Urgent! Canadians Need Your Help
Michelle Schoffro Cook
Imagine that you’re in the midst of working at your family business when a loud crash at the front door causes you to leap to your feet in fear of your safety. Now imagine your surprise when armed policemen and women tell you and your coworkers to stand facing a wall with arms held high while they rummage through and seize your computer equipment and countless possessions. You know there must be a mistake: you are not a criminal. Your coworkers are not criminals. The worst crime you ever committed was letting the parking meter run out minutes before you could plug the meter with more coins. This must be a mistake.
This is no mistake. This is the situation that some Canadians have faced and many more will soon face if the federal government allows Bill C-6 to become law as it is trying to do in a matter of weeks. Then, this image that seems more like a scene from a war-torn dictatorship could become commonplace. This bill will allow the government to seize property without a warrant, without a “safety risk” to justify the seizure, and without a reasonable suspicion that there has even been any wrongdoing.
This bill will remove your right to a court hearing if you are charged with an administrative offence and abolishes the right of trespass (meaning that government inspectors can enter any property or place at any time without proof that a crime has even been committed. It also eliminates Canadians’ access to an estimated 80 percent of natural health products that are deemed safe in the United States by the US Food and Drug Administration. Bill C-6 gives the federal government the right to charge average Canadian citizens and natural medicine practitioners if they possess a single nutritional or herbal supplement that it has deemed unsafe (yet has been proven by a thousand year history and is readily used in the US).
According to Canadian constitutional lawyer and opponent of Bill C-6, Shawn Buckley, “Under Bill C-6, inspectors can seize property connected to the manufacture, distribution and sale of consumer products. This seizure can occur without court supervision. There is no limit to the amount of property that can be seized. There does not have to be a “safety” risk to justify the seizure. There are no defined time limits limiting the length of the seizure. If you are charged with an administrative offense, you cannot have a court hearing. The Minister decides if you are guilty. The same Minister can keep any seized property if he/she determines that you are guilty.
Bill C-6 also abolishes the law of trespass. Inspectors can enter onto any property or into any place except a private home without a warrant. They are exempted from the law of trespass. We do not give the regular police, who investigate much more serious matters, this exemption. Are consumer products suddenly so dangerous that we need to sacrifice the right to enjoy our property without the incursion of state agents?”
This bill would also see the closing of many law-abiding natural health practitioners’ offices since the government could simply accuse any practitioner of possessing unsafe products without evidence to support such a claim, knowing that the practitioner has no right to a fair trial or hearing, and even if the products have a proven history of safety. What health practitioner in his or her right mind would want these types of headaches? So not only will Canadians lose their right to common health products, nutritional supplements, and botanical medicines, they will undoubtedly lose their access to natural health practitioners, many of whom may simply close shop.
Please help protect the rights of Canadians, stop the government from turning Canada into a police state, and help ensure that Canadians have the right to choose the health products and therapies they want for their bodies.
Wherever you are in the world, please send your thoughts on Bill C-6 and the government’s attempts to eliminate Canadians’ health rights and constitutional freedoms directly to Prime Minister Stephen Harper pm@pm.gc.ca
Also, lawyer Shawn Buckley has drafted a fairer Charter of Health Freedoms to replace the regressive and undemocratic Bill C-6. Please sign it and ask everyone you know to sign it: charterofhealthfreedom.org
For more information about Bill C-6, visit: nhppa.org/