See HC quote below...."Health Canada cared not one bit about the
possible deaths or hospitalizations of Canadians due to its
actions..."

Thu, March 30, 2006

The Calgary Sun

  Health Canada suit ignored well-being

By LICIA CORBELLA, EDITOR

Canadians could be forgiven for assuming that the role of Health
Canada is to do what its name suggests -- that is to protect the
health of Canadians.

But yesterday, and for the past three weeks, a Calgary court heard
chilling testimony and evidence of how Health Canada cared not one
bit about the possible deaths or hospitalizations of Canadians due to
its actions, and how it "abused the process" by "blindly" following
soon-to-be outdated regulations to prosecute the makers of a
nutritional supplement that has helped thousands of mentally ill
people lead normal lives.

Yesterday, final submissions were made before Alberta Provincial
Court Judge Gerald Meagher in the case of Health Canada criminally
prosecuting Truehope Nutritional Support for not having a Drug
Identification Number (DIN) for its nutritional supplement called
Empowerplus, which is described as a "miracle" vitamin and mineral
product by its more than 10,000 users who suffer from bipolar
disorder, schizophrenia and other serious mental health ailments.

Defence attorney Shawn Buckley first recapped how the makers of
Empowerplus jumped through numerous hoops trying "every reasonable
means" to comply with a regulation that did not fit the nutritional
supplement industry.

In fact, Health Canada officials, testified that fully 90% of all so
called "natural health products" did not comply with Health Canada
regulations requiring a DIN number, not because they "thumbed their
noses" at the regulations, but because compliance was impossible.

That's why the law was changed on Jan. 1, 2004, to set up new
regulations for natural health products. Nevertheless, Health Canada
later that year retroactively charged Truehope with not having a DIN
in 2003, even though that law no longer applied, a clear example of
abuse of process, argued Buckley.

Buckley also gave numerous examples of Health Canada officials
attempting to "sabotage" Truehope's attempts to comply in other ways.
He also said it was "highly suspicious" that Health Canada tried to
hide information from the court, saying it was "undiscoverable" but
when the judge ordered the material to be sent, hundreds of pages of
the information in question was faxed to the court within the hour.

"It's alarming to me that Health Canada would proceed knowing that
their actions would cause deaths and hospitalizations. This is the
kind of bureaucratic behaviour that would shock the community's sense
of fair play and decency," said Buckley, particularly since the
regulations would soon be changed and the minister of health at the
time, Pierre Pettigrew, had made provisions to let the sale of
Empowerplus to go on.

Health Canada charged the company anyway and seized the product at the border.

Buckley's strongest argument came when he urged the court to imagine
what would have happened if Tony Stephan and David Hardy, the
founders of the company and product, had complied with Health
Canada's demand to stop providing the product.

Harvard psychiatrist Dr. Charles Popper testified that had the
product not been made available there would "be suicides,
hospitalizations, assaults and possible incarcerations."

"Let's say the defendants had stopped selling this product because of
Health Canada and that there were deaths and there were
hospitalizations," said Buckley.

Stephan and Hardy would likely be before the courts on the much more
serious charges of criminal negligence causing death, said Buckley,
because the evidence is immense that suicides would occur if people
didn't have access to the product.

"There's not a jury in Canada that would accept not having a DIN as
an excuse for causing death and bodily harm. If that's the case, then
why would these proceedings go ahead?" asked Buckley, before a
courtroom packed with dozens of users of the product who credit it
with saving their lives.

Buckley argued that if Health Canada had evidence that a product was
causing harm, then singling out Empowerplus would make sense. But the
very opposite is true. Health Canada officials, specifically Sandra
Jarvis and Miles Brosseau, had both anecdotal and scientific evidence
that proved that withdrawing the product was harmful -- even deadly.

http://calsun.canoe.ca/News/National/2006/03/30/1511902-sun.html