Debates of April 2nd, 2003

Sex Offender Information Registration Act

[Some hon. members]

Agreed.

[Réal Ménard, Bloc, Hochelaga—Maisonneuve, QC]

Madam Speaker, I rise on a point of order. I wonder if I can obtain the consent of all parties to do the following.

I believe that the government is preparing to go forward with Bill C-13, as was announced. I am the next member to speak on this bill, now at third reading. I am entitled to speak for 40 minutes, but the House is scheduled to proceed to private members' business in 10 minutes. In order not to interrupt my speech, I wonder if I could obtain unanimous consent to go straight to private members' business.

[The Acting Speaker (Ms. Bakopanos)]

Is it agreed to see the clock 10 minutes ahead and begin private members' business?

[Some hon. members]

Agreed.

[The Acting Speaker (Ms. Bakopanos)]

It being 5:45 p.m., the House will now proceed to the consideration of private members' business as listed on today's Order Paper.

Food and Drugs Act

[Tom Wappel, Liberal, Scarborough Southwest, ON]

moved that Bill C-398, an act to amend the Food and Drugs Act (food labelling), be read the second time and referred to a committee.

Madam Speaker, more than ever Canadians are interested in protecting their health by improving their diet. The Government of Canada has begun and should continue to encourage their efforts to do so.

Indeed, earlier this year the Minister of Health took a big step in this direction by ensuring that manufacturers provide full nutrition information on most foods sold in retail stores. In doing so, Canada joined the United States, Australia, Brazil, New Zealand and more recently a half dozen other developed and developing countries in obliging manufacturers to disclose the amounts of key nutrients on labels of prepackaged foods.

These regulations, which came into force in January of this year, were announced in the fall of 2000. I have been working on nutritional labelling since 1989 and I was pleased that the proposed regulations closely mirrored the bill I then had before the House. That bill had the broad support of Canadians as well as parliamentarians of all parties.

Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada economists estimate that the health benefits in terms of health care cost savings and productivity gains resulting from the dietary changes triggered by mandatory nutrition labelling will be 20 times the costs of modifying food labels.

It is indeed a rare occasion when we as MPs are called upon to support policies that promise that impressive amount of economic payoff. My bill simply extends the principle of mandatory nutrition labelling to more types of food so as to capture more of those economic and health benefits.

A lot of Canadians are following this debate. Support for the measures proposed in Bill C-398 extend beyond the reaches of the parliamentary precinct.

Despite the short notice for this debate, I have been receiving a steady stream of letters of support from health and citizens groups since last Friday. The list is long. I will name a few to give the House a sense of the breadth of community support. The list includes the National Pensioners' and Senior Citizens' Federation; the Community Nutritionists Council of British Columbia; the Ontario Society of Nutrition Professionals in Public Health; the Canadian Women's Health Network; Vive, l'Union des consommateurs; the Toronto Food Policy Council; the Canadian Society for Exercise Physiology; the HEAL Network of Northern British Columbia; the National Eating Disorder Information Centre; the National Retired Workers' Advisory Council; and the Centre for Science in the Public Interest, which is a non-partisan consumer health organization financially supported by over 100,000 subscribers to its Nutrition Action Healthletter.

Ensuring that consumers have ready access to useful information about the nutritional composition of food is critical to help reduce the human and economic toll of diet related disease estimated to cost $6.3 billion in health care spending and lost productivity and cause as many as 25,000 deaths annually in Canada due to cardiovascular disease, cancer and diabetes. If unchecked, these costs will likely increase substantially in the coming years as a result of rising pharmaceutical drug costs, the aging baby boom population and rising rates of obesity.

The World Health Organization has also recognized that diet plays a key role in disease prevention. In its October 2002 World Health Report , the WHO estimated that healthy life expectancy can be increased by as much as 6.5 years in countries like Canada by avoiding the top 25 preventable health risks. However, the report found that in countries like Canada, virtually all preventable deaths examined are attributable to four diet related factors: blood cholesterol, blood pressure, being overweight and low fruit and vegetable intake, as well as physical inactivity and smoking.

