tell us what we need to do and we will make it happen.'… [explaining that] rather than going through the legislative process in any country, the Security and Prosperity Partnership must be implemented in incremental changes by executive agencies, bureaucrats and regulators. 'We've decided not to recommend any things that require legislative changes, because we won't get anywhere.'"

I certainly hope they won't! Before corporations make our parliament buildings into a five-star hotel, the Charter will have to disappear, doctors have to be stopped from free and independent scientific inquiry, and some 30 million of us will have to become zombies through enforced intake of antidepressant drugs. I certainly don't think that will happen either.

Since bill C-51 does nothing for medicine and C-52 does nothing for the environment and neither protects us against known health hazards, it is difficult not to conclude that bills C-51 and C-52 are instruments for those "incremental changes" corporations want for their own purposes.

However, there is that major difficulty that stands in the way like a mountain: the Charter of Rights and Freedoms. It is the contract the people of Canada have with you. It spells out the terms of a civilized relationship.

Yours respectfully,

Helke Ferrie

KOS Publishing Inc.

SPP update on power generation

Yesterday the "Making the Lakes Great" conference conclusions was posted on the H2O list by Dr. Gail Krantzberg, Director of the McMaster Univ. Dofasco Centre for Engineering and Public Policy, under the subject heading, "energy options to protect Great Lakes waters".
 
Here were the presentations, including the Canadian Nuclear Assoc., US Dept. of Energy, Suncor, Acelor Mittal, Hydro One.
 http://www.energy2100.ca/Presentations.html
 
check out the merged US-Canadian flags on slide 3 of
http://www.energy2100.ca/pdf/Energy2100_Scott%20Minos_U.S.%20Perspectives%20on%20Sustainable%20Energy.pdf
 
the rest of that slideshow is also instructive, eg. slides 21 and 22, and 55 (arms, and happy face nuke towers- seriously) !!!
 
or how about the rebranding of James Lovelock, author of "The Gaia Hypothesis" as nuclear advocate on slide 9 at:
http://www.energy2100.ca/pdf/Energy2100_Murray%20Elstons_Canada%92s%20Nuclear%20Industry%20-%20Preparing%20For%20The%20Future.pdf
 
And the conference conclusions, translated, mean a US-Canada integrated power grid, based on primarily carbon sequestered tar sands and coal sources, and nukes, with some wind, sun, and geothermal thrown in for PR. The dirty sources are to be heavily subsidized by government, with high consumer pricing supposedly for energy and water 'conservation' (of course while industry gets bulk reduced rates, and while shareholders make record gains). Measured by an integrated metred system with data collation, analysis, and all policy formulation to be carried out by a new 'government' structure, no doubt to be a P3 as other new federal and Ontario infrastructure boards are, heavily embedded with the same players that gathered at this conference.
 
We can do better.
 
Dust off the better studies sitting on the shelf that show there's enough wind and sun on the planet to fuel 6X our current use, and conserve by getting rid of dirty industries, with transition programs for unionized workers to build the renewables, rather than mainly the nonrenewables and nukes. Do all of the above with public power, not the exorbitant costs of privatized P3 power. Eliminate speculation, and pull self-governance from industry heads and investors. Roll-back NAFTA and put a moratorium on further entrenching of the SPP, TILMA, and bilateral deals.
 
Do not use 'renewable energy' to mean building more hydro dams and canals to channel more Hudson Bay Basin water down to the Great Lakes, killing what's left of our wild north for the sake of profiteers who don't have the smarts and humility to shift gears.
 
And above all, read beyond 'green' headlines to expose and reject policy which would entrench the problems.
 
Thanks to all activists for your work for real change, inspite of the kind of nonsense noted here, tossed from various quarters.
 
Our words and actions, of critique and substantive alternatives, are the change we want to see.
 
