Bill C-283 (Historical)

An Act to amend the Food and Drugs Act (food labelling)

This enactment specifies the type of information that is to be provided on the labels of imported and prepackaged food and food sold for immediate consumption.
It also establishes criteria for labelling using words or pictures.

Food and Drugs Act

[Tom Wappel, Liberal, Scarborough Southwest, ON]

moved that Bill C-283, An Act to amend the Food and Drugs Act (food labelling), be read the second time and referred to a committee.

Mr. Speaker, since 1989, I have been working to provide consumers with information from which they can make more informed food choices. Today I will go to bat again for Canadian consumers by proposing modest but sorely needed measures to ensure they have important health-related information about many of the processed and restaurant foods we eat every day in this country.

Diet-related disease is steadily straining our health care services and, if unchecked, will create staggering demands on our future capacity to fund public health care and become an unnecessary drag on our economic growth which also limits our capacity to finance health care.

The need to better address preventable chronic, non-communicable diseases has been acknowledged in three consecutive Liberal speeches from the throne. The Liberal, Conservative and NDP provincial governments all agreed with the federal government on the need to tackle diet-related and other chronic diseases in the communiqué of the September 2004 first ministers conference on health care and four recent communiqués of the federal-provincial-territorial ministers of health.

Diet-related disease is an urgent public health problem in this country. Heart disease, stroke, certain forms of cancer, diabetes, osteoporosis and dental health all have links to diet that are well recognized by scientists. For instance, the diet-related cases of cardiovascular disease, diabetes and certain forms of cancer costs the Canadian economy $6.6 billion annually due to health care costs and lost productivity.

Diet-related risk factors for disease shorten the average Canadian's healthy life expectancy by nearly five years and prematurely ends the lives of tens of thousands of Canadians every year, to say nothing of the pain and suffering these preventable diseases inflict upon victims and their families.

These days, precious few Canadians grow, prepare or even cook their own food any more. It is unthinkable that we should be eating food without knowing its contents. When the Liberal Party formed government we promulgated mandatory nutrition labelling regulations for most prepackaged foods, which the media dubbed the gold standard, globally. However when it comes to ingredient information on processed food and nutrition information on labels of fresh cut meat and restaurant menus, Canadian law and industry practices are little better than any other country and much worse than many.

Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada estimates that those new labels that were passed will reap $5 billion in benefits to the economy as a whole from reduced health care costs and increased productivity over the next two decades. These benefits are 20 times the cost to the industry of modifying food labels. Canadians should not pass up an opportunity to save the health care system more than $2 billion over the next two decades.

Bill C-238 can be implemented even less expensively than the new nutrition labelling regulations because it only requires nutrition information for a small number of national chain restaurants that typically have standardized menus. Many chains have already done the analysis. Plus, my bill permits meat packers to use common, government-approved nutrition databases and it only requires readily available ingredient composition data on processed food labels.

Nearly 30 groups, collectively representing over two million Canadians, support the measures in the bill. In the past two years, support for one or more of the three components of Bill C-283 has been articulated in expert reports published by the Canadian population health initiative of the Canadian Institute for Health Information; two reports of the U.S. Institute of Medicine, an expert body upon which Health Canada often relies for scientific advice; the chief medical officer of health for Ontario; a call for action by the Heart and Stroke Foundation of Canada; an editorial in the Canadian Journal of Public Health of the Canadian Public Health Association; an advocacy statement of the British Columbia Healthy Living Alliance; and a report commissioned by the British Columbia Cancer Agency and the Canadian Cancer Society of British Columbia and Yukon.

The Canadian Food Inspection Agency initiated consultations on a proposal to establish a watered down form of my proposal requiring percentage ingredient disclosures on products that, for instance, promote blueberry pancakes which, in fact, contain little or no blueberries. The fact that the CFIA abruptly discontinued consultations on even that modest proposal illustrates the need for Parliament to step in.

By introducing Bill C-283 I am seeking to achieve three objectives: first, to close a loophole in the new nutrition labelling regulations for packers of fresh meat, poultry and seafood; second, to extend a simplified nutrition disclosure requirement to large chain restaurant menus and menu boards; and third, add a requirement that multi-ingredient processed foods disclose the amount of key ingredients, especially for ingredients that are the subject of marketing claims or for ingredients that are known by the scientific community to have protective or causative effects on major disease risks. In short, it facilitates informed purchasing decisions, not uninformed or increasingly ill-informed food purchases.

Statistics Canada says that Canadians spend about 30% of their food budgets on restaurant meals. McDonald's restaurants alone claim to serve an average of three million Canadians every day. Plainly, it is no longer an occasional treat to eat at restaurants but rather a central feature of daily life in Canada and yet we rarely see any nutrition information on restaurant menus or menu boards.

It became clear to me and some of my colleagues that the costs of even chemical analysis would be less than a penny on the price of enough food to feed a family of four in a typical faster food restaurants and cheaper by half to calculate such information from existing databases.

Some industry efforts, though encouraging, are not really effective, whether by accident or design. For instance, McDonald's restaurants now provide nutrition information on the back or the underside of tray liners. Imagine, on the back or the underside, for heaven's sake, instead of on the menu boards where the information could actually be used by consumers before they make their purchases, or even on the front of the liner so they could read about what they are eating to help them make more informed choices for their next meal.

Some restaurant owners made the outlandish argument that menus would have to be modified to accommodate every conceivable special order that a consumer could make, such as extra sauce, pickles on the side, with or without cheese, shared orders, et cetera. However, menus at Subway, White Spot and Extreme Pizza, companies that emphasize made to order foods, found a way to report at least some useful nutritional information to consumers, despite the alleged difficulties. Without such information, even trained nutritionists consistently err in estimating calorie counts from physical appearance only.

My bill also proposes to mandate that manufacturers of processed foods show on labels the percentage by weight of key ingredients. This information will help consumers choose more nutritious products, say, products with more fruits or less added sugars. Requiring this information will also help protect consumers against deceptive ingredient claims by unscrupulous manufacturers that tout the presence of appealing ingredients, like vegetables or whole grains, but actually put very little of those ingredients in the product.

Percentage ingredient labelling rules are in effect in Thailand, the European Union, New Zealand and Australia. The Canadian Food Inspection Agency acknowledged the need to establish percentage ingredient labelling requirements. However the CFIA's now dormant proposal leaves open many avenues for consumer deception about ingredient composition and fails to require disclosures that would effectively aid consumers in selecting more nutritious products. My bill does not suffer from the same defects.

