Health in Balance: Can Natural Health Products Stay Alive in a World of Pharmaceuticals? With NHPPA & TrueHope - Episode 259

Important Links (Guest bios in website links):

NHPPA - Natural Health Products Protection Association - Get Involved! https://nhppa.org/

TrueHope - https://www.truehope.com/

Links Mentioned by Shawn Buckley: https://nationalcitizensinquiry.ca/

https://nationalcitizensinquiry.ca/witness/david-collett-stephan/

Links to past episodes about Natural Health Products in Canada and Globally (shown in Spotify by available on all podcasting platforms):

Episode 178:  https://open.spotify.com/episode/5zy7l5IwOlGUZpXvk7b59M?si=q1-pujx_QcOGAOhrlDL-Mg

Episode 217:  https://open.spotify.com/episode/0XhwtMSPQURF7nLy2aH0qt?si=Oq-Eo4ykQZaVOI41ZFNlWQ

Episode 254:  https://open.spotify.com/episode/4uIAA9ygayDubW5mOikY4C?si=j-HfkOVIRQSurxLwSocoPg

Global discussions about natural health with Brett Hawes:  https://onwardpod.substack.com

Join my Substack, where you'll get a glimpse of my upcoming book:
https://sandykruse.substack.com/

The episode examines the challenges that natural health products face against regulations influenced by the pharmaceutical industry and the consequences for public health in Canada. Through personal stories and legal insights, experts Shawn Buckley and David Stephan advocate for health autonomy, urging listeners to actively safeguard their access to natural wellness solutions.

• Discussion of the current regulatory landscape and its impact on natural health products 
• Shawn Buckley's experiences with legal battles for natural health rights 
• David Stephan's personal narrative linking mental health struggles to natural remedies 
• Call to action encouraging grassroots advocacy against restrictive health regulations 
• Overview of the self-care framework and its implications for access to health products

Chapters

• 0:00 Health Canada's Impact on Natural Health
• 16:32 Natural Health Supplements for Mental Illness
• 27:17 Government Funding of Clinical Trial
• 33:35 Health Canada's 1-800 Crisis Line
• 46:02 Regulation of Natural Health Products
• 49:29 Natural Health Regulation and Impact
• 1:04:31 The Drug Approval Process and Patents
• 1:10:21 Health Canada's Self-Care Framework Impact

Transcript

Sandy Kruse: 0:00

Hi everyone, it's me, Sandy Kruse of Sandy K, nutrition, health and Lifestyle Queen. For years now, I've been bringing to you conversations about wellness from incredible guests from all over the world. Discover a fresh take on healthy living for midlife and beyond, one that embraces balance and reason, without letting only science dictate every aspect of our wellness. Join me and my guests as we explore ways that we can age gracefully, with in-depth conversations about the thyroid, about hormones and other alternative wellness options for you and your family. True Wellness nurtures a healthy body, mind, spirit and soul, and we cover all of these essential aspects to help you live a balanced, joyful life. Be sure to follow my show, rate it, review it and share it. Always remember my friends balanced living works. Balanced Living Works. Hi everyone, welcome to Sandy Kay, nutrition, health and Lifestyle Queen.

Sandy Kruse: 1:42

Today, I have with me Shawn Buckley of the NHPPA and David Stephan of True Hope Canada. Today, we are going to talk about natural health products and we're going to speak specifically on what's happening in Canada. However, if you are not Canadian and you're listening, I encourage you to listen to the entire podcast episode, and the reason I say that is because I've actually recorded with Brett Hawes. I'm going to actually put all of the recordings in the show notes for those of you who want a little bit of history behind what's happening with natural health products. And I will note that this issue that's going on is not going on just in Canada. There are some interesting things happenings with natural health products globally here in Canada, something that we've seen, and it's not just in Canada, I think it's happening in the US as well. We're seeing some of these really high end, therapeutic grade supplements bought by pharmaceutical companies. I'll give you a very specific example. I am a registered holistic nutritionist. I'm also a certified metabolic balance coach and I worked with clients for years one-on-one, and there were many supplements that I would recommend that were just not supplements that you could buy off the shelf. These are really good, good quality supplements. Well, guess what? Recently, a number of them were purchased by Apotex, which is a pharmaceutical company. Now I'm going to just give you a little scenario. If many of these supplements are there for preventative care and that said pharmaceutical company actually manufactures pharmaceuticals for disease states, for those who are not really interested in prevention, wouldn't that be a conflict of interest? I just like you to think about that.

Sandy Kruse: 4:08

By the way, I do have a new podcast coming. I haven't decided when I'm going to release this, but I've recorded a number of episodes. It will only be available through my sub stack, at least for now sandycruisesubstackcom. And my new podcast is called Think About it, where really I just bring topics of wellness to light just for you to think about. I'm not telling you how to think about certain things. I'm just asking you to think about how certain things may actually affect you and your wellness and your decisions. I think we come from this world of wellness where you've got people telling you what to do from so many different angles, and so that's why I created this podcast. It's only going to be six to 16 minutes each week. So join me on Substack, follow me on all of my social media channels. It's Sandy Kay Nutrition everywhere.

Sandy Kruse: 5:11

I just passed five years, you guys, and I will say this has been 110% a passion project for me. It has always been about passion over profit for me, because I'm here to help others see if we can be proactive about our wellness and age better. Yeah, we might be living longer, but we're living sicker, and I think a lot of people don't think about their wellness as it relates to modern day life. So please share this podcast, share my podcast. That's the way everybody learns that I'm even here. I'm not a celebrity. I don't have a big name behind my podcast, like all of these other podcasters, so the only way that people know about me is through my social media and through sharing. So I'm going to ask you to share this episode with at least one person. Do it through Instagram, do it through Facebook, do it through text, just however you do it, please do it, because it really helps me to secure amazing guests each and every week, just to help you live your best life. Check the show notes, because I'm going to have the other recordings listed there. And also, if you are on Apple or Spotify, please review my podcast with a few kind words. Thank you, and now let's cut on through to this amazing and informative interview with Sean Buckley and David Stephen.

Sandy Kruse: 7:09

Hi everyone, welcome to Sandy K Nutrition, health and Lifestyle Queen. Today with me, I have two special guests. My first guest is Sean Buckley, and he's a Canadian constitutional lawyer with over 30 years of experience and a proven track record defending more natural health companies against Health Canada than any other lawyer. Since 2008, mr Buckley has been president of the Natural Health Products Protection Association Association, nhppa, whom I've recorded with twice now, and this association is dedicated to protecting Canadians' access to natural health products.

Sandy Kruse: 7:55

My second guest with us today is David Stephen. He has worked extensively with True Hope, a scientific research-based organization with a passion for providing individuals with groundbreaking micronutrient solutions for overcoming mental illness. He has been involved in leading-edge discoveries that have provided significant transformation in thousands of lives and has been scientifically validated in dozens of independent studies from universities around the world, and today we're going to be discussing the status of natural health products in Canada, which actually reflects on what's happening all over the world right now. So don't leave this conversation thinking that it's only applicable to Canada. I just want to make that note right off the bat, because it's applicable to everywhere around the world, and Sean and David bring a rare combination of legal expertise and real worldworld industry experience to this conversation. So stick around. This is going to be a really good one, you guys, and welcome. I'm so happy to have you both today.

Shawn Buckley: 9:17

Very pleased to be with you, Sandy. Appreciate it.

Sandy Kruse: 9:20

Me too, and I think you know I always say a background story is really, really important to every conversation. Everything we do is usually passion for some reason. So let's start with you, sean. Please give us. You've got such a history in Canada.

Shawn Buckley: 9:41

So you want to know how I got into this.

Sandy Kruse: 9:43

Yeah, why so interested in natural health?

