Time For Health Canada to come clean!

Time For Health Canada to come clean!

   On Thursday, November 8^th 2012 a press conference was held in the offices of constitutional lawyer Rocco Galati. The subject was to announce a class action lawsuit that was recently filed, on the behalf of their clients, against Health Canada.

   The clients Nick Mancuso (Actor/Consumer Advocate), Marilyn Nelson (Natural Health Freedom Canada), and David Roland (Natural Health Freedom Advocate) are seeking justice on behalf of the people who sell dietary supplements, vitamins and natural health products in Canada. In the Statement of Claim filed in the Federal Court of Canada, the Lawsuit claims that many of the current policies, regulations and actions undertaken or initiated by Health Canada, against Canadian natural health product manufacturers, retailers or their suppliers, are unconstitutional and contravene The Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms and The Canadian Constitution.

(Left) constitutional lawyer Rocco Galati (right) Nick Mancuso Actor/Consumer Advocate)

   The Class Action Lawsuit maintains that:

1) Dietary supplements and vitamins (“natural health products”) are safe.  In the entire 50+ history of the health food industry in Canada, these innocuous products have caused zero fatalities.

2) Consumers are sufficiently protected from possible harm and fraud with respect to these products by the Food and Drugs Act, the Competition Act, Canadian Advertising Standards, and the Criminal Code.  The Natural Health Product Regulations are unnecessary in that they do not provide any additional protection to consumers.

3) The Natural Health Product Regulations and the NPN Licensing Scheme are ultra vires (unlawful) in that they contravene the Constitution Act, 1867.  Health Canada does NOT have any legal authority to regulate health products, as such.

4) Health Canada has the right to restrict only those products that have been proven to have caused death or serious injury.  In the absence of proven harm, dietary supplements and vitamins must be presumed to be safe (i.e., innocent until proven guilty).  Health Canada has unlawfully reversed this onus, however, by insisting that suppliers prove their products “not unsafe” before being granted permission to sell them.

5) The oppressive and unlawful NHP Regulations have restricted many thousands of safe and effective products from the market, thus depriving consumers of their freedom to choose valuable health options (in apparent violation of our Charter of Rights and Freedoms).

  All this has come about because of policies that the United Nations has set forth and the Canadian government has adopted as part of the GATT (General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade) The effect these laws have is to give a very large advantage to the large pharmaceutical company’s at the expense of smaller health product manufacturers, retailers and  suppliers of such things as vitamins and oil of oregano, Many of these products should be treated as food and not drugs anyway. By putting strict drug licensing and regulations on these small manufactures, producers and retailers the government is forcing them out of business and turning over a large and growing market over to the big pharmaceutical manufacturers and retail drug store chains. Many of these products are not drugs at all but herbs, spices and mixtures of natural plants that mankind has been using as natural herbal remedies for hundreds of years.  

    Nick Mancuso pointed out at the press conference that although many deaths can be attributed over the last few years to drugs that were approved and latter pulled by the FDA, Nobody had in fact ever died from the proper use of “natural health products”

    This class action suit will effect every family in Canada in the way you wish to keep your family healthy and the foods and herbs you will be allowed to have access to. This will be one to follow folks!

Lawrence McCurry

November 8, 2012

Protester or Activist?

    I see a lot of protesters and occupiers calling themselves activists these days, but these people have little clue what a real political activist is. To drop the word political from the term political activist makes you a protester, nothing more. The word activist stems from the word action and although protesting is an important pursuit, to become part of the political process and be actively working toward political goals is what being an activist really is.

    We have a very serious problem in this country. The general public has become so disillusioned with the corrupted main stream political parties that they have stopped taking part in the political process altogether. In the last general federal election only 61.1 percent of the eligible registered voters even bothered. In the recent Toronto/Danforth by election in which I was campaign manager for the leader of the Canadian Action party it was even lower at 43.4% which is less than half the people who could vote did! A lot of people I have met in the Truth movement and in Occupy suffer from the same lack of insight as the general public, in the fact that they strive for political change and yet refuse to become part of the political process.

   The problem with the protest community is the failure to follow through with any one action or set of demands. The powers that be have no fear of protesters and will simply ignore the protester knowing that they will move on until the next scandal. Those in power have no fear and will simply let the police step in if the protesters become a pest. One reason the protester is less of a problem for the politician is the fact that they do not get involved in the political process. The protester is not a threat to him or his power base. Some believe that getting the word out to the public about the things being protested have value, again this might be true if the media were not as controlled as the political process and the public were politically involved, which they no longer are.

    The argument heard most often, not only from the public but also from the people who wrongly think they are activists is that the system is corrupt and all the politicians are crooks, why bother voting when both main parties are the same? This brings us to the big lie, one these same politicians whisper at debates. “To vote for a fringe party or independent is a waste of a vote.” Many also wrongly believe that these fringe parties and independents are no different than the main stream parties, or that they have no real chance of winning. Well that’s what the professional politicians want too. Because buying into that puts you back to why bother voting.    