Health Canada and Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada have already done a thorough job of demonstrating the need for nutrition labelling on prepackaged foods, in the regulatory impact analysis that accompanied the amendments to the food and drug regulations promulgated in January 2003. An exemption for fresh meat, poultry and seafood appears to have been granted in response to claims by several industry associations in 2000 that it would take four to five years to generate nationally representative nutrition data tables for various cuts of meat and species of seafood.

For years, Health Canada and various Canadian industry associations have published such data. Six years have passed. Bill C-283 would provide all parties yet another two years to refine their data in any ways necessary. Without such nutrition information, how many Canadians would know that a three ounce serving of trimmed, broiled top round beef steak has only about one gram of saturated fat while a three ounce serving of trimmed, broiled shoulder blade pork steak has four grams of saturated fat, a full four ounce difference in saturated fat content between two cuts of meat the same size, a difference that is not evident from visual inspection or even taste?

The House may recall that in a previous Parliament, a Conservative member who is now a minister of the Crown, the Minister of Veterans Affairs, spoke very favourably about an earlier version of this bill. He said:

What the member is attempting to do would be very difficult to argue against...We are concerned with the health of Canadians. They have a right to know what they are eating. It would serve the purposes of a lot of people in Canada if we could find a way to adopt this legislation. Details have to be fleshed out in committee. We support moving Bill C-398 on to the next logical step.

I hope all members of the Conservative government will demonstrate the same good sense as that hon. member. I hope members will not prevent Canadians from getting the vital nutrition information they sorely need to make healthy food choices for their families and themselves.

The scientific basis for requiring that this information be provided to consumers is tried and true. The scientific consensus is that Canadians should consume more fruits, vegetables, whole grains, legumes and beans, and less sodium, added sugar, saturated and trans fat and, for most of us, fewer calories.

By now, I think and hope, the food industry has seen the writing on the wall. I urge my friends on both sides of the House to ensure that this writing ends up where it should be and where it can do the most good: on the food labels and the menu boards. I urge them to support this bill by sending it to the health committee for in depth study with a view to improving the bill for the benefit of all Canadians.

[Steven Fletcher, Conservative, Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Health]

Mr. Speaker, I wonder if the member could explain how a bill of this nature could be enforced. There are jurisdictional issues and inspection issues and there is a very large cost associated with that type of enforcement. I wonder if the member could comment on this aspect of the bill.

[Tom Wappel, Liberal, Scarborough Southwest, ON]

Mr. Speaker, the Canadian government is charged with the responsibility of ensuring the health of Canadians. There are many ways in which the health of Canadians is monitored and services are delivered to Canadians. Many of them of course involve regulations that need to be enforced. There are already labels for prepackaged foods and there are serious penalties for breaching these labels. However, clearly what occurs many times is that consumers themselves will notify the appropriate government agency if they happen to notice that something is not properly labelled or if information is missing. Inspectors will then take a look at that. As with the Income Tax Act, where we do not have enough people to examine everybody's income tax return, there are spot checks, spot audits and spot examinations. This is how it works.

As for the claim that this would be terribly, terribly expensive, that is simply not true. Already we have menu boards, so instead of a large picture of a “big mac” there could be a smaller picture of a big mac, and right beside the price we could put “700 calories as shown”. That is all that needs to be done. This does not involve a lot of costs, particularly for chain restaurants that do not have a lot of changeover in their menus. There is some nuance in the bill to allow for those restaurants that do have some changeover.

Any of these problems can also be examined in depth in committee by bringing expert witnesses before committee to answer these questions.

[Paul Szabo, Liberal, Mississauga South, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I want to congratulate the member for raising this issue that is near and dear to my heart as well.

There are some elements of the right to know, to make informed decisions. There is the obligation to inform. There is also the obligation to be correct in that disclosure, which apparently is not the case.

Could the member advise the House if he is aware of exactly who is against this legislation and why?

[Tom Wappel, Liberal, Scarborough Southwest, ON]

Mr. Speaker, there are two ways of looking at it. It is almost impossible to be against giving consumers more information. That is like being against motherhood. I guess the objection would be to the method by which I am attempting to deliver that information. As I said in my speech, the objection from the restaurant industry is that restaurants cannot possibly think of all the permutations and combinations that a customer might order on a pizza, for example, or on a Harvey's hamburger, as it is touted that we can have our hamburger the way we like it.

The answer is that the idea is not to make it difficult for people to sell food to consumers or difficult for consumers to eat it. We would simply say that a standard hamburger is 400 calories and add-ons are extra. Then it should be obvious to consumers that if they buy a hamburger with a bun it is 400 calories, and if the consumer wants to put a slice of cheese on it, there are going to be more calories. At least the consumer would have some idea. For supersized fries, it would be 700 or 800 calories, with three or four grams of fat or whatever the case may be.

This would be just enough to give consumers the information they need. The two main arguments are that it is impossible to do, which is nonsense, and second, that it is too costly. All of the studies have shown that it is not too costly. Clearly, the prepackaged nutritional labelling regulations that came into force in 2003 are in effect and have not bankrupted the industry or led to skyrocketing food costs.

[Steven Fletcher, Conservative, Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Health]

Mr. Speaker, we are here today to discuss a private member's bill, Bill C-283. Bill C-283 proposes amendments to the Food and Drugs Act that would make nutrition labelling mandatory on raw single ingredient meat, meat byproducts, poultry meat, poultry meat byproducts, and marine and freshwater animal products. Products would be exempted if the sales are below a certain amount, provided the label contains no nutrition or health claims. For simplicity, let me refer to these products as raw single ingredient animal products.

Bill C-283 would also require that for foods sold for immediate consumption, information on calories, the amounts of sodium and the sum of saturated and trans fats per serving be provided on the printed menu. If the menu options are set out only on a menu board, only the number of calories would have to be indicated on the board, and the sodium and fat nutrition information would have to be provided to customers upon request. When food is sold in two or more flavours or in bulk or buffet formats, the nutrition information would be required to appear beside the name of the food on the receptacle from which the product is sold in bulk or buffet format, beside the name of each flavour or beside the general name of the food as appropriate.

I note that Bill C-283 proposes to require the same nutrition information for raw single ingredient animal products that is required for prepackaged foods under the regulations published by Health Canada in January 2003, which came into effect in December of 2005. These regulations exempt raw single ingredient unground meats, meat byproducts, poultry meats, poultry meat byproducts, and marine and freshwater animal products from carrying a nutrition facts table unless nutrition or health claims are made for them.