Shawn Buckley: 9:47

So back in 1994, I was working at a law firm that had the federal government contract in Kamloops so anything federal government, we would be the federal government's lawyers. And there was a herbalist named Jim Strauss that was suing Health Canada because Health Canada had seized herbs he was, you know, importing from the United States Perfectly legal for him or anyone else to import. But you know Health Canada hated this guy and was trying to shut him down. So well, let's steal his herbs. And he's suing to get the herbs back. And I end up being Health Canada's lawyer and I go to court and I have his case thrown out of court because he was in the wrong court. But he and I got along really well and you know he took me out for lunch afterwards, which speaks to his character. And then shortly after I start my own firm and then another effort to have him shut down, health Canada convinces the College of Physicians and Surgeons of BC to charge him with practicing medicine without a license and he wanted to hire me. So I had to get Health Canada to waive solicitor-client privilege, which they did, which is why I can talk about this and I represent him in court Now that he's charged with practicing medicine, and practicing medicine was defined as it included making treatment claims. Well, he was making treatment claims.

Shawn Buckley: 11:15

He could not shut up about curing heart disease. He drove around in a white van covered in red letters. We cure heart disease. You know hi I'm. You know, sean, why? Cure heart disease Like he probably wouldn't even give us. He could not stop. Now why he couldn't stop.

Shawn Buckley: 11:29

He was an older gentleman. He flew in the German Air Force in the Second World War. His family were traditional healers in Austria for 400 years and he was trained in the family business. He's working as an electrical engineer for BC Hydro and he has a heart attack. He's rushed to the hospital. They do the angiogram. He's got one artery fully blocked, another 80% blocked. They say, jim, you're going to die unless we do a double bypass. And he didn't like that idea. So he went home, made his heart drops, cured himself, lived probably another 35 years, died in an old folks' home without ever having a bypass surgery and thought I've got to do this. So that's why he's passionate, saved his life and he's trying to help people.

Shawn Buckley: 12:12

I mean, when you get to David's story, it's the exact same thing. And so now I've got to defend him. Well, how do I defend this guy? The law says he can't make claims, he can't shut up about making claims, and so I have to attack the law for violating freedom of expression. But I have a narrative problem. Back then, like now, the charter is meaningless. I mean the courts have just made it meaningless, but back then it was very meaningful and the court decisions on freedom of expression, I mean the law, was 100% on my, my side.

Shawn Buckley: 12:43

But I had a narrative problem. So put yourself in the judge's shoes. Although case law tells you you should let this guy, he's got the right to freedom of expression, but Health Canada's convinced you and the term they used was he called? They called them a rogue herbalist. This is a rogue herbalist. Who's who's endangering lives because they need bypass surgeries, they need what Health Canada would call proper medical treatment, or they will die or, you know, injure themselves with heart attacks, you know significantly. And so now the judge believes there's a danger and you as a judge, just in simple psychology, even though the law says this guy should be able to, are you going to say he can speak and kill people? So I had a narrative problem. So I asked Jim like is there? I know there's no clinical trial. He had a little herb shop. So I go there and I said Jim, like I know I got your story but it's going to be viewed as self-serving, Like, is there any other way we can show you're telling the truth? And he sandy, he brought me boxes I forget now if it was three boxes or five, it was an odd number filled with letters like so you know what? I have five thousand letters, ten thousand, I don't even know I I remember it took me forever to read them and they were all the same, like they might as well just have been a photocopy with changed names. They weren't. Most of them were hand, were handwritten, but they were all the same. I had heart disease, I was sick, I was dying. I took your heart drops, I got well. I can't enter a single one of those letters in court pure hearsay. But I can call the authors of those letters. And so on the day of trial I had five middle class professionals, and I chose middle class professionals because the judge is a middle class professional. These are the judge's people, they'll be credible. They had all had heart disease. They had all had at least one open heart bypass surgery. One of them had had two. They all continued to have heart disease because the reasons their arteries are being plugged up isn't being addressed. They all needed another bypass surgery to survive. A couple of them were too weak to survive the surgeries so they were sent home to die and the others weren't willing to go through it again just to buy another year or two because it was just too traumatic. So the medical system's a dead end. They come across these heart drops. They all get well, sandy, on the day of trial. They're all working full time. Most of them had been disabled for like a decade or more and you can't fake that. So that was kind of my road to Damascus conversion experience, because when I was acting for Health Canada against this guy, it's like, oh yeah, is this ever dangerous? You know, some rogue herbalist is peddling snake oil and people aren't, you know, seeking proper medical treatment. I mean it sounds great, great, except it's a lie. Well, after I prepared for that trial, it was like, no, the opposite is true. The danger is removing this guy and you know I could have given you the names, phone numbers and addresses of like thousands of people that are only alive because of his, you know drops. So I came to a realization that it is extremely dangerous to allow a regulatory body to tell us how we're going to treat ourselves. And this is a situation where the medical system was a dead end. Now I'll stop there and we'll segue to David, but I'll just, you know, set him up by saying you know, I acted for the company he's going to start talking about because Health Canada charged them criminally and they had started restricting this product and it treats serious mental illness. And when I was calling witnesses to call them, and the court acquitted them basically saying thank goodness you defied Health Canada, or more people would have died. So, in effect, and the court acquitted them basically saying thank goodness you defied Health Canada, or more people would have died. So, in effect, the court was saying Health Canada killed people by restricting access. But, sandy, I'm calling these people and these are people that had severe bipolar disorder. These are the people that are being involuntarily committed to psych wards and their lifespan, like once they hit that stage, like after five years, they're all dead, like the mainstream system's a dead end for them. They have zero life, they're being involuntarily committed, they're being doped up the yin yang, they have the medical system and they've tried every drug cocktail. I mean the doctors at that point are creating new drug cocktails. Nothing approved works and yet Health Canada, like they did with stress heart drops, takes the position like even when the medical system is a dead end for you, you are 100% guaranteed to be dead in a couple of years. You're not allowed legally in Canada to you know, try other things.

Sandy Kruse: 17:26

So that is a perfect segue to get to you, david, if you could continue with your story, because that's very, it's a very power. I love how you set things up. This is why you're a lawyer, right Sean. So, David, I would love to hear from you.

David Stephan: 17:48

Fantastic, yeah, so so kind of a similar type story where you know it comes down to life and death. And that's a serious nature of some of the natural health supplements that are out there is that some people actually literally rely on them for their life, otherwise they wouldn't be here. And so so you know, our story really began in the late 70s when my grandfather on my mother's side took his own life, and there's a for lack of better terms a very rich, uh, history or a very prevalent history of mental illness on my mother's side, and you can see it in in my cousins, my second cousins. It it's a multi-generational thing that goes back who knows how far. So my grandfather takes his life in the late 70s, my mother is struggling with bipolar disorder throughout the 80s and her and my father have nine children, and so life is busy, life is hectic, life is is stressful, and things really came to a climax in january of 1994 when she was struggling so bad that she decided to go to the doctor and receive help. She ended up with a prescription for prozac. She took that prescription for about two to three weeks before she ended up taking her own life, leaving behind nine children and her husband of 22 years becoming a statistic, because it would be a decade later that we'd find out that the Prozac would at minimum increase your risk of suicide by two times, but in certain situations, especially with certain varieties of bipolar, anywhere from eight to 12 times suicide risk increased suicide risk from it. But we wouldn't find that out until a decade later because that was suppressed science that was being really kind of just kept in the closet. So if we fast forward now, we've got.

David Stephan: 19:35

A number of my siblings have been diagnosed with mental health conditions. My older sister, autumn. She's in her early 20s. She's in and out of the psych ward. She has a three-year-old son. When she's not in the psych ward she has to be on 24-hour supervision because she's obsessing about killing herself and her three-year-old son. At best the medications are leaving her in a state of sedation, but she still has psychotic episodes and it's just a mess and there's no quality of life and her husband's just trying to hold things together and her husband's really taking care of two people at home, a three-year-old son and his wife, and so that's the situation that my older sister finds herself in.