Leigh Thompson

Marcy Kaptur on the SPP

More on Bill C-51 and natural health products

KRIPPS HEALTHCARE Rx

Dr. Edward J. Thorpe, B.Sc. (Pharm), Ph.D.
5413 West Boulevard, Vancouver, B.C., Canada, V6M 3W5

Dear Kripps Customer, Constance Fogal,

We at the pharmacy email you for an unusual, urgent purpose. You may have
learned recently from the news media about the controversy over Bill C-51which
has just finished second Parliamentary reading in Ottawa. The Bill will go to
Committee for further study, and then proceed to the third and final reading.
We believe the Bill as currently worded is at best, ambiguous, inconsistent and
wrong-headed, and at worst is potentially dangerous to our consumer health-care
liberties. We believe it deserves citizens' examination (see item # 6 below)
and protest to our elected parliamentarians. We urge you to look into the
matter, and if you feel it justified, to voice your concern to a government
official.

Briefly, our specific concerns are as follows.

1] The prospective law can be used to remove your rightful access to vitamins,
herbs, spices, dietary supplements & medicinal food. Promoted as a means to
protect the safety of Canadians from untested natural health products, Bill C-
51 is a wide-reaching, little publicized and carefully crafted set of
amendments to the federal Food & Drug Act that threatens Canadians rights to
natural health products. Key changes include: replacing the word “drug”
with “therapeutic product” throughout the Act, giving the Canadian Government
broad-reaching powers to regulate the sale of all herbs, spices, vitamins, and
supplements.
C-51 would require all other therapeutic products to go through an even more
costly approval process than the current regulations require, which would be
financially impossible for many natural health product manufacturers to meet,
rendering the products unavailable to the public. Currently, 65% of the
applications to Health Canada are being rejected. In the future, as a possible
result of this legislation, only narrowly defined government approved natural
health products, possibly to be considered “prescription drugs”, would be
available to you - by prescription only!

2] C-51 will result in the outlawing of thousands of beneficial low risk
natural health products. It would grant alarming new “enforcement” powers to
federal inspectors to “protect” Canadians from “dangerous”
unapproved “therapeutic agents”. Without oversight or appeal, products as
benign as, for example, dandelion greens, blueberries, bottled water or vitamin
C could become illegal to possess or distribute. As written, Bill C-51 can
classify your food as a “therapeutic product”.

3] C-51 would also allow federal enforcement agents to raid your home or
business without a warrant, seize your bank accounts, and levy fines up to $5
million with jail terms up to 2 years for selling or drying herbs in your
kitchen, such activity now to be categorized as “controlled activity”. Bill C-
51 allows for the confiscation of your property, and then the charging of
storage fees on that property plus a charge for the government bureaucracy's
time! In effect, such legislation will destroy an industry that is the age-old
alternative to conventional allopathic medicine. Natural medicine works well,
is increasingly scientifically-based, and is traditionally and widely used in
North America, Europe, and Asia. Bill C-51 would criminalize the sale or even
the free distribution of “unapproved natural products”.

We appreciate your consideration of this matter. We believe this Bill should be
stopped in its entirety. Please see below for how you can act to make a
difference in the outcome of this legislation.

Sincerely,
Edward Thorpe

Tel: 604-687-2564 - Fax: 604-685-9721
Toll Free: 1-877-312-8822
www.krippspharmacy.com <http://www.krippspharmacy.com> - altermed@portal.ca
altermed@portal.ca>

1) Contact your Member of Parliament ASAP.
Inform him/her that:
- you are opposed to Bill C-51;
- you want him/her to vote against Bill C-51;
- you want your access to natural health products protected.

To find out who your MP is, search by postal code at
http://www2.parl.gc.ca/Parlinfo/Compilations/HouseOf......

2) Forward this e-mail to everybody you know and request that they do the same.

3) Phone your MP and the Prime Minister's Office to voice your concerns.
Dial toll-free 1-866-599-4999 and ask to be transferred to any MPs office. The
hours of this service are:
Monday - Thursday, 8:30 - 6:00 pm Eastern standard time
Friday only, 8:30 - 5:00 pm Eastern Standard time

Stephen Harper's phone numbers are (613) 992-4211 and (403) 253-7990.
Tony Clement's phone numbers are (613) 944-7740 and (705) 746-9053.

4) Introduce this issue to your local media.

5) Also write a handwritten letter to:
- your local MP;
- Prime Minister Stephen Harper;
- Tony Clement, Minister of Health.