These exemptions were included because of the lack of representative data on the nutrition composition for these products that takes into account the sources of variability, such as season, species, feed or trim level. Lack of such data presents a risk of mandating the provision of inaccurate information to consumers.

Since nutrition labelling is mandated on comparable products that are prepared in processing plants, such as raw seasoned meats, it is expected that major cuts of raw single ingredient meat and poultry meat that are packaged in plants will be voluntarily labelled if satisfactory data is available.

In regard to the proposal in Bill C-283 to require certain nutrition information on printed menus, menu boards and adjacent to food for immediate consumption sold in bulk or buffet formats, I note that the Canadian Restaurant and Foodservices Association recently developed voluntary guidelines for providing nutrition information to consumers. This voluntary program will provide consumers with nutrient values that are consistent with the core nutritional label information required for packaged foods and will include calories, fats, such as saturated and trans fats and so on, cholesterol, sodium, carbohydrates, including fibres and sugars, and protein content of standard menu items.

Since the February 2005 launch of the nutrition information program, more than 25 of the major restaurant chains, representing about 40% of all chain establishments, have committed to implementing these guidelines. Many of these chains have already completed this process and are already providing nutritional information to their customers. The guidelines state that nutrition information be made readily available to restaurant consumers through in-store brochures or pamphlets and that the availability of the nutrition brochure will be predominantly displayed on menus, menu boards and such vehicles as takeout and home delivery packages.

In general, the chains that are making progress in implementing the voluntary guidelines are the larger firms who have some access to the expertise required to do so and these appear to be the target of Bill C-283.

The voluntary program has the potential to provide consumers with the important nutritional information without the need for new legislation which would be expensive and burdensome to implement. The voluntary guidelines may provide consumers with information that goes beyond the requirements of Bill C-283 while avoiding the need for complex and costly governmental regulatory and enforcement programs. It would therefore seem prudent to allow the voluntary program time to work and to assess its effectiveness.

Bill C-283 proposes to exempt persons whose establishments or vending machine business has a total revenue of less than $10 million from the sale of food including income from all subsidiaries and franchises. The intention may be that the bill would only apply to those chains with standardized menus and highly controlled production facilities, since these are the minimal conditions for providing reliable nutritional information. However, the bill would also apply to hotel chains, many of which have independent restaurants with their own menus and with more variable conditions of production.

A further concern is the fact that at present restaurants and food service establishments typically fall under provincial jurisdiction and inspection is the responsibility of the provinces. Consequently, there would be a need for consultation with the provinces and territories. Bill C-283 would create heavy additional inspection requirements either for the provinces, if they agree to undertake the work, or for the federal inspectors and laboratories if they do not. No federal inspection system currently exists at the restaurant level which represents thousands of establishments across Canada.

Finally, Bill C-283 contains exemptions based on the dollar volume of sales. It proposes exempting from its requirements for raw single ingredient meat, poultry, or marine and freshwater animal products, persons with gross annual revenue of less than $500,000 from the sale of the same food, provided no nutrition or health claims are made for the product. It also proposes to exempt from its requirements food sold for immediate consumption by persons whose establishment or vending machine business has a total annual revenue of less than $10 million from the sale of food including income from all subsidiaries and franchises. This introduces an economic aspect totally absent from the Food and Drugs Act which would need to be assessed.

The government recognizes the importance of nutritional labelling in assisting Canadians to make healthy and informed choices about the foods they eat. This is why Health Canada introduced improved nutritional labelling regulations which became mandatory on most prepackaged foods in December 2005.

Health Canada is also currently working with industry and other stakeholders to find practical ways to develop reliable nutritional information for consumers about specific meat cuts and to determine the best means to assist consumers in making informed choices when eating away from home.

The government remains committed to helping Canadians continue to maintain and improve their health. I commend the intent of Bill C-283 in this regard; however, a number of initiatives are already underway which address the intent of Bill C-283 as I have already described. These initiatives should be allowed to bear fruit without the need of potentially costly and burdensome legislated requirements. Those are my remarks and I look forward to continue this very interesting debate.

[Christiane Gagnon, Bloc, Québec, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I rise today as the Bloc Québécois health critic to address this important issue .

The hon. member for Scarborough Southwest is introducing Bill C-283, An Act to amend the Food and Drugs Act (food labelling). The health of Canadians is important to him. He has been working on this for 10 years now. His efforts have been fruitful since Health Canada announced the recommendations on nutritional labelling in 2000. A number of these recommendations were based on his studies and bills he introduced in this House.

Since December 12, 2005, we have been able to read nutritional information to make more informed decisions about the food we eat. There are now tables that list 13 nutrients. This informs the consumer on the amount of calories, fat, saturated fat, trans fat, cholesterol, sodium, carbohydrates, fibre, sugar, protein, vitamin A, vitamin C, calcium and iron in their food. This additional information can now be found on every product we buy. Canada's Food Guide to Healthy Eating, gives us supplemental information on the best nutritional value available.

This bill raises a number of questions. We support the principle behind it, which is to better inform consumers about what they are eating and to go beyond that.

However, the bill before us contains measures that raise some questions. It seeks to subject meats, poultry and raw seafood to current labelling standards. It requires restaurants and food services to post selected nutritional information. It also makes it mandatory to list the percentage of each ingredient in a food, particularly any fruits, vegetables or grains emphasized on the packaging. We know that food consumption habits change: people are eating in restaurants and buying variety packs more often.

This bill is not new; this is the third time it has been introduced. In March 2004, it was referred to committee, and my colleague from Hochelaga—who was then the health critic—led the adoption of a motion to hold a round table on the bill so that industry and health experts could discuss it and offer some recommendations. However, the 2004 election prevented the consultation from taking place, so we got no recommendations and no report. This is why we support the bill. It would enable us to get a lot more information to help clarify the elements targeted by this bill.

As you know, the Bloc Québécois has always demanded greater transparency in food labelling. On the basis of the principle that consumers have the right to know what they are buying, I cannot oppose a bill that would enable them to better manage their food choices.

I would like to point out, however, that certain questions remain regarding some of the details and provisions of this bill. This remains an important issue, nonetheless, which is why I hope this bill will pass the second reading stage and be referred to the Standing Committee on Health. That committee will then be in a position to examine the provisions of the bill more carefully and recommend the appropriate amendments.