David Stephan: 20:16

Well, my older brother, who's just three years older than me. He's about 15 years old. He's quite a large boy, he's in the low 200 pounds, kind of a raging bull, and he's homicidal, he's suicidal and he basically has all the ingredients together to make up the recipe for the next schoolyard shooting. That's the type of situation he's in, and my father's looking at this and just watching his family continue to fall apart. And so, as 1995 persists, he comes to the realization that the medications that are being offered them aren't helping, that there's no known answer. He, rather than just work with family doctors, he went and met with the head psychiatrist out of the Foothills Hospital in Calgary and was given the information that this is as good as it's going to get. You need to face the reality that someday you may have to plan more funerals because these disorders do not go away and often in time to get worse. And so he was given this brutal information. But it was necessary for him to hear it, because that's when he began to turn and look elsewhere for answers, outside of the medical system, and that's when he began to spend a lot of time in prayer and fasting, pleading that his family would be saved from these issues, because he was watching his children go down the exact same road that their mother went down and that their grandfather went down, and nothing miraculous happened overnight.

David Stephan: 21:35

But something interesting happened in November of 1995. As a property manager over 26 large buildings in southern Alberta, he's walking down the hallway one day with a colleague, david Hardy, and he feels impressed. Colleague David Hardy, and he feels impressed to tell David Hardy about what's going on at home. And so he does, basically ending off the conversation. If things don't change, we have no choice but to institutionalize. My older brother, joseph, and his colleague had something really interesting to say. He said you know, tony, I've got a large family like yours, but they're all fine, they're well. I've never dealt with mental illness, however.

David Stephan: 22:05

I spent over 20 years in the animal feed industry formulating feed for hogs across Western Canada and the West United States, and we saw something common in the hog pens called ear and tail biting syndrome, where the hogs have become hyper irritable with each other. They bite chunks of their ears and tails off each other and if you didn't separate them out they'd actually end up killing each other. He says we learned that you could completely eradicate that condition simply by putting the proper nutrition into their feed, and in that moment my father had already tried a bunch of stuff. He'd been talking to people in the community. He'd tried magnetic therapy, tahitian noni juice, copious amounts of flax oil, omega-3 oils, stuff like that all good stuff but nothing was working for my older brother, joseph, to allow for him to get off the medication and to um establish quality of life.

David Stephan: 22:52

But in that moment, he says, like a light bulb went off. He knew it was the answer and it's a good thing he had that confirmation, because he went down to a health food store, grabbed all these products, tried it out and it didn't work. And so then they tried it out and it didn't work. And so then they tried it again. And they tried it again and it would be just over two months later, in january of 1996, that they'd come across four products out of the states that worked. And the reason why they worked is because the minerals were put into such a form that they were actually bioavailable. Colloidal minerals, chelated minerals, were being employed and all of a sudden, within five days, joe was saying it's like a fog lifted. I can now see what was right and wrong. So here he was in this fog of mental illness, and it was everyone else's problem. When there was an issue that arose, it was the other person's problem. He was never to blame in his own eyes. And now, all of a sudden, he's able to examine himself, he's able to see with eyes more clearly and his behavior starts to change quite quickly because he's seeing through a different lens, a lens that's not so clouded. Within 30 days, he would have no longer received the diagnosis for bipolar.

David Stephan: 23:55

A month later, my sister ends up having to come and stay with us for a week because she had to be on 24-hour supervision and her husband was working a night shift at a factory. So she comes to stay with us and it was in that, uh, during that week time that my father took the opportunity to get her onto the supplements and, um, and things started to change pretty quickly. Um, it was a little bit rough, but it was better than than it was, and within a week she'd already had major turnarounds, to the point that her husband uh, husband got on board, because he definitely wasn't on board at first. And there's a good thing, there's a five hour drive distance between him and my father, because it would have been probably more than words, because the psychiatrist told them that if you rock the boat and you play around with medications, you're going to die, and so they weren't willing to do anything different, even though her life was complete misery, and so they continued on with it. Within 45 days, they had her off of all of her medications and they thought she was 100% better. She wasn't, but she was sure a lot better than she had been, and as time went on, she just got better and better and better, but no longer like just within the first month of her being on it. No longer was she a 24-hour supervised patient, right, because she was no longer thinking about killing herself. She was no longer thinking about killing her son. She was now starting to, to you know, take up hobbies and side businesses and stuff that she wanted to do that she couldn't do when she was in that state of sedation. So that was the beginning of true hope.

David Stephan: 25:19

Well, when you fast forward, um four years after this, we end up in a situation where we've developed our own all-in-one supplement to make it more cost effective and to ensure that the quality of the supplement is there, that's generating the results that we're looking for personally within our own home, but also that the community has come to rely on and there was no idea about making it into a business at first, but it just naturally started to spread like wildfire when people saw the change that took place in my brother, joe. And all of a sudden you know the principal rather than phoning my dad saying hey, we've got an issue with Joe, again he's saying, hey, we've got an issue with another kid. Do you think you can consult with his parents. And so all of a sudden all these types of phone calls are taking place and it spreads through the small community we're living in and it was at that point in time that it took on kind of an organic business nature of its own. And so four years later, we have our own all-in-one supplement. It's getting studied in the University of Calgary at the Alberta Children's Hospital. The results are phenomenal. Bonnie Kaplan, the researcher who's undertaken to do the studies, she's looking at this. She's so excited about the preliminary results of the first study that's coming out that in October of 2000, she releases those results before the study is even fully completed, and it makes national news.

David Stephan: 26:38

And literally the next day Health Canada swoops in. They phoned my father and said who gave you permission to speak on television last night about what you're doing and my father's thinking like what? Am I in Bolivia, here, or some third world country where we don't have the ability to talk? I need to get permission from the government to speak on what we're doing. And but they proceeded to say that study's being shut down. You're no longer going to be able to supply these supplements. You're in contravention. I believe it is section 3132 of the Food and Drugs Act and in order to help somebody with bipolar disorder, you need a drug identification number, even though it's a multivitamin. And yes, go ahead, john.

Shawn Buckley: 27:13

Well, just to make it stronger. So the audience understands, david. So this is actually a study being funded by the Alberta government. So the Bayview Research Unit which is running this clinical trial, it's all they do. They were set up to do this. They run clinical trials. They're based at Children's Hospital, they're part of the Faculty of Medicine at the University of Calgary and this study is funded by the Alberta government because a couple of earlier studies they did showed such amazing results that the Alberta government agreed the taxpayer needs to fund a large double-blind clinical trial. So when David's telling you that Health Canada is shutting down this trial, understand it's a trial being run by the Alberta, funded by the Alberta government, run out of Children's Hospital by a unit of the Faculty of Medicine. That this is all they do. They run clinical trials. They are professionals at it. This was a blue chip government funded endeavor. Sorry, david.

David Stephan: 28:15

That's okay. No, and $544,000. So it was no small study and, yeah, it was being piggybacked off of the initial results that were being publicized in the news. So at that point in time, there's basically two studies that are kind of running concurrently. The one's about to come to a close and the one is just ramping up. So Health Canada comes in, they swoop in, they shut it all down. So we see censorship right there and you have, you know. It becomes a major topic over the next three years. The news is covering it. It becomes a parliamentary debate In 2003,.

David Stephan: 28:46

They come in, they raid us at gunpoint. They try to just get us to go away. They're doing everything in their power. They seize the product at the border, preventing 3,000 Canadians from having access to it. Now, remember, these are Canadians that aren't just taking it based on the fact that, hey, this looks like a phenomenal multivitamin and I'm going to take it for health. I hear it's good for cognition. No, these are people that are taking it because they were in crisis and they're not.

David Stephan: 29:12

A lot of them aren't referring to us as true hope. They're referring to us as last hope because they had already exhausted everything that was available to them within the medical system. It didn't work. A lot of them already had plans in place to take their lives, because they didn't see that there was any. There was nothing worthwhile about existing within that type of situation and the medical system wasn't helping them. They stumble across our products. They're looking at it and saying, well, I got nothing to lose, because if this doesn't work, I was already going to take my life anyways. And so they're taking our supplements. They get better. Many of them are going back to college or they're going back to their careers or whatever it is. They're pursuing their dreams. So they got their livelihoods back. The quality of life has been reestablished. In fact, most of them are reporting that their quality of life is better than it's ever been.

