Blaine Calkins
Ponoka—Didsbury, Alberta · Conservative · Canada
“Mr. Speaker, the verdict is in, and the Prime Minister is in way over his head. He is the only leader, not just in the G7 but also in the G20, who has led his country into a recession. What does this mean practically?”
“Mr. Speaker, with regard to the Liberals' bill, where they say they are putting back mandatory minimum sentences, but they have this safeguard or whatever they want to call it where it is actually optional, I want to ask my colleague, the member for Bow River , is that not akin to putting seat belts in vehicles and then never requiring an…”
“That catering bill would have been enough to feed a Canadian family for 55 years. Every dollar spent on luxury catering is a dollar that cannot go towards lowering taxes, building homes, improving public safety or helping Canadians put food on their own tables. Conservatives are here and ready to get to work. Where is the Prime Minister ?”
“It is wrong not just when it happens to Conservatives; it is wrong when it happens to Liberal, NDP or Bloc members, or to anybody. Since these incidents, the Prime Minister has praised Paul Chiang as a person of integrity, and he has also strengthened Canada's ties with the People's Republic of China through trade and security partnership…”
“Tay, issued by the Communist regime in Beijing for making pro-democracy comments from here in Canada about what is going on in Hong Kong and China. This was a Liberal MP at the time basically encouraging the kidnapping of a political adversary. Goodness knows what would have happened if Mr. Chiang had actually gotten his way.”
“It seems like common sense to me, but that might not be such a common thing across the aisle. We studied the issue at length at committee, where we heard from several witnesses, including, most recently, Gerald Chipeur, that the bill does not go far enough and would need to crack down even harder on foreign monetary contributions.”
The complete record
Every one of 294 lines we hold for Blaine Calkins, in date order, each linked to its source. Free to read, in full, without an account. Page 4 of 6.
“Mr. Speaker, I have just returned from Prince Edward Island, where all 10 Charlottetown city councillors were present and voted unanimously to reject the Liberal government's gun grab. The 10 city councillors in Charlottetown clearly know better than the four Liberal MPs from that island. They know that lawful gun owners are not the problem. They know that their police resources are already stretched thin. They know that the real problem is with violent crime and with illegal guns from the United States. Charlottetown does not want anything to do with the Liberal government's policy. Even the minister himself has admitted it is a failure. When will the Liberals abandon this ineffective, useless $750-million boondoggle?”
“Mr. Speaker, I want to thank my long-time colleague and friend for her excellent speech here in the House and for telling Canadians exactly how it is here in Ottawa. As a patriot, how much longer does she think Canada can hold out as a sovereign nation before it becomes a subsidiary of Brookfield?”
“Mr. Speaker, the Prime Minister is not serious about building a pipeline. His former orange-jumpsuit minister has said that an MOU with Alberta was not an approval of a pipeline. He knows that a decade of his government's anti-resource-extraction laws has made it impossible to find a private sector proponent. Just like the NDP Premier of British Columbia, the Prime Minister is hiding behind a tanker ban that blocks Canadian resources from getting to market and will block any future projects, all while U.S. tankers can sail freely through the very same Canadian waters. Will the Prime Minister admit that the last decade of Liberal rule has been a failure, and repeal all the stupid, job-killing Trudeau laws?”
“Mr. Speaker, this morning the radical ex-minister of the environment, and Greenpeace stuntman, said, “I sincerely doubt that the new pipeline will ever get built.” As the head of the Liberal “keep it in the ground” caucus, he has continuously poured cold water on the MOU, saying that there is no project, no route, no consensus and no private sector proponent. The former minister knows what the Prime Minister will not admit: that the west coast tanker ban makes any project impossible. Will the Prime Minister repeal the tanker ban so we can get our resources to market, or is the new pipeline really just a pipe dream?”