Given the federal government's constitutional responsibilities, the committee must give this bill priority, in order to ensure that we have all the necessary information about the issues in question.

The committee also looks at the whole issue of obesity and therefore nutrition. Accordingly, this bill could play a role in this desire to provide the public with better nourishment and more information about the quality of the food we eat.

I will now review each of the provisions contained in this bill and express some reservations about them. These issues could, of course, be examined more closely in committee.

First, as for the general intent of the bill, I would remind the House how important it is to fight against unhealthy eating. Food labeling cannot change everything and the fight against unhealthy eating must be part of a more comprehensive approach focussing on education. As we all know, however, nutrition education is a matter of provincial and territorial jurisdiction.

Giving consumers more information certainly could not hurt, but it is difficult to gauge the exact impact of such a measure. Furthermore, the Heart and Stroke Foundation of Canada believes firmly in the effectiveness of such a measure, as demonstrated by its "Health Check" campaign, through which foods that meet certain criteria are identified with a special symbol.

Questions remain regarding the application of proposed regulations on meat, poultry and raw seafood. I wonder whether it is possible to measure the nutritional value of each piece. Many factors are at play, such as how the animal is fed, the cut, and fat content, among others.

Yes, it would be hard to ask every butcher to calculate the nutritional value of every cut of meat being prepared. However, the statistics already exist and certainly it would be possible to find a happy medium without requiring the butcher to conduct in-depth analyses.

The purpose of all this is to give the consumer more information and I am convinced that is possible. This will certainly be discussed in committee.

The provision in this bill requiring that the percentage of ingredients used in food products be indicated does not seem an insurmountable problem. However, at the round table meeting, industry representatives said they are worried that such a measure will only open the door to violating intellectual property. Further consideration must be given to see what provisions could be implemented to respond to their concerns. Other countries have already passed such legislation, namely Australia, New Zealand, South Africa, Thailand and the nations of the European Union. We could look at their legislation and see how it could apply here and how their industry sectors have dealt with the new legislation in effect there.

Finally, perhaps the most controversial measure in this bill is requiring restaurants and food services to post nutritional information on their menus.

In this regard, I would like to point out that voluntary disclosure measures have never worked very well. The case of tobacco shows us that industry is always capable of adapting to such measures even if they opposed them at the outset.

However, we must also question whether or not certain restaurants will be able to comply with such regulations. Can the corner snack bar or the trendy restaurant that changes its menu every day implement these measures?

In this regard, we must not ignore the interests of restaurant owners. Once again, I am anxious to find out how our committee can make some improvements.

We know that poor nutrition is a far-reaching problem that exerts tremendous pressure on the Quebec and Canadian health care systems. Thus, it is important to determine how more comprehensive labelling rules could help fight the problem of poor nutrition.

Before closing, and given the member's knowledge of nutritional labelling, I would also like to point out that it would have been important for this member to take one more issue into account in this bill.That is the issue of mandatory labelling for GMOs, a policy not yet adopted by Canada. The committee should also study what could be done about GMO labelling.

Along the same lines, consumers are not always able to identify products containing real milk products. The committee should examine this aspect as well.

[Penny Priddy, NDP, Surrey North, BC]

Mr. Speaker, I rise to support Bill C-283 passing at second reading and moving to committee, and I have five points that I would like to make about it.

First, in today's environment many people are more concerned about what they put into their bodies. In many ways it is a more educated consumer group, although not in large numbers perhaps. However, a growing consumer group is concerned about the food it eats. More important, this group is concerned about what its children and families eat. For that reason we have to move in this direction. Although there has been some progress, the public is asking for more.

My second point is about health. As a result of the uncontrolled environment in which we live, we see more illnesses, some of which are triggered by food. In this case I think it truly can be a matter of life and death. We have seen the kinds of allergies that have developed. Everybody knows about peanuts. Does everybody think to ask whether foods are cooked in peanut oil? We are seeing food allergies that we would not have seen 10 years ago because our environment is changing.

As others have said, we spend about 30% of our food dollars on meals outside of our homes. We do not know what is in that food, but we need to have that opportunity. We need to be very conscious of it, as we are with the foods we bring into our homes. The bill may raise awareness about that.

For instance, my colleague from Winnipeg Centre has spoken very articulately about the effect of trans fats on health. We see a little more voluntary disclosure of trans fats on packages. However, when people eat out, they want to know if there are trans fats in the food. For health reasons, for personal reasons or for preventative reasons, they may choose not to eat that particular food.

It is the same thing with sodium. I will not repeat all the diseases that my colleague from Scarborough Southwest raised. With the increasing number of young people with high blood pressure, they need to know the amount of sodium in the products they eat both at home and outside it.

The third point is we have a right to know what food we are putting in our bodies and what we are feeding our families. It is not a privilege; it is a right. While there may be parts of the bill we need to debate and while there may be things that need to be changed, I am more than happy to move it to committee in order to help us have an exchange of ideas. Those diseases, particularly diabetes and high blood pressure of which we see more and more in younger people, reflect the need to be very conscious of what we eat when we are out. We know that children and teenagers are eating out a lot. Just the other day a physician told me that a 12-year-old had been diagnosed a type 2 diabetes. We know the effect of some of those foods.

The fourth point is education. We need more consumer education about this. We need to find clear, easy ways to do that, bearing in mind that not everybody has the same literacy rate. We need to have good consumer education.

My last point is poverty. The legislation will not affect many people because they cannot afford to make the healthy choices of fruits and grains, choices that other people can make. These people will continue to go to fast food restaurants because the food is less expensive. These foods are high in carbohydrates and other ingredients, but that is all they can afford. This will not address that in the same way.

In review, the issues are the current environment, health, rights, education and poverty. I am happy to pass this on to the health committee. We can review the legislation from other countries and look at how it has been implemented. I agree that voluntary agreement on almost any issue does not always have a success rate as high as we might like it to be. All these concerns can be addressed by the panel.

[Paul Szabo, Liberal, Mississauga South, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I again want to congratulate the hon. member for yet again raising the bill. He has championed the bill for number of years. He has done it in a way in which he presents to the House an important national priority, a health priority.

