Mr. Chair, members of the committee, thank you for the opportunity to be here with you today.
My name is Rob Cunningham. I'm a lawyer and senior policy analyst with the Canadian Cancer Society.
My testimony is going to focus on what has been distributed to you—article 29.5—which contains an exception for tobacco products in the investment chapter. We support this provision. We're very pleased that it's in the TPP. It was there in part because of Australia's experience with respect to plain packaging. In the Canadian context, plain packaging is part of the Prime Minister's mandate letter to the Minister of Health. Last week, on May 31, the health minister announced consultations for implementing it in Canada.
What is plain packaging? What has Australia done? I have an example here of the iconic Marlboro pack before and after plain packaging. After plain packaging, you no longer have the package as an advertisement. You no longer have the brand colours, logos, and graphics. On a cigarette pack, you have a health warning, and the brand name appears on a drab brown background. You can perhaps see if better if I show you three different packages here. On these three different packs, you have the health warning and then the company names: Dunhill, Marlboro, and Benson & Hedges. In all three cases, you have drab brown for the base colour of the pack, and the brand name is on the background in white.
The Australian government did research into what was the least attractive colour. They came up with olive brown. They referred to it that way. But the olive industry got upset.