Thank you, Mr. Chair.
Greetings to the minister, and I hope he gets well soon. We'll be delighted to hear him answer questions in the House once he's recovered.
Mr. Minister, the Bloc Québécois supports diversity in all areas, but I want to talk about something else. We're going to put some meat on the bone and talk about beef labelling.
We recently learned that Health Canada wants to change the labelling on ground meat to include a statement about trans fats. We certainly understand the fight against artificial trans fat, given that it has such adverse health effects. However, don't you think that adding a statement on a label to indicate something that is naturally occurring in the product is going too far, and is harmful to our producers? That's what they think, anyway. Especially since the very same piece of meat—only not ground—would include no mention of trans fats and wouldn't be a problem.
But scientific findings on the effects of natural trans fats are completely different compared to findings on the effects of artificial trans fats.
Couldn't we just use common sense in labelling beef, just as we do for butter?