What Right Do You Have?

The current threat crushing Canada’s natural health community is about property rights. The property in this case is your body. The basic right of the ownership you have over yourself.

You own everything that defines you. Your physical body, your emotional self, your intellectual self, your spirit and energy, your mind and your thoughts. You may not be able to drive a car without a seat belt, or fill up on gas before pre-paying, but you need to have the right to, for as long as you live, decide what you do with your body.

In Canada you have been free up until now, with a deadline looming, to use a wide range of natural health products and therapies to prevent illness and treat yourself in the event of a health crisis as an option to chemical pharmaceuticals or even surgery.

Most of us in the natural health community have worked very hard to prevent illness and take responsibility for ourselves. We have not been a burden on the health care system. We take pride in knowing, that in Canada’s history not a single death was caused by a natural health product.

In 2008, a risk analysis study showed, that 1.7 million people, in Canada alone, were admitted to hospitals for adverse pharmaceutical drug reactions.

Today, natural health products are being forced off the market because they are putting Canadians at risk? We are being told that they are not safe.

Please take the time to go through the links and articles to understand that these actions are complicated and often contradictory.

Ask yourself. What rights do you have?

Let There Be Freedom

The Charter lists the Rights we already enjoy. It does not create any new rights. Our Courts have declared that we have the freedom to choose how we will address illness or injury in our own bodies when we face a health crisis. Health Canada is using another set of regulations that oppose what the Courts tell us.

The first right listed in the Charter of Health Freedom is taken from our Canadian Charter of Right's and Freedoms:
"the right to life, liberty and the security of the person and the right not to be deprived thereof except in accordance with the principles of fundamental justice". Although the rights listed in the Charter are rights our Courts tell us we already enjoy, there is currently no legislation which sets them out for the bureaucracy to follow. Bureaucrats cannot be faulted for not reading Court decisions, and they have no guiding law to help them to protect our health freedoms.

At the moment we have a disconnect between 2 governing bodies. The Charter creates the strongest regulatory scheme consistent with our Health Rights and our Constitution.

Tipping Point

If the 2004 NHP regulations are allowed to continue, we are going to lose our ability to self-treat and direct our own wellness.

Canada as a nation is at a tipping point. We can either use our power as citizens or we can lose it, and be increasingly controlled.

Your greatest political tool as a citizen is handwritten letters asking reasonable questions and requesting a written response.

Write your MP and the Minister of Health repeatedly and persistently. We need this kind of legal safeguard to protect our right to choose the best treatment for our well-being.

Request that the Charter of Health Freedom be passed into law..

Video: Endangered Natural Health Products HANS (1 Hr 35 min)
Speaker Shawn Buckley
July 2008

Read The Labels

To make things interesting for yourself. Ask the people around you what they think their fundamental freedoms are as a Canadian or as a Human. It is sometimes amusing, sometimes sad and frustrating to find out that, regardless, of who they are, most of the time, they are not quite sure at all.

One answer while writing this section of the Charter site was “To live long and prosper”, with a long pause after that, asking, “Well, what are they?” If we don’t know what they are, how do we exercise them? If we don’t know what they are, how do we keep them? If we don’t know what they are, how do we know if we lose them?

Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms (Section 2)

2. Everyone has the following fundamental freedoms:
a) freedom of conscience and religion;
b) freedom of thought, belief, opinion and expression, including freedom of the press and other media of communication;
c) freedom of peaceful assembly; and
d) freedom of association.

In 1982, one of the most important documents in Canadian history was born. The Charter of Rights and Freedoms provides the framework for the free and democratic society we enjoy today. The Charter’s role has evolved and expanded over several decades. As it enters its third decade of existence, can the document withstand the pressures of technology, issues of privacy and the international demands* of the 21st century? This documentary examines the history of the Charter of Rights and Freedoms, the struggle surrounding the ratification of the document and the importance of the Charter in today’s multicultural society. The program reviews the evolution of the Charter of Rights and each of its guarantees: the fundamental freedoms, democratic rights, mobility rights, legal rights, equality rights, language rights. Interviews with government officials, educators, the legal community and recent immigrants are featured in the program.

Rule of Law

It means that everyone is subject to the law; that no one, no matter how important or powerful, is above the law - not the government; not the Prime Minister, or any other Minister; not the Queen or the Governor General or any Lieutenant-Governor; not the most powerful bureaucrat; not the armed forces; not Parliament itself; not any provincial legislature and certainly not anyone famous. If anyone were above the law, none of our liberties would be safe.

Government of Canada website: http://www.parl.gc.ca/information/library/idb/forsey/rule_of_law_01-e.asp

Constitution of Canada

This is the Supreme Law of Canada, Federal law, our Department of Justice. It contains our Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms. It outlines Canada's system of government, as well as the civil rights of all Canadian citizens.

Official site: http://laws.justice.gc.ca/en/const
Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Constitution_of_Canada

Civil and Political rights

A class of rights ensuring things such as the protection of peoples' physical integrity; procedural fairness in law; protection from discrimination based on gender, religion, race, sexual orientation, etc; individual freedom of belief, speech, association, and the press; and political participation. Contrast with economic, social and cultural rights. Civil and political rights are included in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and elaborated upon in the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights.

Read more…

Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Civil_rights

Universal Declaration of Human Rights

A class of rights that ensure freedoms that include; the protection of physical integrity; procedural fairness in law; protection from discrimination based on gender, religion, race, sexual orientation, etc; individual freedom of belief, speech, association, and the press; and political participation. Civil and political rights are included in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and elaborated upon in the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights.

Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Civil_rights

Human Rights Action Center

Canadian Human Rights Act

The principle that all individuals be given equal opportunity to make for themselves the lives that they are able and wish to have and to have their needs accommodated, consistent with their duties and obligations as members of society, without being hindered in or prevented from doing so by discriminatory practices based on race, national or ethnic origin, colour, religion, age, sex, sexual orientation, marital status, family status, disability or conviction for an offence for which a pardon has been granted.

Read more…

Official site: http://laws.justice.gc.ca/en/showdoc/cs/h-6///en?page=1

Canadian Bill of Rights (Declaration of Rights and Freedoms)

Section 1
1. It is hereby recognized and declared that in Canada there have existed and shall continue to exist without discrimination by reason of race, national origin, colour, religion or sex, the following human rights and fundamental freedoms, namely,
(a) the right of the individual to life, liberty, security of the person and enjoyment of property, and the right not to be deprived thereof except by due process of law;
(b) the right of the individual to equality before the law and the protection of the law;
(c) freedom of religion;
(d) freedom of speech;
(e) freedom of assembly and association; and
(f) freedom of the press.

The principle that all individuals have an inherent rights to build the life they choose while fulfilling their duties and obligations as members of society, is the foundation of the Canadian Human Rights act. The act ensures the right to engage in equal opportunity is unhindered by discriminatory practices based on race, national or ethnic origin, colour, religion, age, sex, sexual orientation, marital status, family status, disability or conviction for an offence for which a pardon has been granted.

Official site: http://laws.justice.gc.ca/en/showdoc/cs/h-6///en?page=1

Canadian Bill of Rights (Declaration of Rights and Freedoms)  
This was Canada’s earliest expression of human rights. It was not as useful as it needed to be for Canadian’s, which was the main reason the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms was adopted.

Official site: http://laws.justice.gc.ca/en/showdoc/cs/C-12.3/bo-ga:l_I//en#anchorbo-ga:l_I
Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canadian_Bill_of_Rights