To some degree, my comments are pre-emptive. There has been some proposal to do an additional labelling requirement. I'm referencing finished consumer and health products. If you create a second labelling regime, Health Canada already has mandatory ingredient labelling for our products using an international nomenclature. They already have the ability to put warnings, etc., on our products. All the tools are there to represent any concerns that people may have.
We've also been very strong with Health Canada in promoting digital labelling, which allows you to provide a lot more information, some of which has been requested by other presenters here today. You could add that information through a digital label to provide more information to consumers rather than add it to the product label, which would just increase product size and environmental issues.
We've had concerns around some additional labelling requirements that have been proposed that might come through amendment, but if you talk about duplication, I can say this. We worked very strongly under the Harper government with a New Democrat MP, Mr. Masse, to bring about the ban on plastic microbeads. That had the unanimous support of the House of Commons. It was enacted through CEPA. We requested, with Mr. Masse, that it be added to the cosmetic ingredient hot list so that every importer and every manufacturer would know that it's there. Well, the silos, Health Canada and Environment Canada, said they couldn't do that, so it's in two separate places. We've recently had companies, not our members, call us to say that they've been caught with plastic microbeads in their products. They didn't know. They checked the Health Canada list and it wasn't on.
It kind of shows that the act is important, but if you don't focus on the specificity of how you implement it and encourage compliance, you're not going to get the level that I think everyone appearing before this committee wants to see.