Health Committee on June 9th, 2009

[Paul Glover]

The Department of Public Security.

[France Bonsant, Bloc, Compton—Stanstead, QC]

Fine.

I am not familiar with the bill. You said that cigarettes contain vitamin C. Did you check that? Is it true that cigarettes contain vitamin C or is that misleading advertising? Ms. Labelle, you are from Legal Services, so could you tell us whether that claim constitutes misleading advertising?

[Diane Labelle]

One would have to determine if the department does tracking. Of course, it's a matter of having evidence.

[Paul Glover]

Madam Chair, that's a good question, but in my opinion, it doesn't change anything. Whether the product contains vitamin C or not, it's an enticement.

[Denis Choinière]

The claim is meant to make the product appear more appealing; it's a ploy.

[France Bonsant, Bloc, Compton—Stanstead, QC]

It's an illusion.

[Paul Glover]

Yes, but if young people think that cigarettes and these small cigars contain vitamins, they will have one more reason to begin smoking.

[France Bonsant, Bloc, Compton—Stanstead, QC]

From a legal point of view, that claim is a form of misleading advertising. I think that some laws prohibit advertisers from making such misleading claims for products that are not entirely...

Did you want to say something, Ms. Labelle? This is not my field.

[Diane Labelle]

To determine whether it is a case of misleading advertising, first of all one would have to verify whether the cigarettes or the little cigars contain a vitamin as the package promises.

[France Bonsant, Bloc, Compton—Stanstead, QC]

Does the bill mention places where people are not allowed to smoke? For instance, people who want to smoke must be 100 feet away from a high school, and people are not allowed to smoke in public places where meetings are held. When you walk around here, it is disgusting. As I enter the building, I see cigarette butts everywhere. I think that's terrible for a capital like Ottawa. When you open the doors, the cigarette butts are swept up and get inside the building.

Would it be possible to state somewhere that people cannot smoke within 30 feet of the doors?

[Denis Choinière]

The Tobacco Act regulates the manufacturing of tobacco products, as well as their sale, labelling, and promotion, but the act does not regulate their use.

[France Bonsant, Bloc, Compton—Stanstead, QC]

The act does not regulate education.

[Denis Choinière]

The use of tobacco products is dealt with under the Non-smokers' Health Act, which Parliament passed in 1988. This act regulates the use of tobacco in federal workplaces as well as in companies that come under federal jurisdiction. Outside these areas, the issue falls within provincial jurisdiction. You would have to look at each provincial law to determine what it covers.

[France Bonsant, Bloc, Compton—Stanstead, QC]

Even if a person is on a federal piece of land?

[The Chair, Conservative, Joy Smith]

Thank you, Madame Bonsant. We have only about two minutes left.

Mr. Uppal, I'm sorry you won't have the full time.

[Tim Uppal, Conservative, Edmonton—Sherwood Park, AB]

That's fair enough.

[The Chair, Conservative, Joy Smith]

If you can go ahead, you may start now. Thank you.

[Tim Uppal, Conservative, Edmonton—Sherwood Park, AB]

I'll just jump directly to this question--and thank you for coming.

I know you talked about the impact of this bill, and you chose to ban--and rightly so--all these products you showed us. As for the flavoured, smokeless tobacco, in Alberta, we're looking at it, and young people were asked if they tried this. The national average for smokeless tobacco is 9%. In Alberta, it's 17%. We have this problem in Alberta. This is a concern among young people in Alberta.

Have you looked at that?

[Paul Glover]

Yes. We are aware that regional differences do exist. Unfortunately, and with respect, my answer returns to our objective with this, which was to target those areas we felt were the largest return on investment nationally—the fastest-growing product categories—as we moved forward in this.

[The Chair, Conservative, Joy Smith]

Thank you very much. We want to thank our guests for coming today and for your very insightful answers. As usual, you've left us with far more information than we started with.

I'm going to suspend the meeting for two minutes, and then I would like to have the Canadian Cancer Society, the Non-Smokers' Rights Association, and the Physicians for a Smoke-Free Canada take their places. We will put your names up and we will resume shortly.

Thank you.

[The Chair, Conservative, Joy Smith]

I call the meeting to order again. Thank you so much.

Committee members, before we start with our witnesses, I need your help with something. To bring witnesses in, we need to spend a little bit of money for their transportation and a few other items. There is a motion to adopt a budget, ladies and gentlemen. I'm going to read the motion. Do you have it in front of you?

