Government Operations committee  Not that we're aware of.

Government Operations committee  I don't think we've ever experienced anything quite like this.

Government Operations committee  In fact, what we did hear from our members in Huntsville was that it actually had a positive impact on sales in that area. We don't have survey results, but what we tended to hear from our members was that there was a positive impact in that region.

Government Operations committee  I don't think we would even know.... We wouldn't be able to do that at this point. One of the challenges of this G-20 was that our operators had no idea what to anticipate. They were getting mixed messages in terms of what to anticipate and whether to stay open or closed. Some went into the G-20 with fairly high expectations that it was going to be close to normal, and that there might even be a bump in some cases.

Government Operations committee  I can say we're appreciative that EI premiums are not going to be 21¢ per $100 of payroll for employers. As our president put it, we were expecting a hurricane of seven and it's been reduced to a two, so we're pleased about that.

Government Operations committee  We haven't heard.

Government Operations committee  I talked to one restaurant operator who said that as a result of his loss during the G-20 weekend, he wasn't going to be able to hire the students that he had anticipated hiring for the rest of the summer.

Health committee  Thanks, Garth. I'm going to focus on nutrition disclosure in restaurants, since it dominated one of your previous sessions. We do appreciate the opportunity to clarify the industry's position on this very important subject. First, you should be aware that CRFA is in discussions with Health Canada and individual provinces about a national policy framework for nutrition disclosure.

Health committee  Thank you. CRFA was represented on the sodium working group. A lot of work went into the strategy report, which we support. The support includes three prongs: sodium reduction targets; an education awareness campaign; and research. All three prongs have to be integrated. I can assure you that there's a huge amount of work going on right now on identifying sodium in products and on reformulating products, not only in the food services industry but in the complete food supply.

Health committee  One of the things we do is we have that guide on our website, and we encourage our members through our e-news and our CRFN magazine to use our documents that we make available to them. We have over 30,000 members across the country. We also know there's an awful lot of work going on among the chains in particular to reformulate their products.

Health committee  We provide a lot of educational information to our members. I don't know that we have a way of assessing how many read it and how many use it, but we know we get positive feedback from our members because they're calling us; they're asking us. We're developing these guidance documents in response to industry questions and industry demands.

Health committee  Sure, I'd be happy to answer that question. We were represented on the group. We understood when we joined the group that the mandate was to develop a sodium reduction strategy, which is what the group did. It was a huge undertaking. It took up a huge amount of the time of the representative from our association.

Health committee  You mean the nutritionals?

Health committee  One of the things that we have focused on is providing complete nutrition information. Canada is a leader in the world in terms of the nutritional information we provide. On packaged goods, we were the first in the world. We pattern our voluntary nutrition information program after the packaged good label.

Health committee  I appreciate the question, because one of the reasons we on occasion do endorse regulations is to avoid a patchwork approach to requirements across the country. CRFA was part of the trans fat task force. We supported the recommendation in that task force report that called for a national regulatory framework to regulate trans fat on the basis of input, not output.