Thank you, Mr. Chair.
Thank you to all the witnesses.
I represent a very low-income riding. It is actually the poorest, statistically, in Canada, where 47% of all the families and 52% of all the children live below the poverty line, so I'm heartened in a way to hear that there seems to be a growing consensus about the association between low income and this health condition that you called an epidemic or a pandemic, Doctor.
I'm really concerned. Largely the face of poverty in my riding is aboriginal. It's North American Indian, off-reserve people who are leaving the desperation of the reserves and trying to find a better life in the inner city of Winnipeg. The conditions that you're talking about are just rampantly apparent in that population. There are more and more people in wheelchairs because of amputations due to diabetes, due to the health conditions, due to diet.
We're looking for concrete recommendations to put into a report. The first thing I'd ask you about is this. We worked very hard in the last Parliament to get a ban on trans fats. We worked with Dr. Yves Morin, a senator, and Dr. Wilbert Keon, also a senator--both known cardiologists--and we got it through Parliament. Parliament did vote not just to label trans fats, but to ban them. Then we struck a task force; it spent eighteen months and finally came back with a recommendation: ban them. Don't just label them--ban them.
But I can't get any witness, when I've been here at this committee--doctors, professors, PhD students--to say as a directive to this committee that our report should ban trans fats or that the report should say to implement the recommendations of the task force to ban trans fats. Can you please help me get it on the record to ban trans fats?