Thoughts on bill C-47

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Incase some of you are unaware, there is a "new" (I say new as it's just a repackaged government threat) bill being proposed by Health Canada to gain over-reach into the natural health industry. I will leave a link at the bottom to a website that describes all the expected changes that will be taking place, as this is post to discuss rather than reiterate. In summary, the government plans to create heavy taxation on natural health companies that can include anything from supplements, herbs, toothpaste, lotions, beauty products, and ect. There is also a proposal for these companies to completely change their labelling process which will create more excess waste and money put into the packaging of the product. This will most certainly destroy many small, trusted, and local businesses and create ample inflation on the remaining products on the shelves. Since I work directly in the sales of these products, I have been notified that many major companies have already pulled out of Canada as it will be too expensive to relaunch any products. That is worrying, as these are the companies that have the money to keep going. This will directly impact those who are already struggling to provide themselves with the nutrients they need to maintain their health. As the majority of us know, the sum of most of the food being sold at affordable prices are devoid of most of its nutritional value. If it does contain any, most of it has been sprayed with carcinogenic pesticides and herbicides, creating an environment in the body that can easily turn on cancerous genetic genes, and also destroying the microbiome of the soil it comes from... which in turn destroys our internal microbiome. As much as I am an advocate for people to get their nutrients from a whole food source, for many it isn't possible with the price of organic and local produce. This will clearly have more people turning back to pharmaceuticals if they can't get the supplementation they need to help heal their body. 

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This message needs spread. This message needs to be fought for. But there is another message that needs to be discussed as well, and that's relearning the simple nutrient secrets that many of our grandparents innately knew. The message of self-sufficiency. 

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We as a society need to connect to our roots, cultures, and gardens more than ever before if we want to continue on as a healthy society. Part of me feels that this almost needs to happen in order for us to stop relying on health practitioners to look after everyone elses health. Some responsibility needs to be put back on to society to remember how to take care of themselves. I've always sworn that once I reach my clinical position, that my goal will be to have no clients, not in a lazy way, in a way that shows that when I see someone I can help them to regain their own sovereignty over their own bodies so that they arent reliant on me or anyone else to look after their basic healthcare. We've all grown up with at least one grandparent that knew all the sayings and health tips that had been passed down from generation to generation. These are the types of things we need to bring back. If this bill pulls through, we need to teach others simple, affordable, and loop holed ways to help realign their bodies again. 

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As much as I have love for what the natural health industry is doing to help combat pharmaceuticals, I also resent the reliance it has created on many to pay outrageous amounts of money to keep up their everyday health. Many of the best teachers I've had have always said to only recommend supplementing if they are in a position of not being able to get it from nutrition, for it to be a building block to get them back to nourishment and for thereafter work with them nutritionally. The more supplement companies are colluding with scientific, almost pharmaceutical-like studies and health talks, the more it disconnects us from it's natural source. Sounds familiar doesn't it? 

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A friend I once worked with used to laugh at the idea of the price people pay for digestive enzymes, she said most people can just suck on a lemon before a meal and it will do a similar thing. Most of us would have grown up eating a bitter salad before our meals which would have helped us to digest our proteins and fats. Remember how there used to always be a lemon or a lime put on the side of the plate? Some of that was to help digest the food and some of that was to help absorb the iron. Of course it wasn't talked about as some kind of healthcare class, it was just known... it was instinctual. As soon as technology took off, it sped up our culture. How can we be connected to our bodies and intuition when we are constantly distracted and on fast forward mode? We used to have things like starters and drink bitter herbal concoctions before meals, we used to have things like digestives after a meal. We took time to connect to our food, body, and family connection to digest life. We wonder why everyones digestion has gone amuck in a world where we can't even digest what is going on, let alone the amount of irrelevant information we are receiving on a daily basis. Yes this C-47 bill is scary, but it's also an opportunity to get creative again, to relearn what we all deeply already know. To get us off our phones, computers, needing to know every new scientific study coming out about the health of the body. WE KNOW how to innately take care of ourselves, and if we don't, hang around somebody who does and learn from them. All this programming we've had over the past 50 years has stripped away thousands of years of passed down knowledge. It's disconnected many of us from our family tree. Try to remember what your grandparents told you growing up. Drink that cod liver oil and orange juice, put lemon in your water, drink fennel tea to help get rid of cramps. Go out in nature and start learning how to identify edible plants. Put your hands and feet in the dirt and breathe in that air. Go for a walk just before a rainstorm and connect with the smell of ozone, lick sap from a tree when you start to feel sick. This is the future we need to create. Not another parallel capitalistic natural healthcare culture which only the middle and upper class can afford. Learn for yourself, your future children, your family, and those who need to be taught. If this bill is going to make natural health go underground, then it goes underground. Sometimes the best things are better off left free and accessible, untainted by a controlling and manipulative government. An example of that is the Cannibas industry... many of those who worked in it before it was legal preferred it, because it wasn't industrialized and made into a set of boxes to be fit into. The government can never take away knowledge or your right to grow your own herbs and food. Stop relying on everyone else to satisfy your own nutritional needs and learn how to be self sustainable. Try it, because it's an empowering feeling, and thats what they don't want. 

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This is the message that should also be shared alongside with bill C-47 scares. Stop fearing and fighting against a tyrannical system and fight back by being your own teacher, grower, and nurturer. Build your strength back. And please, please don't ditch your hardcopy books for a kindle. Remember the tangible. 

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-<3 Syd