I would like to quote the member from his speech. He says, “Diet-related disease is an urgent public health problem in this country. Heart disease, stroke, certain forms of cancer, diabetes, osteoperosis and dental health all have links to diet that are well recognized by scientists. For instance, the diet-related cases of cardiovascular disease, diabetes and certain forms of cancer cost the Canadian economy $6.6 billion annually, due to health care costs and lost productivity. Diet-related risk factors for disease shorten the average Canadian's healthy life expectancy by nearly five years, and prematurely ends of the lives of tens of thousands of Canadians every year—to say nothing of the pain, and suffering these preventable diseases inflict on victims and their families”.

This is an important health issue and I believe it is a national priority.

I want to quote from the American Journal of Public Health, September 2006. The article is entitled “Attacking the obesity epidemic”. The first paragraph states:

Sixty-four percent of American adults are either overweight or obese, and the obesity epidemic shows few signs of weakening. Although the precise number of deaths attributable to obesity is difficult to estimate, obesity is clearly a major cause of preventable death. Not surprisingly, improving the healthfulness of American diet has become a national health priority.

It is a national priority in the United States. Apparently it is not a national priority in Canada.

I listened intently to the Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Health. He spent most of his time reading to us some of the elements of the bill. I was hoping there would be some cognitive words about the health value.

I have often thought that the measure of success of a country is not an economic measure. It is a measure of the health and the well-being of its people.

How is it that we do not recognize this as a national priority? We have ample evidence that producers of the products, which would require such labelling, have not been fully truthful with consumers or have not provided any information, have not recognized their obligation to fully inform.

Canadians have a right to know what they are consuming. I believe it should relate to all products which are consumed. As a matter of fact, right now I think beverage alcohol is the only consumer product that can harm one if misused, but does not warn one of that fact. I hope we will have an opportunity to debate that bill later on in this Parliament.

However, this is along the same lines. I know what the producers will say, that it is too expensive to do this or that they cannot do it because a pizza could have two servings of pepperoni and how would they calculate these things.

I thought the member was very cogent to suggest that even if we deal with something as basic as a hamburger, we know what the base product is. It is a hamburger and here are the number of calories in it.

Today Canadians are becoming more cognitive about their nutrition. However, when we look at the figures, it is very clear that Canadians do not know how much they can hurt themselves even if they are generally aware. There has to be a caution. We are talking about the health and the well-being of Canadians.

Let me go back to the report in the American Journal of Public Health on attacking the obesity epidemic. I thought the conclusions that were reached were very relevant to this debate as well.

It says:

As a response to the increased prevalence of overweight and obesity, which has been linked with the greater consumption of foods prepared outside the home, legislation has been proposed at both federal and state levels that would require the provision of nutritional information for restaurant food items.

The study shows that for a number of items consumers vastly underestimated the calorie levels, fat, saturated fat and sodium levels. On average, less helpful items were underestimated by more than 600 calories. With just one restaurant meal per week, an extra 30,000 calories a year would be added to a person's diet. These unaccounted calories could cause weight gain of approximately nine pounds annually. Holding all other factors constant, over several years the degree of underestimation could cause significant weight gain. Given substantial differences between expected and objective values, these findings indicate that inclusion of nutritional information on menus offers information that would be beneficial to consumers.

In this research study just this month the United States has clearly shown that this is a health issue. It is a health issue which does touch on the health and well-being of Canadians, on their personal health, our health care costs and Canadians' productivity, as the member laid out so eloquently in this speech.

The Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Health, for some odd reason, seems to think that we have a voluntary program and that it is working. It is not working. This issue has been on the table before Parliament for years. Why is it that the parliamentary secretary has to talk on a partisan basis as to how we keep items off the agenda which are not our own items when he should be representing the wisdom of Health Canada? What is Health Canada saying about this? I did not hear references to how Health Canada responded to the suggestion that there should be nutritional labelling.

If it is not a matter of protecting and promoting the health and well-being of Canadians, then the bill should not be here, but that is clearly not the case. It is about time that Parliament looked objectively at the facts with regard to issues like this which affect the health and well-being of Canadians. Now is the time for action. This bill should pass at second reading. I hope it will go to committee in order that informed witnesses can make their arguments on all sides. It is important.

It is not just enough that the parliamentary secretary should thank us for bringing it up and that he will keep it in mind. The parliamentary secretary should have said, “Let us have a look at this. There is some good evidence here. There is also some good argument on the other side. We are prepared to send it to committee, to debate it and to hear from witnesses so that Parliament can make informed decisions on the health and well-being of Canadians”.

[Rob Merrifield, Conservative, Yellowhead, AB]

Mr. Speaker, it is a privilege for me to speak to the bill from my colleague from Scarborough Southwest, the member who has brought the bill before the House. He has actually had the bill in committee before and it has been discussed many times. I do not think anyone in the chamber would argue with the intent of the bill, that individuals in Canada should be able to have the information they need.

Before I get into my deliberations, I must take exception to my hon. colleague who just spoke. The member said that the Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Health made partisan comments in his speech. I do not believe the parliamentary secretary's comments were partisan at all. I would suggest that if my hon. colleague really intended to do something about this issue, he was in a majority government for 13 years and could have actually dealt with the issue of labelling far sooner than by way of a private member's bill. I find it rich that we got those comments from my hon. colleague across the way.

Let us talk about the actual private member's bill that is before us as it flows into what the health committee is doing at the present time. The committee is involved in a study on childhood obesity. We understand from StatsCanada that 26% of the children across this country are obese or overweight. This is reflected not only in our children but also in our adults. We have a very serious problem in this country. It is an epidemic that we have to address.

The argument is not with the intent of the bill. The argument might be whether this is the right vehicle. Is the problem in society that Canadians do not know what they are eating, or is the problem that they are choosing to eat the wrong things? Canadians know that they should move away from their computers and television sets and be more physically active and eat healthier diets. Is the issue a matter of knowledge or a matter of choice and making the wrong choices?

I like the idea of this private member's bill for the aspect that it certainly allows members the opportunity to raise awareness of the issue. That is a very positive thing. We are going to continue that in the health committee as we address childhood obesity. The committee will be hearing witnesses from across the country and discerning some of the blocks that can be moved with respect to what we can do at the federal level to address the obesity problem.

Many of us in the chamber are very concerned about the health care system. The baby boomers are getting into their older years and they are starting to consume a tremendous number of health care dollars. We realize the pressure they will put on our health care system will be significant over the next 30 years. The pressure really has not started yet. It will start within the next decade and will intensify toward 2040-41. Then the pressure will not be relieved, but only will slow down.

