In the wake of a spate of product warnings, recalls and contaminated food warnings in 2007, the federal government announced that it would take steps to overhaul consumer protection legislation.

It unveiled a general outline of what it would do in its Oct. 16, 2007, speech from the throne. Among the promised measures were:

• Giving the government the power to order mandatory recalls.
• Substantially raising fines to deter the manufacture, importation and sale of unsafe products.
• More stringent monitoring of health products to ensure that products and devices are safe.

The legislation, introduced on April 8, 2008, was designed to upgrade legislation governing food, consumer and health products that had been on the books since the 1950s and 1960s.

The proposed changes were mostly well received.

'I've been accused of wanting to ban pot-luck dinners.'—Health minister Tony Clement

But shortly after the legislation was tabled and passed first reading, questions began to be raised about how the changes could put extreme pressure on the natural health products industry. Dozens of "Stop Bill C-51" Facebook groups and an "official" Stop C-51 website made claims such as:

• Up to 70 per cent of natural health products would fail more stringent testing requirements.
• The legislation would give Health Canada inspectors "police state" powers to search private property for illegal natural health products.

"I've been accused of wanting to ban pot-luck dinners, wanting to make it a prescription to get vitamin C," Health Minister Tony Clement told CBC News. "All that is absurd. It's just not in the bill anywhere."

Clement says C-51 is about far more than natural health products. It's about prescription drugs, therapeutic devices and about making sure the food supply is safe — from the farm to the fork.

He points out that regulations have been in place governing natural health products since 2004. Those rules require products to be assessed by Health Canada before they hit store shelves. Once approved, they are assigned an eight-digit product licence number, preceded by the letters "NPN." Labels on homeopathic medicines bear the designation DIN-HM. Clement says anything authorized for sale under that system won't likely be dumped if C-51 becomes law.

"If a natural health product is saying 'with this product you can cure cancer' or they make some health claims that are on the higher end of risk, then we have a duty and obligation on behalf of Canadians to concern ourselves with the efficacy and safety involved."

For Paul Saunders, a Naturopathic Doctor in Linden, Ont., and a professor at the Canadian College of Naturopathic Medicine, that sounds reasonable.

"Under the Natural Health Products Directorate, scientific proof is required before [the product licence number] goes on the label. It has to go before Health Canada. There is a five-tier level of scientific review that's required for products and that's a good system. In theory, it looks like this bill will not change that for natural health products."

But he still has his concerns. Among them are subtle shifts in terminology. Bill C-51 describes a "practitioner" as "an individual who is authorized under the law of a province to prescribe or dispense prescription therapeutic products." Naturopathic doctors do not have prescribing rights. Naturopathic remedies are sold over the counter, without prescription.

"If natural health products were to become prescriptive products," Saunders says, "we would not have access to these products."

He's concerned that if naturopathic doctors are no longer able to recommend certain products to their patients, those patients will no longer have access to those products as medical doctors may prefer to stick to traditional drug therapy.

"From a marketing and advertising point of view, it's never good news to be asked to have more proof for the claim you are making," says Lloyd Oppel, an emergency room physician and assistant professor at the University of British Columbia Hospital.

"It requires a lot of money. For example, the regular pharmaceutical industry, which is far from perfect, has been held and led kicking and screaming to a point where it has to prove at least some degree the safety and effectiveness of its products before they go to market. This was a result of the thalidomide disaster of the 1950s. The natural health products industry has not been required to do that."

'Natural' doesn't necessarily mean 'safe'

Oppel notes that just because something is green and leafy, it does not mean that it's harmless. He cites examples such as aristolochia, which has long been used in traditional Chinese medicine as a slimming aid. Aristolochia produces aristolochic acid which can cause cancer, changes in human cells and kidney failure. Health Canada has issued several warnings about products that may contain aristolochia.

Oppel says standards are important not just for natural products but for the entire health-care industry.

"The solution is not to lower the standards but to improve them so that we get better trials and better post-marketing surveillance… If there are clinical tests that are negative and they are performed by manufacturers, they should be brought to light as well. That's another basic protection that we need to work towards across the entire range of therapeutic products."

Saunders says he supports standards and making sure products are safe. But he notes that without some changes, Bill C-51 puts naturopathic doctors — and their patients — at a disadvantage, by excluding them from the category of "practitioner."

"If a category was set aside that allowed people with the kind of training that our graduates have - which is four years of post-graduate training in naturopathic medicine — [to prescribe] that would help to protect us and our patients."

On June 9, 2008, Clement's office announced that the federal government would be proposing amendments to Bill C-51, if it passes second reading and moves on to the committee stage. If the amendments are adopted and the legislation passes:

• The legislation would define natural health products as a unique category apart from food and drugs and they would continue to be governed by the Natural Health Product Regulations which came into force in 2004.
• Regulations specific to the approval of natural health products would continue to recognize the value of traditional knowledge and history of use in assessing benefits and risks.
• Wording would be included in the legislation to clarify that inspectors must carry out their duties in a reasonable manner and for the purpose of verifying compliance or preventing non-compliance and that the exercise of enforcement powers, such as seizure and detention would have regard to the risk of a product.