When we consulted and proposed six months and nine months, we obviously had to balance our desire to have the health warning messages in place as soon as possible--because the sooner they're in place, the sooner the public health benefits begin to be realized--with what's feasible.
I'll ask my colleague, Mr. Proulx, to elaborate, because he was most directly involved in the regulations. When we looked at what was feasible, we looked at the experience we had most recently had with Bill C-32, The Cracking Down on Tobacco Marketing Aimed at Youth Act, for which we had the same transition period of six months and nine months. Our experience was that it went well and that the compliance was good.
We also looked to the sorts of factors that Cathy just mentioned about large multinational companies with expertise in bringing into place similar issues. They have had to put similar health warning messages in place in close to 40 countries now, so we were balancing what was feasible with what the earliest time was that we thought we could ask them to have the new health warning messages in place.
Mr. Proulx can speak more specifically to the numbers of comments we received, and I think you asked about needing some discussions with the industry itself.