Shawn Buckley: 30:02

David, can I step in Because I'm so excited about what you're saying. So, sandy, when I'm interviewing these people to prep them for the trial, before you prep call a witness, I've got a list of questions figured out that I think I need to get the picture. But every single one of these witnesses I spoke to shared something with me. I hadn't even thought of asking, but David's hit on it. So these are people, like I say, that were in and out of the psych ward. You know, any expert would say they. You know, if you're alive in two years, it's a miracle. Everyone would agree that the approved legal drugs aren't working and and they're totally disabled. Now they are working full-time, they are in university full-time. Like empower plus works for most of them and if it works, you're normal. Like it doesn't kind of work. You're, you're normal, you're cured. So, but every one of them shared with me and these are people that are working full-time. They're not suffering at this moment and they weren't suffering when they decided to do this. 100% of them shared with me.

Shawn Buckley: 31:13

I had a suicide plan in place because I know Health Canada is restricting the product Now smuggling rings they all got together and created smuggling rings. So the people I'm talking to didn't run out, but they made it clear to me I'm going to kill myself while I'm still sane before I go back to being sick. They're not going to wait till they get sick. I they've been freed from that. 100% of them had a plan to kill themselves and a lot of them did run out. The Canadian Mental Health Association would hold a press conference every time there was a suicide they were aware of.

Sandy Kruse: 31:59

Can I ask a question and I think that this is the biggest thing that people who are not sitting where you are, sean, or you are David is can this supplement do more harm than taking the actual drug?

David Stephan: 32:21

Yeah, no.

Sandy Kruse: 32:24

No, right. So there's enough research out there. I mean, you've probably heard of that study about the prison mates who were actually fed a really good diet with high nutritional value. They were given supplements. The violence went down, the crime went down. You've probably heard of that study right down the mental. You probably heard of that study right and so you can't really, you can't really argue it. So what is the reasoning behind all of this and Health Canada? I think we need to say it Go ahead, sean.

Shawn Buckley: 33:01

David, you know this Empower Plus is licensed as a vitamin supplement. That's in health food stores and anyone, without any advice, can go and pick it up and take it. So let's not pretend it's dangerous. It's vitamins and minerals. It just happens to be chelated in such a way you can access them. So I think people have to understand that our Food and Drug Act is not there to protect people's health, it's there to protect intellectual property rights. You know, I was still learning here. When was that trial, david? Anyway, like 2006, 2007, something like that, maybe 2008? 2005.

David Stephan: 33:43

It was rendered in the summer of 2006.

Shawn Buckley: 33:46

Okay, so we're running this trial in 2005, sandy, and there's a health candidate inspector on the stand and I'm trying to set her up with a bunch of questions that I know I'm going to get yeses to, and then I'll create this box and she can't get out of it. For, you know, the final question and one of my lead-up questions, which I just thought was a slam dunk of course she's going to say yes was something like well, you know, as a health Canada inspector, you're there to protect our health. Now, everyone viewing this would think, well, the answer is going to be yes, but her problem is that she's under oath and she's not wanting to lie, so she won't tell me yes. And I'm trying to circle around like cause I, I need her to say yes. I'm trying to circle around like because I, I need her to say yes, I'm trying to create this box and she won't say yes. And then she truthfully explains to me that Health Canada and listen carefully, health Canada is there, not there for good health outcomes.

Shawn Buckley: 34:40

Health Canada is there to enforce the Food and Drug Act and regulations, and the Food and Drug Act and regulations and the Food and Drug Act and regulations say that you cannot sell a life-saving supplement to people that you know will die otherwise. That's not what it says. It says you can't sell something that's not approved of by Health Canada and you can't get approval for a natural health product to treat a serious health condition like bipolar disorder, because you don't have a patent and the process it's going to cost you a billion dollars. So you'll never raise the money, he'll never spend the money and then, as soon as you're through, everyone can compete with you anyway. But there's too much vested interest to allow a non-patented product that actually works through. So it will never happen.

Shawn Buckley: 35:31

But you know, understand, when you have Health Canada inspectors under oath and they're actually going to tell the truth, they make it very clear Like a different inspector I mean, david, I think you know this evidence better than I do know. Mr Bruce, oh, like I'm. I think I'm saying something like because it was clear people were dying like sandy before they started seizing product. Like psychiatrists and doctors and patients and family members were communicating health Canada to health Canada because we have their letters saying don't do this, people are going to die like nothing else, psychiatrist writing, nothing else works and my patients like perfectly well, like they're going to die if you take this way. They didn't care and so basically it put to it kind of a different health Canada inspector, something like well, you know, if you had information that somebody, your actions, were still going to kill somebody, like, would you still go ahead? Yes, yes, we have transcripts.

David Stephan: 36:33

Like I'm not, anyone can verify this?

Shawn Buckley: 36:39

It's almost. I wish. I sincerely wish it wasn't true. I wished, I wish that Health Canada was there to protect our health and I wish that Health Canada would not be taking actions to enforce the Food and Drug Act, which is their mandate, knowing that their actions are going to lead to harm and death. I wish that was the reality, but it's not.

David Stephan: 37:02

The courtroom just about erupted when you asked that question and everybody was expecting a no and he said yes, yet we would continue to move forward, in essence, with our, our directives, regardless of whether people are dying. That that's exactly what was being communicated. Everybody got it in the courtroom and there was just uh, like everybody was aghast.

Sandy Kruse: 37:29

But there's so much conflict there because all you hear now is that they're doing certain. You're going to get into the bills, Some of these bills that have come into place.

Shawn Buckley: 37:49

A lot of the reasoning behind it is that they're saying that it's to protect Canadians. Yeah, but that's public messaging and you know it's not true, david, I feel compelled to talk about the 1-800 crisis lines because we're talking about this trial, and so here we have one inspector explaining to us no, we're not there to protect your health, we're here to enforce the law. And another inspector saying, under oath, oh yeah, no, no, I'll continue to take actions, even if it's clear I'm going to kill people. Um, there was such an uproar. Well, like I mean, think about it, you got 3 000 canadians and their families who know they're going to. 3 000 people are going to die or and their family members are going to die if they can't keep accessing these products. Like there's perfect clarity here with these people and Health Canada is seizing product at the border. I mean, they're erupting and their doctors are erupting and their family members are erupting. There was so much turmoil that the minister's office it was health minister, was it Anne McClellan? Like their phone's constantly ringing. So we know from their internal emails that we got through disclosure, that they made a decision. Actually, like we're being disrupted, our lives are being inconvenienced here by these people that are saying they're going to die. So let's create what we called it was called in the media the 1-800 crisis line, like they actually publicly stated, both verbally in front of the press and on their website. You know, we know that some, you know some people are concerned about this. So we've created this 1-800 crisis line, so we have professional mental health counselors to. You know, take your calls and you know, help you and these people were told. Well, just, you know, tell them to go back to their, you know, to the psychiatric drugs that were death sentence for them. So, as soon as you phone the minister's office, if you said EMPR plus a true up, they just hit a button and bang, you're off to this 1-800 crisis line.

Shawn Buckley: 39:42

Well, in a criminal trial, you have the right to anything that's relevant and we had asked and asked and asked before the trial. Well, give us these notes of this 1-800 crisis line. Well, we want these notes and you know, oh, they're coming, they're coming, they're coming. Well, you know, the trial starts and I don't have them, and so I bring it up to the judge. Like you know, I need these notes. We've already started the trial. I need these notes. We've already started the trial. I need them before we finish. I mean, in all fairness, we should have just adjourned and waited, but you know, we've got witnesses flying from literally all around the world, or North America anyway. We're all ready to go. Like you know, you just make strategic decisions. Well, second day of trial. You know I need these crisis line notes.

