Thank you.
Again, if this wasn't a bill that had been introduced before and if we hadn't had extensive consultations before, then I would agree with my colleagues.
The other thing that I think is important is that we as MPs bring a lot of information and knowledge that we acquire through the course of our interactions to this committee. Not everything that we know is heard here. Here's what we know. I'm going to repeat this.
In 2007, 16 years ago, the food and beverage industry launched the Canadian children's food and beverage advertising initiative. That's what brought in the voluntary code. That's been in place for 16 years.
As Dr. Ellis already acknowledged, and we all acknowledge—you don't have to be a doctor to know this—there's an epidemic of childhood obesity in this country. I don't think you have to be Sherlock Holmes to put those two things together. The voluntary code ain't working.
Do we need to hear from witnesses to cement that fact? No, we do not.
When Bill S-228, the Child Health Protection Act—I think it's same title that Ms. Lattanzio has put to this bill—died on the Order Paper in 2019, researchers at the University of Toronto found that food industry interactions with government outnumbered non-industry interactions on that bill. They looked at 3,800 interactions, including meetings, correspondence and lobbying, in the three years before that bill failed. They found that 80% of those interactions were from industry, not public health or not-for-profit organizations.
Let's just name the elephant in the room. This bill has been studied to death. It has been consulted to death. Every single stakeholder entity who has wanted to have a say in it has had their say in it. We know what their positions are. The bill has not changed significantly. The bill introduced today is substantially the same as the one introduced by Senator Nancy Greene Raine. There is no difference in the general public, except for one thing: The childhood obesity epidemic has probably gotten worse.
What's to hear?
I'll tell you, the advertisers are going to come say they don't like the bill. I'm curious to hear it if anybody is going to seriously contend that it's otherwise. They don't like it. That's why they proposed a voluntary code of conduct.
Again, if we didn't have 16 years of evidence of what the impact of a voluntary code of conduct was, then I'm sure Mrs. Lattanzio wouldn't have sought to use her order of precedence to introduced this very important bill. We don't need to hear from anybody. There's an opportunity for every member of this committee to question Mrs. Lattanzio, to question the ministry staff and also to introduce amendments.
If anybody thinks the bill is not strong enough or feels that it needs to be improved, they can introduce amendments. In fact, everybody has had that opportunity. I would just propose that we defeat this motion. There's nothing to be gained from hearing from one witness next week, or this week, or frankly any other time.
Do you know what? At the end of the day, if you don't like the bill, vote against it. It's everybody's democratic right in this room. If the Conservatives don't like this bill, if they think that the evidence isn't strong enough or if they think the bill isn't appropriate, they can vote against the bill.