We're trying to balance the safety of Canadians, especially kids, with the importance of not overregulating and not having unintended extra costs for industries that are a competitive problem and so on.
One of the things I think is important is as much as possible we're harmonizing with other schemes so that companies are not having to do a different scheme of regulatory response and labelling with every jurisdiction they're selling to.
The other broad issue we're balancing is we've heard testimony from people saying there should not be more information on products because parents are not really capable of understanding all the different chemicals and making those decisions. So it's our responsibility to preserve them from having to make those decisions--government should be making those decisions--and on the other hand there's the right to know so parents can make the decision. That's the broad place we're looking at. What do we think conceptually? Having been a mom of three kids and having been someone who ate organically from the time I was a teen, I thought about what's in everything I bought for my kids, are chemicals a concern, and so on. I want to know. How do we balance this?
I guess I'm going to ask a couple of questions about the harmonization. How harmonized are these issues in the different countries in Europe? How can we proceed in a way that matches other schemes that will reduce the duplication and the transaction cost for business but still provide the labelling, the prohibitions, the precautionary approach that we think is in the best interest of kids?