Thank you very much for the opportunity to explain again, or more clearly, what a difference it would make.
The responsibilities on manufacturers under the Tobacco Act and those under the proposed Bill C-6 are vastly different.
Under the Tobacco Act, you can put anything on the market. There is no restriction. You just have to put a label on it. You have to meet the packaging requirements, you have to pay the tax on it, you have to test it, and you have to report it, but there's no pre-clearance or anything. Any product can go on the market. The result is that there's always post-market surveillance, which is exactly the problem that was explained to the committee earlier this week.
Under Bill C-6, manufacturers have a responsibility. They can't put something on the market if it's going to harm human health or safety. The effect of putting tobacco products under Bill C-6 would be that only tobacco products that are safe could go on the market. Are there safe tobacco products? Some people say yes; some people feel that some of the new tobacco gums or various other tobacco products can be ingested without too much difficulty. I think there's a good case to have those aspects explored. I think it's conceivable that there could be safe products.
The circumstance we have now is that by not putting it in this framework.... I should hasten to say that tobacco is a consumer product. The government admits it's a consumer product, and they've said in court that it's a consumer product, but the result of this is that tobacco manufacturers, as producers of a consumer product, don't have to meet that general obligation in Bill C-6 that I think is such an advance over previous existing law.