If obese children start having heart and stroke disease, cancer and diabetic problems they will be hitting the health care system at the same time. Even from a demographic perspective we have to address obesity in our country as aggressively as we possibly can. We need to raise awareness and let the population understand the battle that we are in so that Canadians can discern for themselves and as a nation what can be done collectively to address our health care problems.

Many lives can be saved by addressing the problem. Canadians can live healthier lives. The health care system can be saved a tremendous amount of money as the population takes responsibility.

We are arguing whether this bill is the right way to proceed. Do we have to legislate every part of our society so that people understand that they are eating the right foods? One of the problems I have with this bill is the labelling aspect. If a label is not accurate, then it is a misleading label.

This comes from my agricultural side. A food item has a certain molecular composition of fats. For example, if a french fry is fried in palm oil, it is 50% saturated fat. If a french fry is fried in soybean oil, it is 20% saturated fat. If it is fried in canola oil, it is 7% saturated fat. These are the kinds of things that change the molecular composition of the fat content of a french fry.

The genetics of an animal will also change the amount of fat that is in a certain ingredient. A good example would be certain cuts of beef. The amount of feed or the type of feed that the animal was fed and the age of the animal impact on the amount of calories in the product that an individual consumes.

We have to give accurate information. If we do not give accurate information, then we would be providing misleading information. I suggest that many things in this bill would lead to misleading and clumsy information. If the bill goes to committee, we will address it as aggressively as possible. At the present time, I believe that legislating this sort of thing is not the direction in which we need to go. We need to inform the population about how to address obesity. This is the direction I applaud and I will push for this as aggressively as I possibly can. I do not believe this is the vehicle we should be using at the present time.

[The Deputy Speaker, Bill Blaikie]

The time provided for the consideration of private members' business has now expired and the order is dropped to the bottom of the order of precedence on the order paper.

The House resumed from September 18 consideration of the motion that Bill C-283, An Act to amend the Food and Drugs Act (food labelling), be read the second time and referred to a committee.

[Nicole Demers, Bloc, Laval, QC]

Mr. Speaker, thank you for giving me the opportunity to speak to Bill C-283, which I consider to be very important.

I am sorry if I am not in my usual spirited form or if I do not speak with my usual passion. I listened to Michael Fortier's recommendations and took my little Valium pill to calm my nerves. I am therefore a little less excited today than I usually am.

All joking aside, this bill is very important. It is so important that we made it a discussion point in our caucus meeting yesterday. This is a bill to amend the regulations and legislation in order to require restaurant owners and merchants to list on their menus or on their food items the amount of calories, trans fats, sodium, etc. This is an important matter that should not be taken lightly and should be reviewed very carefully, thoroughly and seriously. Such regulations have repercussions on the industry.

Even if we are talking about manufacturers or restaurant chains that do over $10 million in annual sales, these food chains are very important to the economy of the various provinces, to Quebec's economy in particular. In Quebec, the restaurant industry is quite developed. It provides many jobs to many people. These jobs are very appreciated since, for the most part, they can be filled by women and single mothers because of their very flexible hours. Men also choose this line of work because they find it quite agreeable, even though it is very physically demanding.

As far as Bill C-283 is concerned, we are aware that it addresses a problem and that is important for Quebeckers and Canadians to know what they are eating. We have talked about this a number of times: when we called on the government for the labelling of GMOs; when we called on the government to let Canadians know, through the food guide, what they are eating, what they should be eating and what is good for their diet.

But even Health Canada, in the person of Ms. Bush, who is working on Canada's Food Guide, is telling us that we should not encourage people to count calories. I do not know.

Is Health Canada going against the wishes of parliamentarians who want the public to be more aware of the number of calories they are consuming? In my opinion, this is important, because I myself have a weight problem and I often go to Tim Hortons. Recently, for breakfast, I ordered the healthiest items on the menu: a bran and carrot muffin and orange juice. I told myself that I was starting my day off right, that I had made a healthy choice, and that I was not eating fatty food, but healthy food. To my astonishment, when I went to the Tim Hortons website later, I realized I had consumed 512 calories by having a muffin and a glass of orange juice. Can you believe it? That is one third of the calories I should eat in a day. On top of that, I was hungry again at 10 a.m., because the muffin I had eaten at 8 a.m. was not very nutritious and I digested it quickly.

When someone tells me that putting calorie information on foods is not important, I am sorry, but I do not believe it. In my opinion, the number of calories should be indicated.

That said, we will have to be very careful not to hurt the industry with this bill. When we try to go too fast in passing a bill in order to please certain people, we can end up upsetting a large segment of the population.

In addition, because Bill C-283 targets major restaurant chains that make more than $10 million a year, it is easy for us to forget—and this is quite paradoxical—that the food sold in small restaurants is often loaded with trans fat. I am talking about fries, hamburgers, smoked meat sandwiches, and so on. These restaurants may not make $10 million a year, but they easily sell 10 million calories' worth of food a year. Bill C-283 will not affect these people.

As we consider this bill, we must ensure that we are not pleasing some by causing problems for others just because we want to legislate quickly.

In committee, it would be worth taking the time to examine all of the available options. I believe that restaurant owners are also prepared to make changes. Recently, I read that Kentucky Fried Chicken is planning to eliminate trans fats by changing the oil it uses. That is a good start. Yes, it is still a very fatty food, and it is still breaded, but this is an improvement.

The Saint-Hubert rotisserie chain, which is headquartered in my riding, has a healthy menu. They are making considerable efforts. They will soon be posting the nutritional content of their menu items, including calories, trans fats and sodium, on their web site. McDonald's and Harvey's are also making an effort, although I am a little less pleased with what McDonald's has done. All of their nutritional information is printed on the back of their trayliners. People are unlikely to read anything printed on the back of a liner under their hamburger, fries and Pepsi. When they finish eating, they do not bother removing everything, turning the trayliner over and reading what is printed on the back. People are not interested and, what is more, they do not want to feel guilty. Obviously, they will not look at it. I much prefer what Harvey's decided to do, although they too provide far too much information. It is very confusing for people to look at all the numbers on a Harvey's pamphlet.

There are definitely things to be done, changes to be made. However, these changes must meet with the approval of everyone involved and with the approval of the restaurant industry. That is no small feat. If we are not careful, restaurant chains throughout Canada could suffer greatly. We are asking them to follow rules that will be the same everywhere; however, menus are often not the same everywhere because ingredients are not the same everywhere. So, using the ingredients, how do you calculate how many calories there are in such or such a food? I do not know. Something has to be done, we have to look at this, that is certain.

