BY ADELLE LARMOUR

Aboriginal health advocates are concerned about how Bill C-51 will impact their traditional practices.

Because Native people have always had a spiritual connection to the land and have harvested natural herbs as treatments for holistic healing, it is unclear to Aboriginal people what implication the Bill will have on their traditional medicines.

“Mother Earth gave us an abundance of medicine to use and it has been in our culture for generations,” said Shelley Baker, executive director of Sudbury’s Shkagamik-Kwe Health Centre. “We’re concerned because we go out and harvest our own medicines.”

Bill C-51, legislation to amend the Food and Drugs Acts and to make consequential amendments to other Acts, was introduced by the Minister of Health last spring and passed second reading. Third reading was scheduled for mid-September.

As stated on Health Canada’s website, Bill C-51 seeks to modernize the regulatory frameworks for foods and other therapeutic products such as drugs, biologics, and medical devices. The bill also proposes a number of amendments that would strengthen and support effective compliance and enforcement action for all product categories.

Noojimawin Health Authority, a Toronto-based planning group for 10 Aboriginal Health Access Centres across Ontario, wants the health centres to be exempt from the Bill, and claims there are many unanswered questions.

The authority wonders if their traditional medicines and practices will be regulated in the same manner as mainstream pharmaceutical drugs.

In an Aug. 12 news release, the authority noted, “There is no specific mention of Aboriginal peoples in the Bill.”

Therefore, it could impact the collection, processing, preserving, labelling, packaging and distributing of traditional medicines.

They would like more consultation and information specific to traditional medicines and their practices.

“It is important that Aboriginal traditional medicines be able to continue to be used as it is a component of Aboriginal health and well-being to which we have relied on for our physical, spiritual and cultural survival as Aboriginal peoples in Canada throughout the millennium,” the Noojimawin Health Authority stated in the release.

www.shkagamik-kwe.org