A growing body of evidence indicates that health promotion efforts can reduce medical costs and productivity losses, with studies demonstrating as much as $4 to $5 in savings for every $1 invested in health promotion. A recent report of the Auditor General noted, “Preventive health activities are estimated to be 6 to 45 times more effective than dealing with health problems after the fact”.

As I said, the federal government announced these very good mandatory nutrition labelling rules on January 1, 2003. The new nutrition labelling rules are predicted to lower the direct and indirect economic losses due to diet related disease by at least $5 billion over the next two decades by reducing premature deaths and disabilities due to coronary heart disease, stroke, cancer and diabetes.

This represents an estimated twentyfold return to the economy as a whole compared to the private sector expenditures incurred to modify food labels. These predicted cost savings, although an impressive first start, constitute only 4% to 7% of the total costs of diet related disease. My bill is an effort to capture more of those economic and health benefits.

For instance, the new regulations exempted fresh meat, poultry and seafood, except ground meat, and all foods sold in restaurants. Bill C-398 is in part an attempt to close these two important loopholes.

Nutrition information is particularly important as a decision making tool for selecting meat, poultry and seafood because of variation in the nutritional composition of these types of foods, which cannot be accurately estimated by consumers using visual inspection.

For instance, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture, a three ounce serving of trimmed, broiled top round beefsteak has only one gram of saturated fat, while a three ounce serving of trimmed, broiled shoulder blade pork steak has four grams of saturated fat. That is a fourfold difference in saturated fat content between two cuts of meat that are the same size. It is very unlikely that consumers looking at the two would know that one has four times as much saturated fat.

Some meat industry lobbyists successfully urged the government to exempt fresh meat from nutrition labelling because, they said, they did not have reliable, representative nutrition profiles of the numerous cuts of meat. However, one organization, the Beef Information Centre, which is a division of the Canadian Cattlemen's Association, supplies detailed nutrition composition information for 106 cuts of beef on its website. Others provide similar information, which appears to refute the information-poor claims of the industry.

Some of these groups are apparently working with federal government officials to calculate these figures. The bill gives those technical discussions a focus. Bill C-398 would ensure that manufacturers will have to share that information with consumers so they can in turn use it to select types of meat with amounts of saturated fat, vitamins and minerals that are acceptable to them.

Bill C-398 offers a workable adaptation of the nutrition labelling rules to be applied to chain restaurants. In the bill, restaurants with more than $10 million in annual sales, and for all intents and purposes that means chain restaurants, would be obliged to report the amount of calories on menu boards. Restaurants with table service would be obliged to report the amounts of calories, sodium, and saturated plus trans fats on menus, where there is more space.

We are no strangers to the havoc that restaurant and fast food meals can have on our health. Our hectic schedules are more like our constituents' lives, especially those with young children, than we know. Sadly, heart disease has cut short or slowed down the work of a number of our colleagues in the House. Likewise, poor diet prematurely kills thousands of Canadians every year as a result of diet related cancer, cardiovascular disease and diabetes.

Canadians spend 30% of their food budgets on restaurant and cafeteria meals, yet it is virtually impossible to find nutrition information at restaurants. To make healthful food choices, Canadians ought to be able to see relevant health information about menu options at the point of sale. Caloric content, for instance, is at least as important as price in making product choices and it is at least as difficult as price to estimate, yet only price is displayed on menu boards.

We certainly would not expect consumers to check the company websites to find the price of foods, or to ask a waiter to recite the sodium and saturated fat content of all the menu choices until we found one that met our nutrition objectives. This minimum amount of information could very easily and for very little expense be provided on menus or menu boards for the standardized menu choices we see at chain restaurants. If this type of information were available, I am confident our diets would change for the better as a result.

Bill C-398 also requires packaged foods to disclose the percentage by weight of key ingredients, especially fruits, vegetables, added sugars and whole grains. This will help prevent misleading ingredient claims like we often see on products called “fruit” cocktail that are really mostly sugar and water or on products “made with whole grains” that use mostly refined flour. However, it will also help consumers choose products that have higher amounts of healthful ingredients or lower amounts of unhealthful ingredients.

