Thank you, Chair.
Our new clause 39.1 would say that:
Any person who contravenes a provision of this act, of the Food and Drugs Act as it relates to food, or [a provision] of the regulations made under either of those Acts, and who, in doing so, knowingly or recklessly causes a risk of injury to human health, is liable, in addition to any fine
—which is already in the legislation—
to treble damages, punitive damages and, in the discretion of the court, damages in excess of any profit.
It relates primarily to this idea of risky behaviours; it's if someone or a company were to engage in risky behaviours where they took the view of doing something of such a nature that they would end up at this stage, go through the courts, be fined, and hit the $5 million level of this thing. It's a very egregious act, not a minor hiccup where something went amiss or went wrong. This idea would move along in a way such that...the outside litigation, if you will, would be allowed such that this would actually happen.
It's typical legal stuff, right? I mean, ordinary folks don't see what this is about, in the sense of saying, “Well, how does this protect food safety?” Really, we're talking about the court system; earlier, we were talking about the court system in a different way. This is about allowing those penalties to be greater if indeed an act were such that you could see that someone actually went about behaviours knowingly, behaviours that not only were contravening the act, but really were, in a very unsafe way, premeditated. I hate to use that word, because maybe it wasn't that egregious, but certainly it was such that they should have knowingly not behaved in that way and should have modified their behaviour.
This is really about ensuring that there are penalties beyond when we move into things like awards, beyond this idea.... It really is about the upper end of behaviour. Some of the words to describe it are things like “fraudulent” and “reckless corporate behaviour”. This really is an extraordinary measure. It's not something that would be utilized...hopefully never, actually. But clearly there are times when behaviour is such that it needs to be penalized in a particular way.
This isn't food tampering per se. This isn't about putting pins in something or tampering with a bottle on a shelf and that sort of stuff. This is really more of a corporate piece, where a decision was taken at that type of level, and not an act by an individual, necessarily, where the legislation speaks to tampering, where you have that.
Let me leave it at that, Chair.