Shawn Buckley: 40:26

I think it was the third day of trial where the Crown shares with us third or fourth day trial that it was a new word undiscoverable. So apparently these notes were in an assistant deputy minister's office, like that. In itself that's pretty weird, isn't it? Why would these crisis line notes be in an assistant deputy minister's office? Hard to believe already, but anyway, they were. And this assistant deputy minister got transferred to another ministry and the notes are missing, so they're undiscoverable. Well, the judge blows up on the Crown and makes it very clear that if we don't have those soon, and makes it very clear that if we don't have those soon, that the judge will entertain a you know application for a stay. So now the very.

Shawn Buckley: 41:14

We learn by the end of the day that these undiscoverable 1-800 crisis line notes have been discovered. Sandy, can you believe it, like just they happen to be discovered the same day. The judge yells at the crown saying you know, I'm going to throw the charges out, um, and as you know, as we're in court, they're being faxed from ottawa to the department of justice in edmonton and you know they'll be delivered to my hotel room by, you know, the evening or the next morning. It was pages Sandy of people begging for their lives. You can't read them without weeping. It's impossible to read them without weeping. And that's the agency people believe are there to protect them.

David Stephan: 42:05

That's what's so important here, is understanding how they've operated in times past, because it's that you know lamp of history that guides our feet today, where we see where we're going. And literally people were begging for their lives. Ron Legenez, the former head of the Canadian Mental Health Association's Alberta chapter, was warning Health Canada, saying look, there's going to be suicides. And then there was suicides and he came and testified to the suicides, the funerals that he went and attended. He came and testified.

David Stephan: 42:36

During that trial, health Canada was put on notice. There was there was no ambiguity here in relation to what health Canada was was doing. They knew what they were doing. They knew that they were. They were putting people's lives in harm's way.

David Stephan: 42:48

It was criminal what they were doing, and yet they did it to enforce policy to ultimately try to remove a product that would be a blessing to people that were suffering with psychiatric conditions, severe mental health issues, that would ultimately compete with the pharmaceutical industry. And so it was just. It was bad business all around and people's lives were lost because of it and there was no excuse for it. And so we need to understand what Health Canada's, how they operate and how cold and callous it is, because this is the problem is that when we are, when we're coming up against an enemy, when we're seeking to incite change, when we're when we're at the battlefront, we need to understand what our enemy is capable of doing and what they're willing to do, and they're willing to to kill Canadians to enforce and push their agendas. And that's exactly what we saw when they came and attacked a well-balanced, very bioavailable multivitamin mineral supplement that was helping to nourish people in such a way that those mental health conditions that they once suffered with were no longer there.

Shawn Buckley: 43:56

But we got to bring that home to today because you're talking about people who actually died when access was restricted. But how many people are dead today because they can't be told? You know, sandy, let's say I've got, you know, a 13-year-old boy, a son who's you know, entering into this. You know, because it starts in puberty and you know this severe bipolar is starting to manifest and nothing's working. And you know, it's clear the medical system isn't going to. So I go to the health food store and I'm looking, desperately looking for help and I pick up that bottle and it says that all that Health Canada will allow and it's something like supports mental health and wellness or something like it's total milquetoast.

Shawn Buckley: 44:46

I've had health canada scientists tell me they know it works. Now how am I going to know that that's a product? You can't just follow the label, you've got to have advice. There's, there's, there's a real procedure to this. You need somebody who knows what they're doing to, to guide you through this, to manage you until you're well and you've got the protocol. But how am I going to know that that's the product that's going to save my son's life when there's censorship, when people are not allowed to share truthful health information, I think for this product. Now they're and david can correct me on the number there's 35 published peer-reviewed studies, all funded by governments around the world, some in the highest journals like Journal of Psychiatry, Journal of Child and Adolescent Psych. Oh, I'm sorry. Yes, I'm having one of those mornings, but True Hope can't share those with you because of the censorship, which can help us segue into how the law is changing, which is another topic we have to cover because Health Canada, the censorship is causing lives.

David Stephan: 45:58

Yeah, it's important to understand that that censorship continues because it was only. It was June of 2023. It was June of 2023. After going back and forth for about eight months with Health Canada, they came at us in October of 2022 saying look, you've got information on your website that we don't approve of. You need to remove it. We went back and said, well, what information you know? Articulate a little bit better. And we were basically going back and forth just to get some clarity and to also, you know, do our due diligence and try to fight this. But the problem is we have a licensed product. They can pull that license at any given time, which now restricts access to these life-saving supplements. So we're really kind of in the balances there as to how far do we push it.

David Stephan: 46:41

Well, finally, by early June of 2023, we get the answers quite clearly and they're saying you have to remove those 35 medical journal publications. There's abstracts on our website. So somebody goes on our website and they want to find out is this product right for me? Right, we're trying to really generate informed consent here, as much information as we can get to them for an individual to make an informed decision as to whether or not this is what they want to do for their mental health. And so we have these 35 medical journal publications, the abstracts from them on our website, showing you know basically what the results were, where the studies are coming from, who the researchers are, and it's all independent. We're just sharing independent information that's available out there.

David Stephan: 47:26

And they're saying you can't have that on your website because we don't approve of those studies and what they found in those studies. Well, that's interesting because you've got a stack of studies here that are all saying the same thing. Right that you know you got five studies on ADHD and they're all saying the same thing. Right, for these children, they're living normal lives, they don't have focus issues anymore, they don't have outbursts, you know they're able to, right? So we see that all these studies from different universities across the world are all finding the same results. They're replicating the same results. So it's very sound scientifically. And yet Health Canada comes in and says you can't have that on your website and you can't have testimonials on your website.

Shawn Buckley: 48:09

And the timing's interesting, so one of the legislative changes. So, sandy, what's happening is there's this thing called the self-care framework, where Health Canada is, you know, once again because this has been going on as long as I've been alive where they want to regulate natural health products, like the chemical drugs. So, the self-care framework, they're going to completely harmonize how the over-the-counter chemical drugs are regulated with NHPs, and one of the because we need to completely harmonize they've kind of broken it out into different branches and one is well, we need to have the same powers and penalties over ginger tea, you know, as we, you know need for, you know, a chemical drug that you know has killed a whole bunch of people. Like, like, so they snuck into the budget bill in 2023. Like what the federal, federal budget bills are meant. You know, the federal government comes up with a budget, you know, on how to spend nosebleeds amounts of money and you might have to change some programs or create some programs. So there's the legal framework to spend the money the way you've decided to spend the money. So budget bills are supposed to be about that. But they sneak into the budget bill a change where they move natural health products from you know where they were to being under the same powers and penalties.

Shawn Buckley: 49:29

So before, when True Hope was resisting Health Canada, you know the maximum fine was $5,000 per offense and an offense isn't necessarily a day. Like you know, health Canada says stop selling. And they continue to sell for four months. That can be an offense like the four months, right, they continue to sell for four months. That can be an offense like the four months, right.

Shawn Buckley: 49:54

But now, as the change in the federal spring of 2023, so TrueUp would have been facing a, you know, $5,000 fine for having those studies up. Well, they can survive that. But that was changed to $5 million per day, like, every day is a separate offense. Now, what company can withstand $5 million a day fines for having the public being able to understand that there's independent, peer-reviewed research? No company can. So, of course, true Hope takes that down and other companies take it down and they're going after, like healthcare practitioners, practitioners, like naturopathic doctors and the like, who truthfully advertise. This is the thing is is none of us object. You know when the advertising is false or even isn't fair, right, but we're talking truthful advertising and you know what is the cost to this.

Sandy Kruse: 50:46

I want to just clarify for the people who are listening. So I'm a holistic nutritionist and if I say anything off label, I'm going to just use milk thistle as an example. We know milk thistle can do so many different things in the body that have therapeutic benefits. But if I say something that is off label and make a claim, I can be fined for that, Sean.

