Thank you.
It's a good moment, I think, to focus on this clause, because this is the review clause that compels the government to do a review of the impact of this legislation in five years. For a lot of the concerns that were expressed today, including from my Conservative colleagues, there will be an opportunity at that point to determine whether or not this legislation has missed the mark, has oversprayed its effect or has been applied in a way that is concerning to people.
On this one, as well, the specific amendment here, which I support, is calculated at drawing the department's attention to see whether or not these marketers—again, I'm going to emphasize that these are sophisticated marketers with a lot of money—adapt to this legislation by instead focusing their targeted advertising to children who are 14 and up. By the way, they are still children.
I personally think that 13 is too young for this. I would have liked to see the age be higher, because I don't know that there is a whole lot of difference between marketing to a 13-year-old and to a 14-year-old.
What this amendment would do is.... It just says let's make sure that we look and see whether the advertising industry and the manufacturers of unhealthy foods are shifting in their advertising instead, not just to kids aged 13 to 16, but actually up to 18, which I think is smart.
I want to conclude by saying there was specific testimony on this that I wanted to read. Again, it's from Dr. Tom Warshawski. I asked him whether or not, with this legislation, we should be thinking about kids older than 13. He said:
You're right about the unique vulnerabilities of adolescents. They have discretionary income, they have less supervision, and they have unique drivers in terms of their social relationships. With adolescence comes a shift in affiliation from the parents to peers. Peers become very important. There is also a need for immediate gratification, which adolescents demonstrate, so they are particularly vulnerable to marketing....
We would, again, like to see the protection expanded to this group. One of the things we discussed with Health Canada is that if and when—and hopefully it's going to be soon—we get the protection for kids under the age of 13, we look to see how marketing has shifted. It could be sort of a game of whack-a-mole: You inhibit marketing to kids under the age of 12 or 13, and then all of a sudden it increases toward adolescents. What happens to that marketing? What does it do to the purchasing behaviours?
The first step is to get it for the younger children, and the next step is to really keep an eye on what's happening with adolescents.
I think this is a really good amendment, because it carries the age up from 16 to 18. Let's carefully monitor it to see what happens.