You can send your letters without postage to:
(Name of person)
House of Commons
Ottawa, ON
K1A 0A6

6) Get more information
Read the transcript of April 30th's House of Commons debate on C-51 here (note
that the debate has not finished yet):
http://www2.parl.gc.ca/HousePublications/Publication...
Read a copy of Bill C-51:
<http://www2.parl.gc.ca/HousePublications/Publication>... &
Read a Draft Discussion Paper on Bill C-51 by Shawn Buckley, president of the
Natural Health Products Protection Association: http://www.nhppa.org/. See
also: www.stopbillc51.com




Thursday, May 1, 2008

Debate in the House of Commons on Food and Drugs Act
The House resumed from April 30 consideration of the motion that Bill C-51, An Act to amend the Food and Drugs Act and to make consequential amendments to other Acts, be read the second time and referred to a committee.

Hon. Carolyn Bennett (St. Paul's, Lib.):

Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to speak this afternoon about Bill C-51. As always, the Liberal Party aims to improve the safety and health of Canadians. We support measures that strengthen the regulatory process so that Canadians can have access to the safest and best foods and therapeutic products. The drugs on the market are not a great risk for the health and safety of Canadians.

That being said, we see this bill and the other bill as a huge missed opportunity. As often happens with the government, it is what is not in the bill that is remarkable, including just taking out the whole section of the bill on the pride of Canadian health policy, which is the interdiction against directed consumer advertising.

We look again to a government that seems to be more interested in business than in patients. Although we believe there is a need for the minister to have the ability to take unsafe health and consumer products off the market if the companies are unwilling to do so, the powers given to the minister in this bill are unbelievably unreasonable. It is not putting in place the kind of scientific advice that would be very important in terms of a minister being able to administer the Food and Drugs Act based on evidence in science and not ideology, and the way the government's friends in business are behaving on just about everything else.

It is important that the Food and Drugs Act be updated. Up until now, as everyone knows, the product safety system has functioned purely on a voluntary basis. If a product is dangerous or poses a health risk, corporations can issue a recall.

This bill would grant the minister the power to enforce the recalls rather than depend on the voluntary system. Certainly, those of us in the health committee have heard this from many witnesses, including the department itself, that these are powers that the minister must have in the event of a recalcitrant company.

The bill would also grant the minister the power to seek an injunction, to enforce regulatory compliance through the Federal Court. This is a faster avenue for enforcement rather than the current system which fills up the courts by addressing each non-compliance matter at trial.

As well, the bill would improve the surveillance of therapeutic products both before and after they reach the market. This could have the effect of helping critical drugs, such as cancer therapies, get to the market quicker and yet remove them just as quickly if significant adverse reactions or incidents are reported. This has been very much the wish of a number of the groups, from cancer to HIV-AIDS, to both the providers as well as the patients.

As we have heard in committee many times, people are very concerned about hurrying and having less safeguards because we are now going to commit to doing a much better job post-market. We need to be very clear and it is the reason for the kind of scrutiny this bill would require, to make sure there is absolutely no less safe drugs coming on to the market because of this hurry up approach that is important in these very special drugs.

Because of the substantial regulatory powers the minister would have, it is obviously going to be important to study these powers to ensure transparency, effectiveness and accountability. We will see, in some aspects of this, that it seems a bit remarkable that the minister would be able to stop a clinical trial midway through without having information from the very people running the trial. There are things that just do not make a great deal of sense unless we in committee find out exactly how the government expects to carry this out.

The idea is that the Minister of Health can suspend a clinical trial authorization or the terms and conditions other than a prescribed term or condition or the suspension to prevent injury after giving the holder of the authorization an opportunity to make representation, and to suspend a clinical trial authorization if the minister is of the opinion that an immediate suspension is necessary.

My experience is that this only comes to the minister from the people supervising the trial, who are scientists. I hope we will hear in committee exactly how the minister is planning to carry this out.

It is interesting that time and time again these powers to the minister do not seem to have any provisions within the act to find out what science or which scientists the minister would be relying on in order to exercise these substantial new powers as given to him in the bill.

From licences to the discontinuing of clinical trials, to the disclosure of personal information to a person or government that carries out functions related to the protection or promotion of human health without the consent of the individual to whom the personal information relates, if the disclosure is necessary, is worrying. We will need to know from both privacy experts and from many other witnesses, particularly, I would hope, patient groups, what they think of that, as well as what they think about disclosing confidential business information to a government or to the following persons without the consent of persons to whose business or affairs the information relates without notifying that person. This is something the committee will have to look at very seriously.