I would vote for the principle of this bill. However, I am not saying that once it goes to committee I will agree with the rules to impose on the restaurant industry or the merchants. We must ensure that they can comply with the rules and continue to turn a decent profit. We know that the purpose of any company is to make a profit. Yesterday, we saw that even the government decided to axe the income trust program in order to recover the taxes it was losing.

Restaurant owners are just as smart as the next guy, and of course they want to make money. We will have to reach an agreement with them. I am sure that parliamentarians will find a way to do that thanks to all of the advice we will receive in committee when we hear the witnesses, if our colleagues let this bill get to that stage. I am sure we can find a solution that works for everyone; we will have much to gain by doing so.

I would like to know what I am eating, and I want to be careful about the calories I consume. That is not always possible here, but I want to make an effort, and I need help from the industry, Health Canada and my colleagues. Together we can find a solution, but we will not find that solution by legislating against the wishes of the restaurant industry.

[Pat Martin, NDP, Winnipeg Centre, MB]

Mr. Speaker, I am glad to join in the debate on Bill C-283, an act to amend the Food and Drugs Act regarding food labelling, put forward by my colleague from Scarborough Southwest.

I am prepared to accept that labelling of many of the ingredients in the processed foods we eat is beneficial. It is a good idea. I can say at the start that we intend to vote for my colleague's bill. I recognize his long commitment to this issue and I appreciate the opportunity to address it today. I qualify my support somewhat though by saying that even though labelling is useful, I think it is of limited use.

First of all, a healthy and balanced diet is largely a matter of personal choice. Therefore, labelling will be of great value because in order to choose the right foods, we have a right and a need to know what is in those foods, but I will also say that government has a duty and an obligation to ensure that the foods we eat are safe and that the materials labelled in those foods are safe.

While I welcome having saturated fats, the total amount of calories, sodium, cholesterol, et cetera, listed on the label of these products, I do not ever want to see trans fatty acids listed on a label of foods sold in Canada, because I do not want trans fatty acids to be allowed to be a part of food in Canada. While labelling is advantageous, it is not a substitute for the obligation that Health Canada has to eliminate certain aspects from the food supply system.

In the context of childhood obesity and the current study under way at the health committee, I sometimes sit in on the health committee as an associate member when my NDP colleague is unable to be there. There is a very interesting study being done on the whole issue of the near epidemic incidence of childhood obesity.

I had a conversation with Senator Wilbert Keon, a medical doctor, a cardiologist who runs the cardiac centre. I worked with him very closely on the campaign to ban trans fats. His comment to me while we were riding on one of the little green buses the other day was that caloric intake is the single biggest health problem that our society faces in terms of general public health, not in terms of diseases, but in terms of general public health. I agree with him. We are poisoning a generation of kids by supersizing them. I will not overstate things and say that we are killing children; I am simply saying that the quality of life of our children is suffering and the long term general health of our children is suffering because of their caloric intake, the amount of calories they are ingesting. It affects the quality of life of children in very scary ways.

At the health committee there was a cardiologist who appeared as a witness. He said that children three years to 10 years old were coming to his office with arterial sclerosis, clogged arteries. Imagine, children three years to 10 years old with symptoms we would expect from middle aged out of shape men like me who sometimes present with those symptoms.

It creates lethargy. Even if children are not showing any overt symptoms of illness, they are sluggish. They are not feeling well. They are probably not participating in activities at school because their little arteries are clogged with these terrible fatty acids or saturated fat, whatever it is. They are unable to enjoy their young years to their fullest because they are being hobbled by this terrible problem.

I know that diet is only one aspect of healthy children. Activity is just as important. There are two sides to the same coin to create a generally healthier population. There are programs, such as in the inner city of Winnipeg, that cost very little to get very little children busy and active.

There was one program called Wiggle, Giggle & Munch, which teaches new mothers to get their children moving and active even at six, eight and nine months of age. This program costs $5,000 for 18 classes for 20 and 30 young moms and their newborn babies to come together once a week and learn the importance of diet, eating the right snacks, and getting their kids active. Do members know how hard it is to find that $5,000 to renew that program? It is like pulling teeth. It is one of the frustrations that we face in this era of budgetary cutbacks, that we are not prioritizing important small programs like Wiggle, Giggle & Munch in my riding of the inner city of Winnipeg.

I would like to dwell again on the trans fatty acids issue. I know that my colleague's bill calls for labelling. I think the general population, though, has come to a realization that trans fatty acids are the worst possible type of cooking fat or cooking oil we could imagine. The scientific community is onboard. The industry has come to this realization, where companies like KFC have now eliminated trans fats from their products even though they used to be one of the worst offenders. Voortman cookies, New York Fries, all these companies have realized that they do not have to compromise quality or taste or shelf life to eliminate this material.

In speaking in favour of my colleague's bill, I think in the same context the member for Scarborough Southwest will not mind if I use this as a platform to advertise this other important initiative that has been running along parallel to the activism of my colleague on the food labelling. It is interesting to note that all of New York City may in fact take steps to unilaterally ban trans fats if its federal government is too slow to act.

I think the federal government should take note of this debate today and recognize that it is safe political territory to take this step and ban trans fats.

I do hope we pass Bill C-283, but I also hope that the current government of the day realizes that Parliament has spoken on trans fats, too. We had a vote in the 38th Parliament and we essentially gave direction to the Government of Canada to take steps to virtually eliminate, as far as is reasonably practical, trans fats from our food supply. It is rare that one single food product gets debated in the Parliament of Canada and is subjected to a vote as this product has.

A blue ribbon task force took 18 months to agonizingly, but thoroughly, analyze the problem from coast to coast to coast. It came back with a very firm recommendation as well: ban trans fats. I do not understand what the holdup is now.

Governments are reluctant to take steps if they think it is politically dangerous, but I can assure this government that banning trans fats is politically safe. I will be the first one to acknowledge the government and to recognize it if it does in fact take this step.

Getting to my colleague's bill, Bill C-283, the only thing that I would like to see revisited at committee, as far as specifics of the bill, is the threshold that my colleague has built into this bill, where it does not apply to a person who has, I believe, gross annual revenues of less than $500,000.

I believe there should be ways around that, even if it is done through associations or restaurants, et cetera, that may be able to cooperate to take some of the burden off smaller restaurants, so that they are not dealt with a disproportionate cost factor in listing these items.