“Mr. Speaker, we know the Prime Minister has been meeting with Brookfield executives behind closed doors. This is the same Prime Minister who served as board chair of Brookfield Asset Management. Now we learn that he will not allow Alberta to build a pipeline unless it initiates a $16.5-billion carbon capture project where Brookfield profits. The taxes and royalties from a pipeline should be used for doctors, nurses, roads, schools, police, housing and securing our country, but instead, billions will now pour into the coffers of corporate giants and Liberal insiders, including, of course, Brookfield. How much revenue does the Prime Minister have to divert to his own company before he demands that Canada just simply change its name to Brookfield?”
“Mr. Speaker, the current Prime Minister was the adviser to the last prime minister. Under his watch, no private company was able to build a pipeline, not TC Energy, not Enbridge, not Kinder Morgan, just the Canadian taxpayer. Now, we learn Alberta must initiate a carbon capture project via the Pathways Alliance in exchange for a pipeline. Who has a significant stake in Entropy, one of the leading Pathways carbon capture companies? It is none other than the Prime Minister's company, Brookfield. This begs the question, is the only way anything can be built in Canada is if Brookfield profits?”
“Mr. Speaker, she just has to look to her right to her colleague who just asked me a question, who called natural health products garbage in the last Parliament. Garbage is garbage: garbage in, garbage out. We can have these conversations all we want. As I said in my speech, 400,000 kids in Canada are the target for the school lunch program. I would be embarrassed to stand up and say that we as a government for the last 10 years have created such an economic mess in this country that we now need to borrow more money we do not have to feed kids whose parents used to be able to feed them on their own.”
“The policies of the current government, including the industrial carbon tax, are not a path forward to prosperity for this country. The carbon tax is going to drive away investment, and it is going to create more problems for our nation.”
“Mr. Speaker, my esteemed colleague for Foothills, Alberta, knows very well what we are capable of in this country and what we are capable of as Albertans. As I said in my speech, we are 10% of the population and 15% to 16% of the GDP, because we have a culture in Alberta of getting things done. We have had years and years, decades even, of Conservative-minded provincial governments that have kept taxes low and created investment, wealth and prosperity for the people of Alberta, which we have shared happily, for the most part, with the rest of Canada. That is unless we have a Liberal government, of course, which puts its boot on our neck, taxes us into oblivion and makes it so we cannot even afford to buy homes, buy groceries and pay for a roof over our heads.”
“They want to control the social fabric. We just have to look at the legislation they put in to curb speech and control basically everything Canadians do every single day. Canadians can no longer afford the government. We need a Conservative government that unleashes opportunities and that unleashes the talents Canadians have.”
“Mr. Speaker, we have a completely different philosophical view on this side of the House. We believe in and trust Canadians to look after themselves. I remember a time in this country when my parents and grandparents could afford to put food on the table for their families. They did not need a school lunch program and did not need food banks in order to provide food for their families. If I was the member, I would be embarrassed to announce a program for the 400,000 kids in Canada who now need a school lunch because their families cannot afford to pay for it. This is the whole idea of the Liberals. The Liberals want to create a culture of dependency. They want to be in absolute control and insert themselves in every way into our lives. They want to control absolutely everything that happens from an economic perspective.”
“Could members imagine the fiscal power that this country would have right now if we unleashed the potential of our natural resources? As an Albertan, I know very well what our contribution is, as 10% of the population contributes 15% to 16% of the GDP to this country, because we have a different attitude. One where the government does not control everything we do and we unleash the potential of our entrepreneurs, investors and workers to do the things that build our country and make it great. Until the government retracts and repeals the legislation that has stymied this development, we are going to be in the same place where just Liberals, and Liberals alone, get to decide what happens in Canada. It is like living with the mafia.”
“I see the frustration in my friends and colleagues of my generation who started very successful and prosperous businesses in the oil and gas sector, just to watch those businesses disappear and go bankrupt and watch all of their assets disappear over the last ten years because of a government that simply does not understand the consequences of the actions it has taken. I would submit that had the government not cancelled the northern gateway pipeline, the energy east pipeline and all but one of the various LNG export terminals on both the east and west coasts of this country, that Canada would be in a better position today. For one pipeline and one LNG export terminal, it would take approximately 10 years to build each of them.”