Shawn Buckley: 51:19

It depends on the circumstances. So, let's say you're a regulated health professional, so, like in most provinces now, naturopaths are most likely the patient in the office you've got a, you know, a doctor patient relationship. That's not, then you know. So they're talking about public things. But you know what about the clerk in the health food store who is not a health care practitioner, who does not have, you know, a patient doctor relationship or patient health care person relationship? Is that, to the public, likely? Right, but so it it, and you know. If you put it on your website, or you know, you advertise absolutely, even though you know if the issue was, are you telling the truth? Well, absolutely, any court will agree with you. So it's just the fact that Health Canada takes the position that you can't say anything about the product, about any product. But if a product becomes licensed, so you know what would the approved claim be for milk thistle?

Sandy Kruse: 52:29

Let's say it's good for your liver.

Shawn Buckley: 52:30

Okay, so good for no, it would probably be, you know, supports healthy liver function or something.

Sandy Kruse: 52:36

Sure sure.

Shawn Buckley: 52:37

So once that's approved, they say, well, now you can at least say that, but you can't say anything else. So before it's approved, you can't say anything, can't say anything else. So before it's approved, you can't say anything. And once and but they only approve for these structure, function, claims, will, supports, enhances, traditionally used, um, they will not let you tell the truth and they will not license you for those conditions. Everyone's learned you. You go to a consultant my firm does nhp licensing like we're not even going to try for what it's really can be used for. We're going to go for the milquetoast because we know that's all that's going to be approved.

Sandy Kruse: 53:13

So really essentially this bill is the self-care framework part of a bill, right?

Shawn Buckley: 53:23

No, it's just, it's this process, so one. So one part is is well, let's impose all these powers and penalties. That's been done. Now, you know there's efforts to try and get that undone. There's a private members bill in parliament right now, bill 368. I will like, under my name, I've got NHPPAorg, so I'm with the Natural Health Product Protection Association. So go to that website, subscribe to our newsletter and we'll let you know when we're running campaigns to you know, do this and do that, and you know kind of, and it's a place where you can be informed and follow us on social media. That's another way that we let you know what's going on. But so we've got a bill in front of Parliament. Well, we don't. It's a private member's bill by MP Blaine Calkins, but we, you know, assisted in the drafting and we've been supporting to get it into the Committee of Health and now it's through the Committee of Health.

Shawn Buckley: 54:19

But there's other aspects. So, like one, sandy, that's really pressing. Another aspect is is well, the pharmaceutical companies pay licensing fees, not just for, you know, to get a product license approved, but then yearly fees for licenses. If you're going to manufacture anything you're doing at a building, you have to get a separate license per building and you have to get through the process and then renew it each year. So 80% of Health Canada's revenue comes from the pharmaceutical companies. Internally, they refer to the pharmaceutical companies as their client, like it's a pure conflict of interest. Well, actually it's not, because Health Canada isn't charged with protecting the public or good health outcomes. So it's really I have to correct myself it's not a conflict of interest. They are there deliberately to protect intellectual property rights and they are fulfilling their role of protecting intellectual property rights owned by the pharmaceutical companies. So there isn't a conflict of interest. But they want to charge those fees on natural health product companies.

Shawn Buckley: 55:23

Now there was a big uproar about this because they published the proposed regulations in the Canada Gazette, as they're required to do, and as soon as they did that, I publicly said what they're going to do is they're going to come back with reduced amounts and then eventually just tweak them up to the full-blown, 100% of what the chemical drug companies, and that's what they're doing. So they're going to bring in reduced amounts this year. In fact, we're worried, based on an email from a senior politician, that it could be like this week, next week, that they publish these. Their timetable doesn't mean they're in force immediately. The regulations can say these come into force on November 1st or December, but they've said publicly and they have a position paper on their website that near the end of this year they're planning on bringing in cost recovery.

Shawn Buckley: 56:13

Sandy, I was on an industry call last spring where we were having this discussion with Health Canada, and that day is when they released their discussion paper and said this is what we're going to do. Well, I think every industry member on the call, every manufacturer, said either they're going to stop manufacturing in Canada or, you know, they're going to drop like 40 to 90% of the product line. And we're not even talking about increased prices yet. You know, I've totally I'm totally making these numbers up now because I forget.

Shawn Buckley: 56:49

But I think, like for a homeopathic doctor to have a full scope of practice, like you know, you might need like 5000 licensed products. Well, no, no supplier like can supply that, and with the traditional Chinese practitioners it's, it's more or might have that reversed. But we're talking thousands and thousands just for a base practice. And so what's going to happen to those traditions? The Canadian suppliers aren't going to be able to supply. And if you're going to be importing for use with patients. I mean, you have to have a site license yourself then. You have to have a site license yourself then, and the products have to be licensed. So are we going to lose our traditional Chinese practitioners and our homeopathic doctors, like within a year, and are we going to start losing most of our products? And what's going to happen to the price? Because we're already like, I find them expensive.

Shawn Buckley: 57:47

And we all know that you know lower income Canadians. They don't. They don't have a choice, they can't access these products. They're priced out like they're priced out. So we've already structured our system where a large number of Canadians can't access these and there's health consequences and we're talking life and death and we're talking total quality of life, like with chronic illnesses. The three of us on this call are fully aware that a lot of people just can't manage chronic illnesses on the chemical approved drugs but really get like full quality of life and relief being managed on natural health products. Sandy, that's your business is probably managing chronic conditions with natural health products.

Sandy Kruse: 58:35

We're not allowed to say that, right. So that's the other thing is that you know you're not allowed to say diagnose, cure, heal. There's so many things that you have to be careful of in the space of natural health and yet you know I can make my own personal claim for me that I wouldn't be who I am and where I am today had it not been for that, as a supplementary to, you know, the Western medicine, and then natural health took it from there. They did their part. Now I'm doing my part. You see what I'm saying.

Sandy Kruse: 59:11

So it's it's a very difficult. It's a difficult situation because, like a lot of people use both, sean, a lot of people believe in both. I am never, ever going to say I'm anti-Western medicine or like I had a daughter who had cancer at five and was very well taken care of at Toronto's Hospital for Sick Children. But I'm the one that took it over after as her mom, as her mom, I'm the one that made sure she was taken care of and nourished and and, and you know, takes whatever it is that I believed would help her. It's me, my body, my role.

Shawn Buckley: 59:58

Well, you've just touched on something really important, because I I think we have to um ask the question because I I actually believe that, as human beings, that we should have control over our body, and and there's very practical thinking here I mean, if you know, a squirrel comes up and bites me in the ankle right now, I'm the one that feels it. If I get cancer, I'm the one facing death. I'm the one, like no Health Canada employee is going to suffer my, my suffering. No Health Canada employee is going to go on my health journey.

Shawn Buckley: 1:00:39

So shouldn't I have the absolute right? I think I should have the right. I think you should have the right. It's your body, you're're the one that has the experience based on what you do, and there's only one class of people that have never had the right to decide. Well, there's two classes of people in history that have never had the right to decide how they treat themselves when they're sick, and that is slaves, and that's now very soon going to be Canadians. So I'm although I don't really see a big difference anymore between the two, the way things are going politically but who gives Health Canada the right to restrict our natural products?

Sandy Kruse: 1:01:24

Right.

Shawn Buckley: 1:01:25

Like, who gives them the right to say what we can like legally? You mean it's illegal for me to decide to use EM power plus to treat serious mental illness, even if I'm actually having the experience. It worked and nothing else worked. Like, just wait a second. So how did we end up where that's illegal? You know I'm sent home with, you know, blockages in my arteries to die because I'm too weak to survive a double bypass. And you mean it's illegal for Strauss to sell me these, to actually tell me these heart drops could save my life. Like we're not talking about lying, we're talking about truthful, like we'll all agree. Hey, let's not be fraudulent, let's not overstate. That's not what we're talking about here. Do you mean I don't have the right to choose? Because I don't have the right to choose if I can't be told and they can't sell, so I don't have the right to choose something? What? What if I'm healthy to do a bypass, but I just don't want to? I'm free to refuse all treatment.

Shawn Buckley: 1:02:33

One of my grandmothers, who had been a nurse all her career, came in with ovarian cancer and it's like not only did she refuse treatment, she stopped eating. It's just going to be a suffering journey. I'm going to shorten it. Do you mean she wouldn't have been free to try something not approved for ovarian cancer just to see, like, like, that's our? The problem is, is we actually accept that they have authority over us? They can't. They can't morally or ethically have authority over us and any law that isn't moral or ethical has to be resisted and ignored, whatever the cost.