Even in clause 24, it says that the minister can recall a therapeutic product or cosmetic. It also says that the minister may authorize a person to sell a therapeutic product or cosmetic even if the minister has directed a person to recall it. This will somehow need a great deal of explanation at the committee. I look forward to that.

We are prepared to allow the bill to go to the committee, but it is extraordinarily important, yet again, that the stakeholder reaction to the bill is very much around the elimination of the prohibition on direct to consumer advertising.

Barbara Mintzes, the health policy expert and professor at UBC Centre for Health Services and Policy Research, has stated clearly on the website, straight.com, that the amendment would introduce a loophole that could allow pharmaceutical companies to directly advertise drugs to consumers, a practice that is currently illegal in Canada. The proposed new wording of the bill tabled in Parliament on April 8 says: No person shall advertise a prescription therapeutic product to a person other than a practitioner unless they are authorized by the regulations to do so.

In the bill there is a general prohibition that covers direct to consumer advertising for drugs. That prohibition is now gone, which means the barrier of introduction of direct to consumer advertising through the regulations, because there is a sort of general prohibition in the bill, is gone, according to Barbara Mintzes.

Direct to consumer advertising and that prohibition has set Canada apart from our neighbours to the south in a very proud way. I am not sure why the minister is now trying to turn this around. Anyone who accidentally watches American television sees that barrage of advertising. It means people go to their doctors thinking that a certain drug will have a certain benefit, and we know that this increases the likelihood of harm as we learned the hard way with the Vioxx case.

Vioxx was brought on to the market for a very special group of patients, patients who had arthritis, but also had serious problems with their stomachs. The drug was to be just a boutique drug to deal with the patients with serious arthritis, but also for whom those drugs were too hard on their gastrointestinal tract. Instead, the drug was marketed widely to the whole population and people with arthritis thought they should be on that drug. That is when we found the drug had serious cardiac effects.

This would be a risk that one would take based on perhaps an equally serious gastrointestinal side effect for people whose ability to function would be improved by Vioxx. However, this was not the intent of the drug when it was put on the market in the first place. Now because of the serious increased risk of heart attack and stroke, it ended up causing much concern in terms of both life and disability.

It is so clear that the newer, better drug can have an effect on patients when there are cheaper, older drugs that are better, safer and have the same effect. From antibiotics to antidepressants to the kinds of drugs that are used around cholesterol, we want to ensure that physicians and patients have a real conversion about what really is the best and are not unduly influenced by television advertising. This is evidence based practice. Yet, again, we are finding the government preferring ideology and business over evidence. The evidence is that direct to consumer advertising is wrong and bad for patients. The bill would eliminate this serious prohibition on the evidence based policy and evidence based practice.

It is important therefore that we look to what other structures need to be placed around these undo powers to the minister. We need to look very seriously at the kind of advice the minister gets in order to do his best job. I have long been a believer in the fact that ministerial advisory committees need to give transparent advice to the minister. Whether it is the scientists that list endangered species, it is very important that politicians do the politics, scientists do the science and that the transmission of information from the scientists to the politician must be done in a transparent way such as the citizens of Canada can understand.

I believe people can understand why a minister might not list all 11 species on an endangered species list or species at risk list because of the politics, the economy and the reality in a certain community. However, politicians have to do their job and explain why they have made that decision when the scientists have said X and the politician or the minister has decided to do a version of X or even Y.

It is really important that we look to the models like NICE, the National Institute of Clinical Excellence in Britain, and the way in which it has involved citizens in the decisions. The bill very definitely needs resources to explain how the minister will do this.

As a family physician who did obstetrics, I quite often was at the hospital waiting for a baby to arrive during the national news. It would be quite clear that a drug would be recalled while I was not watching the news. The patients would arrive the next morning and tell me they were on whatever drug had just been recalled. I would have no information about it. A letter would arrive from Health Canada three days later telling me the drug had been recalled.

We have to get into the 21st century. If the minister is to have the powers to recall a drug or product, then the minister has to be able to communicate with the people who prescribe the drugs, not three days later after someone has lost his or her life because in that 72 hour window the doctor accidentally prescribed the recalled drug.