“A Greek proverb reads, “A society grows great when old men plant trees in whose shade they know they shall never sit.” To think of the future is to be altruistic. If we are to be honest with ourselves, do we want our children and our grandchildren to inherit the economic future that we have right now, or do we want to gift them with a flourishing economy in which they can prosper, buy a home and invest in their families? I know the residents of Ponoka—Didsbury very well, and I see the frustration on their faces. I see the frustration in the faces of the young people in their twenties and thirties who are still living at home, who wish they could buy a home in central Alberta.”
“This has created a situation in which businesses are fearful of taking the risks they should not be afraid of taking. As a result, they are not investing in Canada. A recent OECD report indicates that the Canadian business landscape is currently facing a significant challenge due to lack of investment. For example, Canada invests less in machinery and equipment than other OECD countries. Furthermore, the investment gap between Canada and the U.S. has widened at a time when our neighbour down south is waging a trade war against us. I would like to conclude by asking members and all Canadians this very simple question. Passing a budget is an act of stewardship. It is about being disciplined today so that we have a brighter tomorrow.”
“When I spoke of households and budgets, I said that a good budget allows for some manoeuverability. This idea of being able to pivot in a crisis is paramount for governments of all political stripes, yet by stripping our cupboards bare of essentials over the past ten years, we have left ourselves as a nation very vulnerable. In plain language, we are lacking the fiscal discipline to pivot in a crisis. Furthermore, our economic woes have created a culture of dependency in which the economy is now reliant on the government and not the other way around. Business needs certainty and a reliable fiscal environment to thrive, yet under the Liberal government, Canada has anything but. To get anything built in this country, one must navigate an intricate web of bureaucracy.”
“Remarkably, the new finance minister has presented a budget that will grow our debt-to-GDP ratio rather than shrink it. How can we grow our way out of a crisis if our debt is growing proportionally faster than our economic growth? We are robbing a future generation of Canadians of their wealth to shore up our present economic frustrations and considerations. This is the same generation that is already struggling to pay for food, pay off their student loans or even buy a house and start a family. We should be ashamed of the debt we are leaving to future generations. More worrisome still is the fact that the the Parliamentary Budget Officer has stated that the Prime Minister has “limited room to cut taxes” as the debt-to-GDP ratio continues to grow.”
“With a projected deficit of $78.3 billion, this budget gets us nowhere closer to reaching fiscal balance. To add insult to injury, no trade deal with the United States has materialized. For those listening at home, I want to give a snapshot of what is happening here in Ottawa. The Liberals have created generational debt over the last decade under the banner of generational investments, yet these investments have not paid off. The Parliamentary Budget Officer has indicated that GDP growth is stagnant and will remain below 2% for the remainder of the decade. This will make it difficult to manage rising debt levels. (1630) The previous fiscal dogma espoused by the previous finance minister was that our debt-to-GDP ratio was a marker of fiscal sustainability. We disagreed. We thought they were spending too much money.”
“Over the past 10 years, we have witnessed budget after budget of ballooning deficits. The prime minister who presented those atrocious budgets then resigned, a good riddance. The man who replaced that prime minister, the member for Nepean , told Canadians that he was the so-called reasonable guy. He said that he and only he could address Canada's challenges. He said he would be more fiscally responsible than his predecessor. He promised economic prosperity. He said that he was best qualified to deal with President Donald Trump, yet with his first budget, which was delivered late, of course, and I am very much looking forward to the fall economic statement in April, we see he is not the man he said he was. The budget is nothing short of reckless, and it is proof that he misrepresented himself to the Canadian electorate in the spring.”
“That is nearly as much as the $54.5 billion spent on the federal health transfers to our provinces. Our debt is so large now that servicing the debt is equivalent to one of the core functions of our government, yet the government keeps wasting money on vanity projects such as its current gun grab, which will not do anything at all to address public safety. We know this to be true because the minister said so when he thought no one was listening. He basically said it was all to get votes in certain parts of the country. If members do not believe me, if the Liberals do not want to believe me, they can just ask the Toronto Police Association, which just today put out a tweet saying that the confiscation program is “ineffective” and asking the government to instead use that money toward funding frontline policing.”
