Thank you to all of you for taking the time to appear before us.
My question is directed to Ms. Farn, from Refreshments Canada. I would like to talk about the serving size of beverages. I have been drinking soft drinks for a long time and for a few years my parents even operated a convenience store. So I have been able to follow the evolution in this area. When I was younger, one could find soft drinks in small serving sizes, individual bottles of 300 ml. At meal time, one would put a large bottle on the table, the 750 ml glass bottle which was the family size.
Over time, portions have kept increasing. There are now 500 ml cans and 2 litre bottles for the family-size portion. Recently, driving towards Ottawa, I stopped at a convenience store to buy a soft drink—I wanted something sweet and the smallest serving size available was 710 ml, which is roughly the same amount as the family size from my youth. These individual bottles are elongated and refined and they often have stoppers that allow you to drink straight from the bottle. What is going on? Is this normal?
We can see in your guide that you acted on the recommendations about sizing, but I do not know where one could find 250 ml containers because there are almost none on the market. For example, in the schools in my riding, students shop at the convenience stores around the school. If they are only offered 500, 600 or 700 ml portions, they will run into problems.
What does the industry do concretely to ensure that there is a real choice of reasonable individual portion sizes, as far as possible?