PETITION CHALLENGE

CALLING ALL NATURAL HEALTH PRACTITIONERS  

Nutritionists, Naturopathic Doctors, Integrative Medical Doctors, Indigenous and Traditional Medicine Practitioners: everyone in clinical practice using natural health products, herbal medicines and botanicals.

This is your challenge.

WHY DO THIS NOW?

We are only 3,000 signatures away from making history.

Over the past five years, the petition in support of the Charter Of Health Freedom has grown to Canada’s 2nd largest Federal petition in the last 25 years. We are about 3000 signatures away from 96,000. In the hands of natural health industry stakeholders and citizens–in stores and homes and events–momentum in support of the Charter of Health Freedom has brought it to the brink of being second only to the Bill of Rights in public support.

Now we need you, your colleagues, clients and networks. If every practitioner in our membership collected one petition sheet of 25 signatures, we’d achieve our next milestone. But we know you can do better than that. This is a challenge! We are working for six figures in our petition count before we find the right Member of Parliament to submit the Charter as a solution to truly protect natural health products and the rights of people to choose how to deal with their own health issues.

With your help we can break a more records in the next 90 days.

WHEN TO ACT

Start today (April 30) and collect until July 31 2014

July 31, 2014 is the deadline to have your envelopes post-marked indicating the date that your petition was delivered into the care of the postal service.

Send NHPPA all your signatures at once on July 31. It is important that each practitioner gather petitions for a single send to us, so the count will be correct.

THE ACTION

! Collect signatures in support of the Charter of Health Freedom.

This action is a vital step you can take to protect the tools of your trade. You, your practice and your networks are vital links in the chain of communication to get the word out. Your personal and professional futures are at stake, as is the wellbeing of your clients.

WHY IS THIS IMPORTANT?

You may have noticed that supplements you have safely recommended for years now have lower potencies, less effective formulations, are more expensive, or have disappeared altogether. You may even have experienced supplement orders from the United States being seized at the border.

Since the introduction of the 2004 Natural Health Product (NHP) Regulations thousands of safe, effective products have been criminalized and removed from store shelves. Although practitioners have been exempt from the full force of these Regulations to date, this may change, and already many products you need to help your clients are no longer available. Emergency Kit for Health Canada Raids can be consulted by practitioners as a source to understand your rights.

Health Canada is effectively making your treatment decisions for you, by restricting your ability to make choices in the best interests of your clients.

The number of disappearing products has reached crisis level, and will continue to deepen until there is a change in the law.

WHAT IS THE CHARTER OF HEALTH FREEDOM?

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The Charter of Health Freedom is a proposed legislation that could end the destructive regulatory landscape facing natural health products and people.  The product losses are an inevitable result of  the current regulations:

“Despite the fact that there have been zero recorded deaths from consumption of vitamins, minerals, enzymes, herbal remedies, or amino acid supplements, Health Canada continues a very aggressive approach to regulating NHPs, treating them as if they were the most toxic of all substances on the open market. At the same time, it conspicuously ignores the carnage created by prescription drugs and vaccines.”

– Dr. Zoltan P. Rona, MD, M.Sc., Vitality Magazine, March 2013

The Charter would protect access to NHPs and traditional medicines by creating a separate legal category for them, separate from the Food and Drugs Act. The Charter would regulate for fraud, adulteration and misrepresentation, while deeming NHPs and traditional medicines to be safe unless there is evidence of harm.

In short, the Charter is A Law For Natural Health Products.

HOW MANY SIGNATURES ARE NEEDED?

The more. The better.

Since the launch of the Charter of Health Freedom on September 10 2008, the NHPPA has kept a comprehensive list of each and every petition that has come in from across the country. The larger the petition signatures numbers from people who want the Charter of Health Freedom enacted, the more gravity it will have to:

  • find a Member of Parliament to present it, along with the Charter itself, in the House of Commons.
  • be taken seriously by our elected officials
  • make history as a significant political Canadian document

DOWNLOAD PETITION STATION MATERIALS

CLICK HERE to download and print all the materials you need to set up a petition station in your practice.

  1. The Petition
  2. Various Information handouts for your signatories
  3. Petition station poster

GATHER SIGNATURES

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Here are some ideas on how to collect signatures:

  • Keep a petition in your practice for your clients to sign.
  • Give each client a petition to collect signatures amongst family, friends and colleagues.
  • Go door to door in your neighborhood.
  • Identify petition stations in your community eg. Your local health food store, community centre, or gym.
  • Take a copy everywhere you go so you are always ready to gather signatures.
  • Create petition stations at nutritionist networking groups and presentations.
  • Hold a petition signing party.
  • Share a booth (or space on a table) at local events, markets, fairs. Print and set up our “Sign The Petition” poster, print off plenty blank Charter petition pages and print out one or two pieces each of our support material for use at the booth only–directing people to download their own copies directly from the website.

WHEN YOU MAIL NHPPA YOUR PETITION SIGNATURES ENVELOPE

Be sure to include your first and last name, name of your practice, your email and phone number

You must have any petitions you have others collect signatures for give you the petition back before it is mailed to us in one envelope.

We want to know all about you! You know your clients, you know your region, you know people. We’ll feature all our entrants in a gala blog post and the winners and runners-up will each be featured individually.

Your first and last name and a short bio including links to your website. A brief description of how you collected signatures. A photo of yourself and/or your practice (with your petition signatures).

RULES TO ENSURE YOUR SIGNATURES COUNT

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Do not write anything else on the page, the wording must not be altered in any way. Only one signature per person. The signature count must be from unique individuals to be valid. The person’s name in capitals must accompany their signature. A postal address consisting of at least city and postal code is vital to prove the signatory is a resident of Canada.

A FEW INCENTIVES

Besides freedom of choice!

Stay tuned for a Practitioner Charter Petition Challenge prize list.

PETITION CAMPAIGN RESULTS 

We will post news of the final count on Facebook, Twitter and via an E-Blast to our database. If you have not “liked” or “followed” us yet, please do. Subscribe to our weekly E-Blasts where you will get news about the petition challenge to support your success.