“That is $1,280 billion, which is an incomprehensibly large sum to the average person. For context, when the St. Lawrence Seaway was constructed in 1959, which is one of the most important infrastructure projects in our history, it cost $470 million, or nearly $5 billion in today's currency. I do not believe we have received the same economic benefits as the seaway for much of this new debt over the last 10 years. In fact, the Liberals have doubled the national debt in this country in the last 10 years, and I cannot think of a single significant nation-building infrastructure project that we received for that money. The debt is so large, it is now impacting our finances. In 2025, Canada's federal government is projected to spend approximately $54 billion on servicing just our debt.”
“These same budgetary patterns can be observed in Parliament, usually following along party lines. My time in the Harper government showed me what a responsible budget actually looked like, while my time in opposition has taught me what an irresponsible budget looks like. Those irresponsible budgets were usually presented by the Liberal Party, the Liberal government, and mostly Justin Trudeau. They all had varying degrees of severity. One could argue that, under the last prime minister, this level of carelessness reached new heights. These were, for all intents and purposes, tax-and-spend, NDP-style budgets that turned our national debt into a national albatross burden around our neck. That burden has become an ever-increasing liability. Our federal debt has reached over $1.28 trillion.”
“Mr. Speaker, I have witnessed a number of budgets over my 20-year parliamentary career. Some of them were good, such as the first 10, and some of them have been pretty bad, which are the ones since then. What makes a bad budget? Generally, it is a Liberal. To the average Canadian, a bad budget may be one that fails to balance what one wants with what one needs and leads to a shortfall. A bad budget leaves one open to unpredictability and makes it difficult to adapt to changing circumstances. In contrast, a good budget allows one to address current needs but still have some money left over to plan for the future. It allows people to invest in the things their families need the most. We can classify these kinds of budgets as either a responsible budget or an irresponsible budget.”
“Madam Speaker, I appreciate the comments from my colleague, and I thank him and all my colleagues here in the Conservative benches for the support of the bill. I want to thank my colleagues from the NDP, Green Party and the Bloc Québécois who supported the bill in the last Parliament, and I look forward to their continued support and their constructive feedback. I am also looking forward to making sure that we get back to the traditional definition of natural health products. That is what Canadians want. That is what they elected us to do. Let us do it.”
“At this particular point, the bill that I have tabled before the House belongs to the House. I want to get it passed here at second reading, and the place for those amendments to be proposed is at committee, but the member does not need my permission to do it. He should ask Canadians and the industry associations that represent them whether they agree with the wording and the nuances of the wording that were in those amendments. In principle, I support the amendments that he put forward in the last Parliament.”
“Madam Speaker, I thank my colleague for his support of the bill in the last Parliament and for his thoughtful analysis. The member was very thoughtful in his deliberations and his approach to dealing with Bill C-368 . He will note that the bill is not exactly the same. One of the amendments that was put forward at the committee stage the last time dealt with exempting nicotine, so I included that through the definition in this particular bill, but there are other amendments that my colleague would likely bring back to the committee. The member does not need my permission to do that, so I would encourage my colleague to actually talk to the industry associations and Canadians who might have had some concerns with the amendments that he brought forward, and make sure he gets them on side.”
“It can mandate any label change if it is concerned about the contents inside the bottle not matching what is on the label. It can inspect any site to look for contamination issues all it wants. It can even stop that site from continuing to produce things. The hon. member's question seems to indicate that there are no authorities and powers right now, but nothing could be further from the truth.”
“Madam Speaker, I guess I reject the premise of the question. I never said that Health Canada did not have a role to play. As a matter of fact, had the member been listening to my speech, he would have heard me say that Health Canada, prior to Bill C-47 , had the power to stop any sale of any natural health product that is regulated in this country. That product cannot be sold as a natural health product until it has a natural product number, which means that natural health products have to be pre-approved. Nothing can happen post-market access. Everything is approved before it even gets to the market. Health Canada has border powers for personal-use imports. It has seizure powers to seize a product that it thinks might be unsafe. It can revoke a site licence for a manufacturer, a packager, a labeller or an importer.”
