It certainly is problematic, not least in terms of timing.
Bear in mind what this is. It's very much a technical trade issue, a barrier that actually will disproportionately affect packaged U.S. consumer goods sold in Canada. That's many billions of dollars. At a time when we're of course trying to salvage NAFTA and are on the verge of a trade war, we should not, in my view, be doing things—at least at this point in 2018—that could create further friction in the trade relationship.
But I think there's an important point here. While nobody in industry would dispute at all the importance of the healthy eating strategy of Health Canada, the goals, and what was up till recently a multi-year history of partnership with Health Canada in promoting nutrition literacy.... We led the world in a collaborative way to put nutrition facts tables on food in Canada. We have been a driver of the best nutrition guidance in the world. Somehow we let this get away from us, to where we have now a suite of regulatory actions that do seem to be out of step with that collaborative approach.
As you point out, just as we're launching this ambitious export goal for the industry.... We've embraced agrifood, the strategic innovation fund, and the mandate of ISED, and we have all the recommendations from the Barton report around growing the industry, but we seem to have a disconnect and a lot of friction around this among departments in Ottawa, frankly, which I think we do need to solve, because it's making it very difficult to understand where we should be investing in that situation.