Thank you very much for the question.
Obviously, since we've been made aware—and as Mr. Harrington noted, that was very late in the process and I think counter to some of the commitments that we had received from the department—we've been working quite diligently. Obviously, it will impact every individual business uniquely depending on their piece, but I can give a few examples of specific members we have.
Regarding the labelling updates themselves—unlike, potentially, when they impacted the OTC industry—given that these are small businesses, many of them are copacks or some of them are sharing equipment and the updates to that machinery alone, never mind to label stock and things in inventories that will take time to work through, can be in the realm of hundreds of thousands of dollars.
We have one member who recently underwent it of his own accord. His is a small business that would fall into that category, and he estimated that it would cost an additional $250,000 to go through and make the labelling updates.
I can provide another example regarding cost recovery. Multiple members have now gone through the due diligence of calculating the costs on an annual basis, and they have examples of $450,000 a year or $560,000 a year. These are annual fees for these businesses. Given the competitive nature of the natural health product industry—this is not like the pharmaceutical industry—a lot of businesses have to carry a lot of different products to remain viable and these costs are simply not in their margins today. I think that was clearly articulated in the study we commissioned at the beginning of this year.
I'll remind the committee of our startling statistics. One in five of these businesses is saying that it won't be financially viable. That was only on the back of the labelling updates. That was prior to the cost recovery.