I will simply close by saying that I admire and respect those who use the private members' system to champion a cause patiently, year after year. It is a good system and it can be used to the advantage of the general public by those who are patient enough to use it well. My colleague from Scarborough Southwest should be recognized for taking this important step that may in fact end up elevating the general public health of all Canadians.

[Roy Cullen, Liberal, Etobicoke North, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to speak to Bill C-283.

I want to congratulate my colleague from Scarborough Southwest. He and I are working together on another committee right now and we are doing that very well. He will not be surprised, though, when I speak against his bill because I have done so before when the bill was in a different parliament, in different numbers and in different forms.

He has the objective right. Canadians need to understand better what it is they are eating, and if there was a way to do that which was economically feasible, I certainly would support it. I do not think the bill as it now stands does that.

We have heard from others about the importance of diet, about the problems with obesity, and if there is a way to educate Canadians better on these facts, we should be doing so. The food service industry has been doing a lot of that through their voluntary measures and some of the measures introduced by our government to comply with nutritional labelling. However, the bill goes a little bit too far.

My riding of Etobicoke North is out by the airport. There are a lot of restaurants and also a lot of light to medium sized industry, food processing companies, and yes, I have heard from them. If I thought the bill was for the benefit of all Canadians and it was workable, I would support it, but I do not think it is workable, economically feasible or technically feasible to accomplish what the member so rightly wants to accomplish.

I would like to talk about a few of those factors. First, just to recapture, the bill would require companies with over $10 million in annual food service sales to list calories, salt and the sum of the saturated fatty acids and trans fats per serving for each menu item on their printed menu and to list calories per serving for each menu item on their menu board.

I see a number of problems with that. As I say, I think the objective is a good one, but I see a number of practical problems. Right now, if we go into a fast food restaurant, we will see menus displayed throughout the restaurant. To add another layer of information would cause some difficulties in terms of fitting it all on one menu board, or else the lettering would have to be reduced to a point that it would be illegible.

The other problem I see is that there are many trends now for customized meals. Let us face it, these fast food restaurants are here to stay and they are very popular, particularly with our pace of life, and people use them. That is the reality. When we get into these combos that fast food restaurants have, which are very popular, people will say, “I want a big Mac, but I do not want the fries; I want the salad, and by the way on that salad, I would like this dressing. Actually, you can supersize the fries, double up on the cheese, hold the bacon and give me the onions”, et cetera. It sounds mundane, but this is what is happening. In fact, fast food restaurants are marketing in this way. They want to give consumers more choice.

What would we do then? I think we could do it technologically on a computer and on a website, and I think that many of the businesses are doing that now, so if we want to know exactly, we could go to various portions. It will do all the arithmetic. It will add it all up and it will tell us what we are eating in terms of calories, salt and these various elements. If we do that, what that information does for us is another thing, but for those people who want that information, there might be ways of getting it from some of the bigger chains.

However, for some of the smaller restaurants, I know that there is an exemption here of $10 million in sales, but that actually creates another issue. I know what the member is trying to achieve, but it creates a level field that is not quite fair or even. We could have a Harvey's that is required under the bill to comply with all these nutritional elements and put this on its menu board for all the various combinations, and then we have Joe's hamburger shop next door, just a one off little independent, and it will not be required to do that. There is a cost to doing this. We have to have access to a nutritionist.

How could a regular manager of a Harvey's do this work? How could the owner of Joe's hamburger stall? He would not have the information to do that and would have to hire a nutritionist. That is why, quite rightly, the member would exempt small businesses, but then it would create a problem of an uneven playing field.

I read an interesting book not too long ago called Freakonomics and in it there is an interesting part where it talks about Starbucks, the coffee people. Actually, every day on the way to work I pick up a Starbucks. I am a Starbucks fan. That is the way it is.

The author says, and I think he can probably demonstrate it, but I did not do an audit on his numbers, that in a Starbucks coffee shop there are something like 3,000 different permutations and combinations of what people can ask for. I must say this is borne out by my experience when I go into Starbucks and listen to people as they place their orders. I am not that conversant with all the products. They will say they want a double latte, topped up by this, warmed up, doubled up by this and that. They will want Halloween or pumpkin sauce and they want this and that. Apparently, there are about 3,000 different permutations and combinations.

I am asking this question. How would Starbucks do that? I could see how it could do that on a computer or a website. If someone wanted to go in and say they wanted to do this combination, permutation number 1,876, boom, plug it in and it would give all the nutritional content of it. How could that conceivably be put on a menu board? I have no idea how that would work.

The other problem is that there are many restaurant chains that have operations right across Canada. There is an issue, I believe, with supplier variability. I think that some are discounting the argument. I am not going to argue that it is an insurmountable issue but it is an issue.

We have, for example, Tim Hortons chains. I know they backward integrate. They standardize in a very holistic and very professional way, but if they are buying their flour and all the ingredients, let us say in Nova Scotia, and they are making their muffins there, and they are buying their ingredients in British Columbia from a different source, notwithstanding that they are going to have very tight standards and requirements, there is going to be some difference, I think.

Perhaps I used a bad example because Tim Hortons chains would probably have the most standardized and most integrated supply chain management system around, but I can think of other examples where they might not have that consistency. What do they do then? Do they make an assumption that the flour that is bought in Halifax is the same as the flour that is bought in Trail? I do not know. I think it is an issue.

Do not forget that we would be asking the restaurants to comply with these laws and rules if the act is passed. It is not to be taken lightly. They would have to comply.

I have many food processors in my riding and they are also concerned about section 5.3 of the bill which basically requires manufacturers, people making biscuits or bread or what have you to comply.

It says that manufacturers are to prescribe in the ingredient list the percentage by weight of the three most prevalent ingredients and all those that are of vegetable, fruit, whole grain, legume or added sugar. Additionally, manufacturers would be required to list the percentage by weight for ingredients emphasized on a food label using words or pictures.

First of all, to comply with the requirements that our previous and this government is requiring has cost the industry, in terms of mandatory nutritional labelling, about $300 million. This would cost a lot of money and the industry argues, and I think with some merit, that it would create not necessarily more knowledge or information, but it could add in fact more confusion.

I will tell my colleague that I never like speaking against a private member's bill. I brought in a private member's bill a couple of years ago on user fees, Bill C-212. It took me two years, a lot of blood, sweat and tears, so I congratulate the member for taking this initiative, but I will not be supporting it.