There is widespread scientific agreement about the health benefits of consuming adequate amounts of fruits, vegetables, legumes and whole grains and about the adverse health effects of consuming foods high in added sugars. For instance, scientists agree that a diet rich in fruits and vegetables is associated with a lower risk of several cancers, lower rates of stroke and lower blood pressure, but about two-thirds of Canadians do not consume the recommended five to ten servings of fruits and vegetables per day. Many processed foods purporting to contain fruits and vegetables as ingredients contain only trace amounts of them without disclosing that fact on the label.

The World Health Organization issued a report in March 2003 called “Diet, Nutrition, and the Prevention of Chronic Disease”, noting that many foods contribute protective or causative effects on chronic disease risk that cannot yet be reduced to the metabolic effects of particular nutrients.

The WHO report identified 14 classes of foods that are often used as ingredients in processed foods and play very important roles, protective or causative, in the causation of non-communicable chronic diseases.

In addition to adequate breastfeeding and consumption of appropriate amounts of certain nutrients, the WHO report determined that there is convincing or probable evidence establishing links between cardiovascular disease, cancer, or type II diabetes and the following foods and ingredients: the protective foods, such as fruits; vegetables, excluding tubers; whole grain cereals; legumes; fish and fish oils; and unsalted nuts, provided that the caloric intake is not exceeded; and the causative foods, such as foods and drinks rich in added or free sugars; unfiltered boiled coffee; some forms of salted or fermented fish; high temperature foods; preserved meats such as sausage, salami, bacon and ham; and salted meats, pickles and other foods.

The five classes of ingredients identified in Bill C-398, namely fruits, vegetables, whole grains, legumes, and added sugars, constitute a practical subset of the 14 classes of ingredients the WHO expert report determined to be related to the risk for chronic diseases.

In closing, disease prevention is the most direct way of alleviating financial pressure on the health care system because it involves both decreasing the need for health care services by Canadians and, at the same time, increasing the ability of Canadians to help finance health care through increased labour productivity by contributing to the other side of the health care ledger.

Meaningful information can help consumers to make decisions that promote disease prevention. An informed consumer is an educated consumer. An educated consumer is a healthful consumer, one who will contribute to minimizing the increasing health care budget by preventing disease with educated consumption. This fact is what lead to mandatory nutritional labelling, which came into force on January 1, 2003. My bill closes a few loopholes left by omissions in the regulations. Its passage will benefit all of us directly in contributing to more beneficial dietary habits, and as a country, by helping prevent rather than treat numerous diseases, including cardiovascular diseases, cancer and diabetes. I ask all colleagues to support the bill.

[John Duncan, Canadian Alliance, Vancouver Island North, BC]

Madam Speaker, it is my privilege to speak on this private member's bill, Bill C-398, an act to amend the Food and Drugs Act, a bill which would require mandatory nutrition labelling in French and English for imported or packaged meat, poultry or seafood for retail sale, applying to businesses with gross annual revenues of more than $500,000. It would require that food sold for immediate consumption, for example, in restaurants, hotels and vending machines, include posted nutritional information such as caloric and fat content, applying to business with gross annual revenues of more than $10 million. It would require that prepackaged, multi-ingredient foods show the percentage, by weight, of important and “emphasized” ingredients.

The intent of the bill is a noble one: to provide Canadians with more information about the foods they consume. Who would not welcome the prospect of more information about what we put into our bodies every day to give us energy and keep us alive?

We are now living in an age when Canadians are taking more and more responsibility for their health. I even heard on the radio this morning that the longest lived Canadians come from British Columbia. I am so proud of that, because that is where I am from. I think it has a lot to do with people taking personal responsibility for their health and for disease prevention.

Health Canada estimates the health burden of poor diet in Canada at $6.3 billion annually, including direct health care costs of $1.8 billion. Yet when it comes to translating the noble goal of providing or requiring more health information into practice, it is not always easy. We know this from the debate over the labelling of foods containing GMOs.