“We need colleagues to get this bill to committee so that we can go through it again. I urge everybody to listen to Canadians. It is time to have some true consultation on this process. I want to thank all of the industry association reps, Natural Health Product Protection Association, the Canadian Health Food Association and everybody else who has lobbied so hard to protect these vital, important businesses and this vital, important space for Canadians.”
“This makes sense for a large global therapeutic or biomedical company, but it does not make sense for a mom-and-pop shop that is trying to create some new natural remedies or a practitioner of traditional Chinese medicine. This is a ridiculous change that simply did not need to happen. It puts a chill in the industry and a chill in investment. Nobody wants to operate or take any risks in that particular structure. In closing, I want to thank Canadians from coast to coast who have written to parliamentarians and who have put pressure on their MPs. I will just advise them that they need to continue to do that because there will be a vote on this. I know that we need to make the changes to get natural health products back to their traditional definition and classification.”
“It has already done so. It is called good manufacturing practices. It has that ability to do so. It can inspect any product off the shelf by sending it to a lab, doing an analysis and making sure the contents in the bottle match the contents on the label. It can revoke a natural product number. (1115) These are the massive, sweeping powers that Health Canada already had prior to Bill C-47 , so the arguments that Health Canada is using, that it needs massive new powers to keep Canadians safe, simply do not hold water. I also want to expand on the fact that health products are now being regulated as therapeutic products, so the fine structures for therapeutic products now apply to health products. Some of these fines can be up to $5 million a day for non-compliance.”
“Anybody who says that Health Canada does not have enough power right now is simply missing the point. As a matter of fact, the Auditor General has said that Health Canada was not already using the powers it had pre-Bill C-47 . With its current powers, it can stop the sale of any natural health product it wants. Health Canada has border powers for personal-use imports. If it chooses to change the regulations or do more to keep Canadians safe from health products that are coming in from offshore, it can do so. It can seize any product any time it wants. It can revoke a site licence from a manufacturer, a packager, a labeller or an importer any time it wants. It can mandate a label change, for example, to add a warning, to any of the manufacturers here in Canada. It can inspect any place that has a site licence any time it wants.”
“We should be making sure that we do not overburden the Canadian space, because this market is worth $5.5 billion in products every year. That is over $200 million just in GST alone, and the cost of the natural health products directorate is only $50 million a year. This industry pays for itself in spades, and we are not even talking about the health benefits for Canadians, which keep them out of the allopathic health care system, or the regulated health care system, that we have here in Canada. Really, it comes down to choice. Consumers want to be able to take care of themselves. Mothers want to take care of their families and their children. People are looking for alternative health care measures all of the time when the regular health care system is not providing them any relief.”
“It has a post-market regulatory framework, which means that anybody who has a business in Canada and who is looking at the uncompetitive environment, and most of these business people are women, would be looking at the United States, saying that they could move their business down there, start manufacturing, have a tax incentive to do so and still ship to Canada. They would not have to deal with any of the burdens and red tape of pre-market approvals for a site or a product, and simply have some post-market regulations in the United States, but still ship to Canada without even any tariffs on those personal-use imports. This is the environment we are facing here in Canada. It is one we should be very concerned about.”
“We are also in an environment right now where, south of the border, there are several states, such as Georgia, North Carolina, Texas, South Carolina and Nevada, that are actively using tax incentives to draw health businesses into their areas of responsibility. In Canada, we have a 90-day personal use import system where anybody can order online and have their natural health products brought in from a non-Canadian jurisdiction with the same level of regulatory framework. Regulatory checks and pre-market approvals for sites and products all happen in Canada. That is why we have the gold standard when it comes to regulations. That is not what our main competitor in the United States does at all.”