Shawn Buckley: 1:03:11

Let me talk about the drug model, just to make you see how serious this is, and it's probably going to take me a good five minutes here, but this is important. So we have the drug model in Canada and every Western nation got the drug model in roughly you know, roughly the 30s, 1930s, and it's part of this control grid and it illustrates, you know, my point that this is for intellectual property rights. So the drug model has three parts. The first part is is you define anything ingested or topical as a drug? So everything is a drug, it doesn't matter. You've been using ginger tea for 3 000 years to treat nausea. It's a drug. And sorry, I just have to stop for a minute because, sandy, like I don't know if it's the lighting or what, but you look dehydrated. Can you take some water, like I'm just getting distracted here. No, I made water a drug, I'm sorry, I just made water a drug and in fact, if you, I just made water a drug and in fact, if you were here with me and I gave you the water, I would have broken a whole bunch of laws. I'm just making a point Anything ingested for a therapeutic product, even water, is a drug, because we define drug to mean anything ingested or topical or, you know, put in body. Orifices are injected literally. Okay, yeah, so every everything taken therapeutically is a drug.

Shawn Buckley: 1:04:31

The second part of the drug model is you make every drug illegal, and this is the law in canada. Every drug is illegal. That's our starting point. So everything's a drug, every drug's illegal, absolutely. And this shouldn't surprise everyone, because you're going wait, we have access to drugs. No, every drug is illegal, but Health Canada will grant temporary exemptions from a drug being illegal in the form of a license that has to be renewed yearly. So everything's a drug, regardless of safe, dangerous. Every drug is illegal, but Health Canada will grant temporary exemptions so that we can access them. And the third part I'll just restrict it to serious health conditions, because it's easier for me to make the point. And serious health conditions. So let's say serious mental illness, like David's talking about, or heart disease or cancer For serious conditions.

Shawn Buckley: 1:05:32

The third part of the drug model is is you make the approval process so expensive that only products with a patent can get through the process? So, and just for your audience that doesn't understand what a patent is. So if you invent something new, well, that's not a natural product. I mean white willow barks. Those trees have been growing for a long time. You, you can't patent something God made. But let's say you take the active ingredient of white willow bark, which is a pain reliever, and you, oh, this is the active ingredient. Well, let's tweak that molecule. Oh, now we have ASA.

Shawn Buckley: 1:06:11

Well, it's new, it's a new, novel chemical. So we can get a patent. And all the patent means is, is, is, is in Canada for 30 years. No one else can make that without our permission. So our drug process. The last time for serious conditions, the last time I had an expert on the stand, a drug approval expert on the stand. So they're under oath. And I asked the question what's it cost to get through the new drug approval process without blinking? A billion dollars. Now I think on a simple application you can get through, for you know hundreds of millions, but he you know it's just average cost a billion dollars, and this is like a good 12 years ago. So every drug in my lifetime, in the lifetime of anyone on this call, any drug that's been approved for serious health conditions, has had a patent. It's been a novel chemical. Because that's how you make money and that's how you have a monopoly.

Shawn Buckley: 1:07:10

I use Viagra as an example. So Viagra was the first erectile dysfunction drug and Pfizer gets it approved in Canada. Well, no one can compete with them because they have a patent. They can sue anyone, so they can charge whatever they want and their marketing was so good there the mainstream media was actually running stories because it was a fun story on how much a pill cost and like we're talking a long time ago I think you know 30, 40, 50 bucks a pill like, which would be like two, three hundred bucks today in today's dollar. So they were making money hand over fist. But now the patent has run out and anyone can make Viagra. The generic term is Sidenafil, so the price has dropped. But Viagra recovered the billion dollars to get through the process and made hundreds of billions of dollars.

Shawn Buckley: 1:08:00

So if anyone on watching this call. Or the three of us has a heart attack right now and we're rushed to the hospital. Or you know we've been doing cancer tests and we get a text right now saying it's stage four. Go to the hospital immediately. Or you know, we have a mental breakdown and we're rushed to the hospital. The only treatments we're going to be offered are novel chemicals that had a patent when they went through the new drug approval process. Now, when the patent runs out, the trick is is the companies tend to stop making it. Eventually. The generic companies still will make it, but you know, the pharmaceutical companies will put a new drug through for the condition, same condition, and then their drug reps will start pushing that. And you know the education machine and the medical schools. It's not that those and a lot of the drugs that used to be effective. Even the generic manufacturers stopped making them and they're gone, and so we end up.

Shawn Buckley: 1:09:00

So us on this call, the three of us and people watching we're going to be treated for heart disease and cancer and mental illness with different drugs than our grandparents, and the children born today are going to be treated with different drugs than we are Now. This is how stupid this is and this is how you know there's no good health outcomes. Let's say, canada said we're abolishing all our drug laws, all our policy, we're starting from scratch and there's eight billion people in the world and we asked every. All eight billion people come to come to us, tell us how do we get good health outcomes to treat serious health conditions. Not a single person on earth is going to come to us and say I got it. I know, I know how to do it. I know how Canadians can get good health outcomes to see to, to treat serious health conditions. Make it illegal to treat them with anything but novel chemicals that don't exist yet. We'll invent them. They don't exist yet and you're gonna get good health outcomes for serious health conditions. That's madness and we know it is, but that's our law and that's our reality. So we're today being treated with, you know, drugs that didn't exist when we were born and our children are going to be treated for serious health conditions with drugs that didn't exist before they were born. And you see how this is madness. That has nothing to do with health.

Shawn Buckley: 1:10:21

Now what's happening with natural health products, the self-care framework? They have an intellectual property rights problems and for serious health conditions we can't go anywhere like true hope's not going to be able to say they can treat bipolar disorder. But you know, in the moderate and minor health field, like it's all natural health products like. So if I'm pfizer, why would I go through this expensive billion dollar process to be able to treat a moderate health condition when I can't compete Like the other? You know, drug companies can't make my product. I have a patent, but we've got all these pesky practitioners like Sandy treating people with natural health products, and so this is causing Health Canada money. People aren't applying for licenses. This is causing the drug companies money. So if we harmonize, so natural products have to go through the same double-blind clinical trials. They have to pay the same fees. Well, they don't have intellectual property rights. So we will extinguish them and then we will be more successful in our job.

Shawn Buckley: 1:11:27

Our legal obligation not to protect Canadians because we will take steps that will kill Canadians that's what we say under oath. We're not there to protect Canadians. That's what we say under oath. We are there to enforce the Food and Drug Act and regulations, and indeed they are. That's their legal obligation. And you read the food and drug act and regulations, and we're in the drug model, where the only legal treatments are novel chemicals for serious conditions and we're moving that down to basically all but the most minor conditions.

Shawn Buckley: 1:11:59

So the self-care framework, sandy, you're going to love this. They've told us, and they we don't have the copy of the regs yet. They've, even though they've probably have been written since 2017. They won't share them with public, but they've, they've have told us quite clearly including in public presentations, and we have. We took pictures of their slides that they are not going to license, under the self-care framework, any condition for which you would need to seek the advice of a health care practitioner.

Shawn Buckley: 1:12:31

So if you, if it's a, if you would go to a naturopath, if you'd go to a nutritionist, no, no, no, and it has to be a self-limiting condition, a condition that would resolve itself by itself in two or three months. So what products, then, are going to be licensed for? Nutritionists or natural health, you know, naturopaths, or traditional chinese practitioners like the? And everyone know why are they doing this? Because they're there to protect intellectual property rights. So this self-care framework is a total death knell for our industry, and that's why we need you to subscribe to nhPPAorg and get involved, Like when we launch a campaign, get involved and support us financially. I mean, the reality is is, you know, we've got a small team, we need to grow it and we need a bigger budget.

