Clement open to drug plan but sees other options

From CTV News:
Conservative Health Minister Tony Clement says he's open to creating a catastrophic-illness drug plan such as the one promised by the Liberals and the New Democrats, but a brand new initiative isn't the only solution.

Speaking to CTV's Canada AM on Tuesday, Clement said there is already money in the health care system that could go towards prescription drugs if the provinces and feds could work together on the issue.

"What I've said to my provincial counterparts is I'm willing to go forward with a new initiative, but there's money in the system now," Clement said from Huntsville, Ont.

"If we work together to do bulk purchasing of pharmaceutical products, if we work together to reduce our generic drug costs -- because our costs are 25 to 30 per cent higher than they have in the U.S -- then we can find the money to put to new, innovative drugs or drugs for rare diseases." ...more

Firms back campaign against health bill

From the National Post:
When Tony Clement, the Health Minister, agreed last week to revamp a contentious health-products bill, he cited an opposition movement that had spread virus-like across the Internet, garnered broad and sympathetic media attention and spawned protests from Penticton to Parliament Hill.

The Web-based campaign touched a nerve with its dire warnings of an impending clampdown on users of herbs and other natural remedies.

But was the crusade that prompted Mr. Clement's climbdown truly the citizen uprising it appeared to be?

In fact, some of the campaign's alarming criticisms of Bill C-51 were themselves a matter of debate. And the seemingly grassroots movement has been driven largely by two controversial natural-health companies embroiled in drawn-out legal battles with Health Canada. One sells an unlicensed vitamin treatment for bipolar disorder, the other herbal "heart drops" for cardiac disease. ...more

About-face on natural health products

From the Victoria Times Colonist:
In a surprising about-face, Health Minister Tony Clement has agreed to key demands of the natural health products industry after the sector launched a grassroots campaign against restrictions on homeopathic medicines and herbal remedies in new legislation.

When Clement proposed amendments to the Food and Drugs Act in April, natural medicines were lumped in with pharmaceutical drugs, raising concerns they would be subject to the same type of oversight. He now admits it was a mistake not to create a separate category under the law.

"My attitude is a bill is a work in progress. Let's see whether we are clearly getting out the things that we want to do in a particular bill. In this case, obviously protecting the health and safety of Canadians was and remains the motive for the bill," Clement said in an interview Friday. ...more

Clement calls natural-health claim "absurd"

From the Georgia (BC) Straight:
Health Minister Tony Clement has struck back at claims by lawyer Shawn Buckley in last week’s Georgia Straight that his proposed regulations in Bill C-51 would result in a Canada-wide death toll of “tens of thousands” or more.

“It’s absurd, it really is,” Clement told the Straight by phone on June 9. “We can disagree on public policy, but to use that kind of language is really over the top and regrettable.”

Buckley, a Kamloops-based constitutional lawyer, spoke at a June 2 downtown event organized by the Health Action Network Society in opposition to Clement’s health bill before the House of Commons.

During his speech, Buckley—also president of a group called the Natural Health Products Protection Association—claimed that Clement’s bill would result in more natural health products (or NHPs) being regulated off the market due to strict licensing and labelling laws as well as more stringent policing of the industry and greater Health Canada enforcement powers. ...more