It will be extraordinarily important that the databases and the kind of two way communication between provinces and the federal government exist. Who actually is in charge of speaking to the doctors of the country about these products at risk? How do we get in touch with them? Until we have the resources for the infostructure, how will we get the minister and the ministry into this century to communicate with the people who count on him for timely advice on things as important as this?

It will be extremely important for the government to look at what the federal drug agency does in the United States and why that is a free-standing agency. The health protection of our country is half the people at Health Canada now. We have to decide whether we want to put a science based and a real structure in place for the drug evaluation post-market surveillance, working toward a common formulary.

Our national pharmaceutical strategy is in disarray. There are a few working groups, but there is really very little action toward the part of the 10 year commitment for health, which was in a national pharmaceutical strategy in the 2004 accord with the provinces.

The health minister has cancelled the next meeting of his counterparts supposedly for June. I do not know how we can do any of these things unless the provinces, territories and their health ministers feel they have a partner with the federal government. It will be extraordinarily important that we look at this, like we did in the very sensitive bill on reproductive technology, to ensure that any regulation must come back to the health committee so we understand the nuances and the decisions taken in the regulations, which can be so important to people's lives. It must come back the committee that has studied the bill and has now done this important study.

It is a bit rich, in the middle of a study on post-market surveillance, that the government has decided to table the bill without the information, without the recommendations of the very committee that has studied this. It was a bit shocking to hear that even the working group on the national pharmaceutical strategy, the working group on real world drug safety, was not even consulted in what should be in the bill. Yet again we have this top-down, ‘’father knows best, take it or leave it, trust us you will like it’’ approach from the government. It is extraordinary that when all of the witnesses came, when all the provinces and territories and working groups existed, that the government would not take counsel from these people who study this and who know it.

Also, almost every member of Parliament over these last weeks, since the bill was tabled, have been inundated by calls to their constituency offices on the natural health product risk. People using these products are worried again that their products are not understood because of the issue around health claims. We need to seriously look again at what the minister is considering in terms of natural health products and how we regulate these things. Some products have been used for thousands of years, but without a clinical trial. It is not evidence based, but Canadians have the right to be wrong on these things. They also have the right to be right in terms of the products that work for them. In studying the bill we want to ensure people have patient and client freedom.

These changes are just not good enough. Canada needs a national food policy. At the same time as we get this tinkering around the edges, we have from melamine in dog food, to re-labelled snap peas from China, to mushrooms from China called ‘’product of Canada’’ because they have been sliced here. We have orange juice called ‘’product of Canada’’ because Canadian water was added to it.

The government needs to sit down with all government departments that deal with food in this country, such as agriculture, fisheries, industry and international trade, and with the producers and the food security people.

We need a national food policy. We cannot even tinker with things in this bill unless we can actually have a commitment from the government to get on with it and protect the health and safety of all Canadians.

BLOGGER HOLIDAY - only indigenous and the most frantic updates for awhile.

Yup, folks, that is correct.

Although I get my knickers twisted looking at many many issues, and although I can write in a sloggy kind of sloppiness most of the time on here -

I have an article to write properly on Canadian foreign policy as I have viewed it since I have came here in 1994 and how that impacts its domestic policy (particularly as it impacts the indigneous community). I am going to focus on what I would do if I had a chance to have some real participation in future developments and what I would do as a non-neocon, laying out in detail what I most correctly perceive.

The spring is here, my body is mending, I have fresh hope. None of my readers have a real inkling of how close to death I have come since having those shots last fall.

Now it is time for me to show those who have befriended me exactly what I am myself capable of producing.

I know that some of my readers will know precisely what I am talking about.

I have a unique perspective and a compelling vision for Canada, time for me to put it all down in a form that is useful to others and does me credit.

Hopefully, what I write will be of use to those I am trying to educate and I will dedicate this effort to them.

Maxime Bernier's number should be up just about now! And if I can add some fuel to the fire that's precisely what I am going to do. It is my sincere desire to see Maxime Bernier find a better way to spend his days then making drug profits, hacking up the world while on his power trip and causing needless death and destruction.

As for Peter MacKay ..

Oh, what a sorry lot of losers The Harper installed. Ouch.

