Mr. Chairman, members of the Standing Committee on Health, Madam Clerk, and colleagues, bonjour and good afternoon. I want to thank you for giving us the opportunity to appear before you once again.
My name is Anu Bose. I am the head of the Ottawa office of Option consommateurs. With me is François Décary-Gilardeau, the food and agribusiness analyst at our Montreal office.
We are no strangers to this committee. We were here late last year, speaking to you very strongly on Bill C-36--now, thanks be to God, the Consumer Product Safety Act.
We are a moderate outfit. We are 30 persons--lawyers, economists, and energy and agricultural scientists--but we have locked horns with the likes of Maple Leaf Foods and lived to tell about it. We also sit on several government committees and working groups, such as the advisory committee on food regulation for Health Canada and the consumer associations round table for CFIA.
Healthy living is a very vast and very complex subject. We've chosen to restrict ourselves to the labelling of food, not only because we are what we eat but because we have seen one too many claims that are economical with the truth about the products they are pushing.
We do realize that it is not very easy to eat healthily in today's world because of the siren song of fast foods and convenience foods. We also believe that the tide must turn, and that given the appropriate incentives, Canadian consumers could make healthier choices for themselves and their families.
We base our remarks on the UN guidelines on consumer protection, which state that consumers should be protected against risks to their health and safety and that consumers have the right to have access to adequate information to make an informed choice. It reinforces the concept of the duty of care that every government, including our own, owes its citizens.
Option consommateurs maintains that all information provided to consumers by manufacturers should be credible, should be verifiable, and, above all, should be appropriate. Information must also be easily understood--that is, be jargon-free--since not everyone in Canada has full command of one or the other of the official languages.
Mr. Chair, with your permission, I'll ask my colleague, the real expert on labelling and health claims, to continue.
Thank you.