It is moved that the proposed budget in the amount of $7,300 for the study of Bill C-32, An Act to amend the Tobacco Act, be adopted.

Do I have agreement from the committee?

(Motion agreed to)

[The Chair, Conservative, Joy Smith]

Now we're going to go to our witnesses, and we're going to start with the Physicians for a Smoke-Free Canada. We have Neil Collishaw, research director, and Sam McKibbon, the campaigner from that organization.

From the Non-Smokers' Rights Association, we have Melodie Tilson, the director of policy, and for the Canadian Cancer Society, we have Rob Cunningham, senior policy analyst, national public issues office.

Let's start with Mr. Collishaw, please.

[Neil Collishaw, Research Director, Physicians for a Smoke-Free Canada]

Good afternoon, honourable members of the health committee, colleagues, ladies and gentlemen.

I believe committee staff have already distributed to members of the committee information kits in English and French.

I should also say that we have received three letters sent to you by physician colleagues of ours in northern Ontario and a fax sheet from colleagues in Alberta. Regrettably, these documents arrived too late for us to have them translated into French. However, I have sufficient copies in English, and I have passed them to the clerk and they will be distributed to you when the French version is completed.

[The Chair, Conservative, Joy Smith]

Thank you, Mr. Collishaw.

Just to remind you, we will have seven minutes in this round for presentations. Thank you.

[Neil Collishaw]

Thank you.

According to the WHO, tobacco use is a pandemic that is unequalled in history. Last century, the use of tobacco killed 100 million people. In the 21st century, it will kill 1 billion people unless we end this epidemic. It will not be an easy task. We need an ongoing series of measures to restrict tobacco use, such as those found in Bill C-32. Taken together, these measures are proving to be very effective to reduce the use of tobacco.

We applaud this bill, and we have only one improvement to suggest to you. We suggest that the ban on the use of flavourings be expanded to include smokeless tobacco like this product here. You can find a draft amendment that would do so in your information kits.

Why are we making this suggestion? Here a few reasons provided by two dental surgeons from Northern Ontario, Dr. Pynn and Dr. Dowhos of Thunder Bay, in their letter to the committee. Here is the quote:

More than fifty percent of our patients are of Aboriginal origin with the majority of this population using tobacco products. ... Tobacco has no boundaries when it comes to its effects on the oral cavity.

Dental decay and gum disease caused by tobacco usage, including smokeless tobacco (also called chew and spit), are leading reasons why we are so busy with tooth extractions. Not only are we extracting single or multiple teeth, but we also regularly have the unfortunate task of performing full mouth clearances of all 32 teeth because of tooth rot from poor oral hygiene and decay.

Prolonged usage of products such as smokeless tobacco can also cause life-threatening oral cancers. Oral cancer can have a horrific and disfiguring consequence, as the majority of the surgical interventions for its treatment require parts of the jaw to be completely removed.

Our youth do not recognize that the instant pleasure they may receive from chewing smokeless tobacco can have devastating effects later, thus we also need to ban the use of flavourings to smokeless tobacco products before it is too late.

In a few minutes my colleague from Dryden, Ontario, Mr. Sam McKibbon, will explain just exactly how he and many of his friends in northwestern Ontario and many other places in northern and western Canada are being seduced by the lure of flavoured, smokeless tobacco.

Mr. McKibbon was one of the creators of the “Flavour...GONE!” campaign. Physicians for a Smoke-Free Canada are proud to have provided more both moral and financial support to this campaign, and we are proud to have Mr. McKibbon here speaking on our behalf today.

Before I turn it over to him, I still have one important duty to fulfil. I would like to thank all of you. For 18 months, we have been asking parliamentarians to amend the act in order to protect our youth from the tobacco companies' tricks, in particular adding all kinds of tempting flavours to encourage our kids to start using tobacco. The fact that Parliament has introduced not one but two bills to deal with this problem bears witness to the serious attention that our elected officials have given to this issue.

We are particularly grateful to Ms. Judy Wasylycia-Leis and her staff for the introduction of private members' bills in two successive parliaments to draw attention to this issue and for the strong support shown by her and her staff to the “Flavour...GONE!” campaign. We are similarly grateful to the Hon. Leona Aglukkaq and her staff for the initiative shown to bring forward Bill C-32 as a government bill and the parliamentary craft involved in shepherding it through all stages of consideration.

We are also grateful for her initiative in seeking the support of Ms. Judy Wasylycia-Leis and to the latter for so graciously offering such support.