Virginia

HYPOCRISY DELUXE ,, Reid supports one Federal Prosecutor not another!

Special prosecutor targets polygamy 'epidemic'

Probe could halt cross-border trade in young women

ROBERT MATAS

hypocrisy

May 9, 2008

VANCOUVER -- The United States has appointed a federal prosecutor to work with state and local authorities on bringing an end to lawlessness in polygamous communities, an investigation that may extend to finding a way to stop the so-called polygamy underground railway across the Canada-U.S. border.

A senior prosecutor in the deputy attorney-general's office has been assigned to carry out the review in consultation with the attorneys-general of Nevada, Arizona and Utah, Harry Reid, Majority Leader in the U.S. Senate, stated in correspondence released yesterday.

Mr. Reid described the problem as an "epidemic of lawlessness in polygamous communities."

He found out about the federal initiative after contacting U.S. Attorney-General Michael Mukasey to urge a thorough review of how the U.S. government could help state and local authorities "tackle this complex problem."

Arizona Attorney-General Terry Goddard said yesterday that he welcomes the review, which he and others had sought three or four years ago. "The problem traditionally has been that the laws have not been enforced in these remote communities in Utah, Arizona and Nevada," he said in an interview.

"My fundamental guiding star is, there is nothing special here. They need to follow the law like anyone else and it is up to us as prosecutors to make sure it happens," Mr. Goddard said shortly before co-chairing a town hall meeting on polygamy in St. George, Utah.

B.C. Liberal MLA Bill Bennett, who represents the East Kootenay riding, said the Canadian government should be working with the United States on the cross-border issues. "What we need is a co-operative effort by the province, various states and the two federal governments, who have primary responsibility for immigration and customs," he said from Victoria.

"Certainly from what I've been told, there is no doubt young women have been sent to Bountiful [B.C.] to marry older men and young women have been taken from Bountiful to marry older men [in the polygamous communities] in Colorado City, Arizona and in Utah."

The U.S. federal review was announced a month after a raid on a 1,700-acre compound in Texas of the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, a polygamous religious sect.

Authorities found more than 20 girls that they believed were under the age of 18 and pregnant or who already had children. Child protection officials said they found evidence of sexual abuse and a pervasive pattern of grooming young girls for underage sex. They apprehended 463 children at the compound, including at least one Canadian girl, and placed them in foster care.

Former members of the polygamous sect have said young women were regularly sent across the Canada-U.S. border, in both directions, to marry older men. Bountiful is a FLDS community of about 1,000 in the Creston, B.C., area.

Mr. Reid said he believes the U.S. federal government should have done more years ago, when the states of Utah and Arizona had asked for federal co-operation in investigating "the systemic lawlessness" in polygamous communities. State authorities had sought federal action on violations of federal civil rights laws by Colorado City marshals and on Internal Revenue Code violations.

"This is precisely the kind of help I believe the federal government should provide, but it has not yet done so. Your requests for federal funding to assist victims of domestic violence also merit prompt review," Mr. Reid said.

In a statement issued from his office late yesterday, he said that human trafficking across the Canada-U.S. border was clearly a federal matter. "[He] would expect the Justice Department to review any allegations like that," Mr. Reid's spokesman, Jon Summers, said.

Arizona's Mr. Goddard said he recently spoke briefly to B.C. Attorney-General Wally Oppal about the U.S. response to the polygamous communities. Mr. Oppal seemed "very interested," he said.

In Arizona, authorities have tried to ensure that the law applies without stigmatizing the FLDS communities for their religion, Mr. Goddard said.

Authorities there have gone after allegations of child abuse in the communities and after police who took orders from the church. The state government has taken over the school district because it was run by the FLDS hierarchy and not for the benefit of the children, he said.

It is up to the federal government to look into tax evasion, possible welfare fraud and civil rights violations, especially those committed against young men thrown out of the community, Mr. Goddard said.

The actions in Arizona are in marked contrast to activities in Canada. Polygamy is illegal in Canada, but no one at Bountiful has ever faced charges for bigamy.

Mr. Oppal is currently deliberating whether to refer a question on the constitutionality of Canada's polygamy law to the B.C. Court of Appeal. He told reporters this week he expected to announce his decision within two or three weeks.