“Let me remind people where the starting point was. We were already the best regulated environment in the world. We did not need to do any of this in Bill C-47 . We were the safest already. Over 80% of Canadians use natural health products. There were several audits done by the industry, by Deloitte and so on, that basically debunked all of the claims that Health Canada was making to justify what it was doing. It claimed it was for consumer protection, but the reality is that very few people, in any way, shape or form, are harmed by natural health products. Where are we? We have more red tape, more costs and less choice for consumers.”
“If we were to lose a wide swath of traditional Chinese medicine, Ayurvedic medicine and all of these things, it would be a tremendous loss to our economy. I want to be clear that this was done under the previous Trudeau administration. Gender-based analysis was a big issue for the previous administration, but when this change was imposed, there was no gender-based analysis done on the impacts of changing the traditional definition of therapeutic products in Bill C-47 . Over 80% of natural health products consumers are women, while 90% of practitioners are women. Over 50% of the micro-businesses are female- or women-owned, and 84% of direct sellers are women. That is what the impact would be on the Canadian economy if we continue down this road of making the natural health products space uncompetitive. We would lose businesses in Canada.”
“The cost-recovery framework that was proposed would have new product fees of up to $4,000 per product. If we look at traditional Chinese medicine, the ingredients are combined to get a very select remedy for clients. If a fee had to be paid every time the ingredients were combined to make a traditional Chinese medicine product, that would make it virtually impossible for traditional Chinese medicine practitioners to be effective and sell their products at a price point that users of traditional Chinese medicine could afford. It would wipe out traditional Chinese medicine. (1110) This would have a huge impact on our economy at a time when job numbers are not necessarily great. There are 54,000 direct employees in Canada who are working in this space.”
“Our brand is very reputable, or at least it was. For products, manufacturers and distributors across the world, if a product had a natural product number and the made-in-Canada symbol on the label, it was trusted pretty much globally. A natural health product sold around the world that was developed, processed and regulated in Canada was trusted to be safe. The contents in the bottle matched the contents on the label or matched the labelling requirements. That was our reputation, but that is not the case anymore. The changes that have been proposed under Bill C-47 and the self-care framework are basically going to create licence fees that would stop or wipe out a lot of manufacturers. This is for traditional Chinese medicine, Ayurveda medicine, homeopathy and so on. This is very concerning because 80% of Canadians use these products.”
“We fear that the proposed changes to Canada's regulatory framework for natural health products risk creating an environment that could stifle the industry and limit Canadians' access to high-quality supplements. IADSA has always promoted the Canadian model as a global reference point for governments across the world who are creating or redeveloping their regulatory systems. This Canadian model is recognized as providing consumers access to products which are safe and beneficial while fostering innovation and supporting investment in the sector. That is the same shape the Harper administration left the natural health products industry in. There are precisely the same challenges with the changes proposed in Bill C-47 . It has undone all of that good work and created uncertainty in this environment.”
“It is a cash grab by Health Canada, to basically charge the fees that it wants to charge. It was called the self-care framework for a time. This would massively increase the cost of creating a site licence and it would also massively increase the cost of getting a product to market. (1105) Prior to Bill C-47 , Canada was an icon and had the highest standard of regulations for natural health products globally. The International Alliance of Dietary/Food Supplement Associations, IADSA, in its written submission at committee on Bill C-368 in the previous Parliament, said: Up to now, Canada has been a world leader in the regulation of dietary supplements.”
“There was push-back on that at that particular point in time, which led to massive industry consultation with Canadians. Of course, natural health products have been regulated on their own since that time in 2014-15. This actually created an opportunity, because of the consultations of the previous Harper government, for the natural health products industry to flourish and become the gold standard, or at least it was the gold standard for a number of years, until Bill C-47 was passed. The bill in the previous Parliament was Bill C-368 . It is now Bill C-224 . I just want to say how important it is that Canadians understand that if the bill does not pass, Health Canada will have the power to regulate natural health products as if they are therapeutic drugs. We need to undo that.”