Sandy Kruse: 1:13:18

So so, excuse me, what does? Okay, the most recent, because there's a lot of bills that are kind of coming in and people are hearing about it. And then you guys have a campaign to like I know I've been involved in every campaign that I know of where there's postcards or there's petitions, or isn't bill 69, the newest one, can you? Because it gets confusing for people who are not in it. Right, like, I get, you're a lawyer, this is your life, so, but I want to get involved as somebody who is very passionate about natural health products. Yeah, well, who is very passionate?

Shawn Buckley: 1:14:04

about natural health products. Yeah well, and we're actually not really talking about bills and acts, except for this, you know, budget bill.

Sandy Kruse: 1:14:13

Okay.

Shawn Buckley: 1:14:13

Which you know. So we're fighting that with this private members bill. It's more regulations and policy. And so when you talk about those postcards, so everyone's going to know, like both us and the CHFA, we've got postcard campaigns. Well, if you've sent one or two, just keep sending them Every time you go to the health food store. Pick up two or three and have your family members fill them out and put them in, because MPs are paying attention that they're still coming in. And if you don't see postcards in your health food store, ask them to get them. Say hey, wait a second. There are postcard campaigns and I want to do that Now.

Shawn Buckley: 1:14:51

The postcard campaigns are largely structured against the whole thing self-care framework Although we've got, you know, some in the pipeline that we'll phase in that are, you know, on specific aspects of it.

Shawn Buckley: 1:14:59

But please keep sending postcards and you know, if we or anyone else asks you to send a letter or make a call, don't just do one, like write a letter one week and do one the next week, like they actually pay attention. And the funny thing, sandy is, is every single MP, regardless of party, they understand that Canadians don't want this self-care framework. They understand, regardless of what they say oh, this is for public safety, blah, blah, blah. I mean we can have 10 shows on how false that is. They understand, and yet Health Canada is still pressing ahead. So we're not at that pressure yet. Like we have to get to the point where MPs' offices can't function because their constituents are respectfully and lawfully communicating to them so continuously that, you know, just for being able to focus on other things, they're going to have to give us what they want. And it comes back to these, these who gave them the right, who gave parliament the right, who gave health canada the right to decide what we do with our bodies?

Sandy Kruse: 1:16:17

that's a pretty powerful way to kind of sum up this conversation. I don't want to leave this conversation if there's anything that we didn't talk about. Like you know, the number one thing is get involved with NHPPA, because you guys are doing incredible things. I've recorded with you two other times not you, but people who are part of the NHPPA and I'm just very passionate about this because I am a sole believer that it's my body, it's my right and yeah, like the other thing that we didn't really mention, and I think this is important to know if there's a restriction on what's being allowed to be said, let's say, about milk thistle, isn't that like, almost like withholding information? Like to me that in and of itself is not taking care of me? If you're withholding important information that could help me and my health, does that make sense?

Shawn Buckley: 1:17:26

Right, but you see you're looking at it the wrong way. Now look at it from Health Canada's perspective. First of all, they get paid by the pharmaceutical companies and legally they're there to protect intellectual property rights. Now, if somebody who has a condition that could go to a medical doctor and get prescribed a drug that has intellectual property rights, thus protecting those rights, they're not. They're not going to do that. Some of them won't do that.

Shawn Buckley: 1:17:52

If they know they can go to you and take, you know, some natural products that will solve the same thing.

Shawn Buckley: 1:18:00

So if you put your, if you start understanding what the purpose is, it makes perfect sense. Well, of course, we have to prevent people from understanding there are alternatives to going to their doctor, because when you go to your doctor, your only alternatives are the novel chemicals that had a patent when they went through the process. And just so you have a feel of how expensive this is, you know, if you're going to go through that process for a serious health condition, the application fee alone, so that what you pay Health Canada to look at your license application is a quarter of a million dollars. So they want to get paid, they want to pay their mortgages, they want to be able to send their kids to hockey camp. They want to be able to go on vacation to the lake in the summer and they understand that they are legally charged with an obligation by Parliament to enforce the Food and Drug Act, which is there to protect intellectual property rights, and they take that job very seriously and that's why you can't talk about milk thistle.

David Stephan: 1:19:12

So, in essence, what we have in the balances is that Health Canada is there to simply protect the pharmaceutical industry big chemical, big egg, all that type of stuff at the cost of your rights. So they're providing rights for industry while they're eroding the general man's rights.

Sandy Kruse: 1:19:31

At the cost of my rights and my health.

David Stephan: 1:19:34

That's right.

Sandy Kruse: 1:19:35

It's my health too.

David Stephan: 1:19:36

And, quite literally, could be a life and death situation. But it's not about that. It's not about it's not about the health of Canadians. It's about the health of Canadian industry, or industry within Canada, namely the pharmaceutical industry.

Sandy Kruse: 1:19:51

So, david, where do you stand right now with True Hope? What's happening with True Hope? You guys are still active in Canada. We just had to remove all those studies that were published studies off of your website, and so now what? If somebody is interested in your supplements, can they get them?

David Stephan: 1:20:14

They can get the studies if they go and look in a different jurisdiction. Uh see, the nice thing is that you know there's websites hosted out of the U? S where they can go. You know that we have a website called tropecom that's the U? S website and it has all the studies, but yet tropecanada S where they can go. You know we have a website called tropecom that's the US website and it has all the studies, but yet tropecanadacom does not contain any of the studies. And we also had to remove a number of testimonials where people were just sharing their real life experiences. They're not allowed to share that, according to Health Canada, because what they were sharing was experiences that Health Canada does not approve, of correcting certain conditions that Health Canada has not approved Empower Plus for or any of our other products for. So it's, you know we're still playing the game. In essence, we're moving forward.

Shawn Buckley: 1:20:57

But you know, david, you guys are, you know, not thinking broadly enough about testimonials, because Health Canada likely would let you post testimonials from funeral directors talking about you know how good the funeral was and how the family's doing.

Sandy Kruse: 1:21:12

Sean, that's why you're a lawyer, right, like you think of these things, wow.

Shawn Buckley: 1:21:18

But wow, this is a powerful show, Sandy.

Sandy Kruse: 1:21:21

I think so. I think so. I just I want to take a moment to just thank you both so much for your time today. I think we can, you know, reconvene and have another discussion. I think these discussions need to be had and it has to be top of mind. And then, you know, like I'm always about like how does this expand to the rest of the world too? Because it does relate and I know Brett and I recorded about that Like we're talking about Canada, but this is kind of going on in different forms all over the place. So I just want to thank you both very, very much for your time and you're both doing amazing work and I definitely want to keep in touch.

David Stephan: 1:22:03

Thank you for having us on, yeah thanks for having us.

Shawn Buckley: 1:22:06

Sandy and and I think, dave I can speak for David We'd both love to come back.

David Stephan: 1:22:11

Absolutely. And and, by the way, just put a real quick plug in there's a documentary that's going to be coming out that Sean's a part of, I'm a part of. That's really articulating the whole story of Health Canada, true Hope, but Health Canada as a whole and what's going on, and that's supposed to be set to release in, I believe, March or April of this year. So that'll be coming out pretty soon and there'll probably be a cross-country tour on that as well. So I'm just throwing that out there just to pique people's curiosity about it, to stay tuned as to what's going on. So maybe we could reconvene.

Sandy Kruse: 1:22:46

Yes.

Shawn Buckley: 1:22:47

And I'll just I'll also say, because I'm part of the National Citizens Inquiry, that David testified about a different experience that's related at the Vancouver hearings of the National Citizens Inquiry. So if you go to the National Citizens Inquiry website, there's a hearings tab and then there's 2023, 2024. Go to 2024, vancouver and watch David's testimony and Colette's testimony. So yeah, and I have to say nationalcitizensinquiryca, because there's imposters that pop up now and again. So, on that happy note, I truly have to run.

Sandy Kruse: 1:23:28

Okay, Thank you guys. Thank you both so much for your time today.

Shawn Buckley: 1:23:31

Thank you, Sandy.

Sandy Kruse: 1:23:35

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