     Recently a twelve year old girl by the name of Victoria Grant became a you tube sensation with a speech about why Canada should return to utilizing the Bank of Canada. This girl got many views with her message and yet The Canadian Action Party has had this policy as its main platform for years and nobody has paid attention, why? If the people of Canada want to see real change in this country they need to drastically step up their game. Marching in protests, handing out flyers and putting up posters is a noble pursuit, but it does not make you an activist. At a recent protest I had a well-known protester start yelling at me that “he has had his camera broken, been arrested three times and given his whole life over to the cause. So don’t tell me I’m not an activist!”  Sorry no, he’s a protester. An activist would be working in some real way to bring about the political policy that he supports, this is only accomplished by participation in the political process. Besides protesting and educating the public the real activist must get personally involved in the process. This means joining a political party or supporting a candidate at elections. Another method is talking to politicians, in a non-confrontational setting to convince that politician or party that you represent the power base that supplied them with their job. Attending council meetings and writing articles on who does and does not support your cause. Form groups in your community to show that you are a clear voting block that needs to have your considerations taken into account. Or even run for office yourself with your voting block as support.

     There are only two ways that Canadians are ever going to see any kind of real political and monetary reform in this country. You could have a violent bloody revolution where intuitions fail, general mayhem and many people die. Even then there is no guarantee that what you’re left with will be any better than what you have now. The other way is to become politically involved and support an independent candidate or small or fringe party that’s not influenced by banks, corporations or foreign powers. 

     Organizing and participating in protest is an important and necessary pursuit for a political activist, but not the whole game and certainly not all it will take to see the real kind of political change we need and must have if Canada is to be a healthy and happy society. 

Lawrence McCurry

September 22, 2012

No Justice, No Nothing……

    

 Why have the Metro Toronto police given a free pass to the Black Bloc to commit crime in Toronto?

     It has been well over a month since members of the covert crime gang known as the BLACK BLOC committed a serious assault on Toronto blogger Greg Renouf and it seems the Toronto police Dept. refuse to make an arrest even though the victim of this vicious assault has identified two of his attackers!

     Greg Renouf is a local writer who has written extensively on the Occupy movement and their relationship with the socialist/anarchist wing of the Black Bloc.

        Many of you will remember this same group of criminals from the G-20 protests of 2010 in Toronto. Word on the street at the time was that some of the Black Bloc may have been police officers just like the agent provocateurs at the SPP in Montebello Quebec in 2007.  There is no question that this same gang of “anarcho-primitivists” as Renouf had referred to them has been infiltrated by police in the past and most likely still are.

       For months Renouf has been writing articles critical of both the Black Bloc and the controlled Occupy movement that has embraced them. Renouf has shown great courage and restraint in uncovering the secret communist/Marxist control behind the Occupy movement and the various infiltrations of other activist causes like the casserole and student movements of late. Although Renouf usually makes sure he is armed with his Camera and the crowd at protests he did not expect to be jumped at night in a small park at Bellevue Square beside Toronto’s Kensington Market. Around 11:30pm on June 23^rd four of these cowards beat Renouf with a wooden flag pole and kicked him when he fell to the ground. These men were not wearing masks and Renouf could clearly identify two of his attackers. There were also a number of shocked witnesses. Although Renouf sustained serious injuries that required a trip to hospital by ambulance to close the large wounds to his head, he was still able to meet with police the next day and provided names and pictures of two of his four attackers.

      The case was turned over to Detective Williams of 14 div. who seems to be in no hurry to investigate or make an arrest. In fact in the month since the attack the victim has been told that Detective Williams has been on vacation, days off and has yet to return any of the victim’s phone calls personally. Is he waiting for this man to be killed by these thugs or is he just hoping it goes away? There is now speculation on the street that the reason there has been no arrests in this case is because one of Renouf’ s attackers is himself a Metro Toronto police employee. That is quickly becoming a lot easier to believe than the excuse that Detective Williams is too busy to investigate the matter or just too lazy to do his job.

      The power of the alternative media to cover stories that the main stream corporate media refuse to touch is important to the freedom we still have left to us in this society. When a group of criminal thugs are permitted by police to beat a writer for the soul reason that they don’t like what he has to say about them is a travesty not one of us can afford to overlook.

     Whether you sympathize with the protests or not, whether you agree with what he writes or not, when the voice of the alternative media is silenced we are all in the jackpot.  

     If the Toronto police are playing with the safety and life of Greg Renouf just to save the identity of one of their own, who may even be complaisant in this crime they had better come clean sooner rather than later!

Lawrence McCurry

July 30, 2012