“Our job as parliamentarians is to make sure that the laws and regulations thereunder reflect what Canadians' wishes are. Overwhelmingly, Parliament has been told time and time again by Canadians, whether they are involved in the business directly or are consumers, that they do not want their government to treat natural health products like they are therapeutic drugs. They want the traditional definition restored. If we go back to 1998, there were 53 recommendations in the health committee report suggesting that natural health products be regulated, classified and categorized on their own. There was opposition when an attempt was made to change the law in 2014 by the creation of Vanessa's Law. The thought was that Health Canada could sneak health products in under the Vanessa's Law rubric.”
“This plan was hatched in a back room, where Health Canada officials, I am assuming, basically duped the minister of the day, Mark Holland, into putting this into the budget implementation act. It created a firestorm of activity. Parliamentarians who were here in the last Parliament will remember the various campaigns that were initiated by Canadians across the country, whether it is the Natural Health Products Protection Association's campaign or the Canadian Health Food Association's “Save Our Supplements” campaign. I have a stack of cards from concerned Canadians in my office, as I think the Speaker does as well, that is at least two feet high. Canada's Parliament is supreme in this matter, and that should not be overlooked by Health Canada officials who want to have their way all the time when Canadians are concerned.”
“Given that big pharmaceutical industries have billions of dollars of research and development funds and have a completely regulated allopathic health care system, natural health products cannot compete in that space. We will talk more about that red tape, but I just want to be clear with Canadians that there was no consultation at the time that Bill C-47 was brought in. As a matter of fact, there was no debate. I could not find anything the government said at the time about natural health products. They were just tucked into the massive omnibus budget implementation act. The Natural Health Products Protection Association had no idea. The Canadian Health Food Association had no idea. The Direct Sellers Association of Canada had no idea. The Canadian Federation of Independent Business did not know.”
“The government of the day changed that to make natural health products regulated the same way as therapeutic drugs, which has meant that all the processes Health Canada uses to pre-approve sites and pre-approve natural health products are now the same as those for therapeutic drugs. This has meant that getting something as simple as a vitamin B complex to the marketplace is just as complicated and potentially as convoluted as getting a new cancer treatment drug to the marketplace. Of course, the government's intention through Bill C-47 's change to the definition was to do cost recovery on the natural health product industry the same way that it is done in the pharmaceutical industry.”
“moved that Bill C-224, An Act to amend the Food and Drugs Act (natural health products) , be read the second time and referred to a committee. Bill C-224. Second reading He said: Mr. Speaker, it is certainly a pleasure for me to rise for the second Parliament in a row to present a bill to restore the traditional definition of natural health products. Canadians watching at home might recall that back in the last Parliament, in 2023, the Trudeau government of the day introduced Bill C-47 , the budget implementation act, which redefined natural health products. Basically, they had a stand-alone regulatory body that had its own regulations and legislation.”
“They chased away Kinder Morgan, for example, which was going to build a pipeline for less than $10 billion, and it blossomed to over $30 billion. Does my colleague agree with me that the government basically just wants to control every single aspect of the Canadian economy? What is that doing to ruin the hope and future—”
“Mr. Speaker, what really caught my attention about this budget and the member's speech is the missed opportunity to repeal bills like Bill C-48 and Bill C-69 . These bills are barriers to the success of our economy. What the Liberals like to do, and this is what they always do, is make it so the entire Canadian economy is dependent on a decision that one or two people over there make. There used to be pipeline projects. Over 18 LNG export terminals were inherited by Justin Trudeau in 2015. All of those are gone. The Liberals put all these barriers in place, and then they spend billions and billions of taxpayer dollars to partner with somebody they might find in the private sector in order to do something.”
“Mr. Speaker, the Liberal industrial carbon tax drives up the price of food. Since the Prime Minister took office, strawberries are up 25%, beef is up 25% and coffee is up 20%. The food professor, Sylvain Charlebois, told us that the widening gap between Canadian and American food prices was driven by one single factor: the carbon tax. He predicts bad news for 2026 and states that we are the only country in the G7 that has seen four consecutive months of a food inflation rate increase. Why is the Prime Minister insisting on making food more expensive for Canadians by raising—”