The recent controversy concerning Bill C-51 has drawn people's attention to the concept of regulating NHPs.  Given the amount of commotion, you would think that NHP regulation is something new to Canada or that the government is acting suddenly and arbitrarily.  Neither is the case.  In response to a mandate from the recommendations* of the House of Commons Standing Committee on Health, Health Canada has been evolving and implementing an NHP regulatory framework for the past decade.  This is not even the first time that the Food and Drugs Act has been amended for NHPs.  Bill C-51 is just the next step in this ongoing regulatory development process.

[* Correction (7 May 08):  Poor wording on my part.  A House Committee cannot give a mandate to a Department.  In this case, the Minister of Health at the time, Allan Rock, decided to adopt the recommendations in the Committee's report.]
 

To put Bill C-51 into context, it is useful to look at NHP regulation in Canada over the last decade.  This article will attempt to provide this high-level overview.  Future articles will look more closely at the regulations related to NHP treatment claims – the point of contention for skeptics – and at the details of Bill C-51 itself.

On February 29, 2008, six members of Ottawa Skeptics converged on the Colonel By building at the University of Ottawa for a demonstration of the “Perepiteia Generator”, which internet rumours and media reports (but not the inventor himself) have been dubbing a Perpetual Motion Machine – a remarkable claim, and certainly within the mandate of a Skeptics organization to investigate. We were met there by the machine's inventor, Thane Heins, who demonstrated his apparatus for us a couple of times, and discussed it with us for about an hour.