The Canadian Alliance has a number of concerns about this legislation. I would like to address some of my concerns in my remarks today.

Health Canada announced new regulations for prepackaged food on January 1, 2003. These are Health Canada regulations that can be contrasted with this private member's bill. The new regulations require most food labels to carry a mandatory nutrition facts table listing calories and 13 key nutrients. Foods exempted include fresh fruit and vegetables, fresh unground meat and poultry, and food sold in restaurants. Bill C-398 would close the exemptions for meat products and restaurant foods. Undoubtedly there are good reasons why Health Canada exempted meat products and restaurant foods from the new regulations. We have a good sense of why and I will get to that shortly.

It should be noted that Health Canada is giving companies up to three years to implement the changes, and five years for small businesses. Bill C-398 that is before us today would take effect after two years. I do not know the reason for that discrepancy.

I will go on to some of my specific concerns. If passed, Bill C-398 would likely have its largest impact on Canadian restaurants and on the customers that patronize them. If passed, the bill would require chain restaurants to provide the calorie content of their products on menu boards and fat and sodium content on menus. The Canadian Restaurant and Foodservices Association says this proposal would be “highly impractical and unworkable for food service operators”.

An obvious concern for the CRFA is the fact that many restaurants have menus that continually change and dishes that are sold in countless combinations. The Canadian Restaurant and Foodservices Association also notes, “The magnitude and permutation of ingredients used by most restaurants reach staggering proportions”.

I can illustrate this with a quote from the Canadian Restaurant and Foodservices Association:

The make-up of a sandwich consisting of just 5 items or toppings (such as bread, meat, cheese, lettuce and tomato) can be ordered in 120 ways. A sub comprised of 10 items or toppings could provide 3,628,800 combinations. When the items for a sub are expanded to 15, then 1.3 trillion combinations are possible, making it virtually impossible to accurately communicate calorie or fat content on a menu or menu board for the vast majority of restaurant menu items.

An important consideration identified by the CRFA is that national restaurant chains and franchises operate thousands of different locations, each one being the equivalent of a small business. Many of these operators rely on regional suppliers creating significant differences in the ingredients of similar menu items.

This incredibly complicates the whole issue. It should be noted that most restaurant chains already have nutritional information about their products available on request. This information may include details such as diabetic or allergy concerns that may be more important than the provisions announced in the bill. I have a daughter with a potentially lethal allergy to peanuts. I know how careful people must be regarding many of these allergies.

That outlines some of the impact of Bill C-398 on quick service restaurant chains. The Canadian Restaurant and Foodservices Association notes that the proposed legislation would also apply to full service restaurant chains and hotel food service where the selection of menu items is much broader, menu items change frequently, and daily specials are common.

The laboratory analysis mentioned that is required to determine the nutritional content of just one menu item can cost in excess of $150 and generally takes a minimum of two weeks. This is unworkable and we can be sure that such costs will be passed on to the consumer.

The Canadian Restaurant and Foodservices Association says that from a cost and timing perspective, it would be impossible for the vast majority of large and small restaurant and food service operators to meet the requirements of this private member's bill.

I want to talk about the provisions in the bill on emphasized ingredients and raise some concerns about the bill's provisions. This is found in the bill's suggested amendments to section 5.3 of the Food and Drugs Act. Bill C-398 specifies that where ingredients:

...are emphasized on a food label by words or pictures, the label shall indicate the percentage by weight of the emphasized ingredients (a) beside the emphasized words or pictures, or(b) beside the common name of the food,in characters at least 50 percent the size of those employed in the common name of the food.

These provisions are complex and confusing. Who will decide whether ingredients are emphasized and how will they decide this? This formula is unworkable. Health Canada's proposed labelling standards are more feasible.

In conclusion, the intent of this bill is commendable. I hope I have demonstrated that some of the provisions of the bill are cumbersome, confusing or simply impractical. We should not impose an unnecessary regulatory burden on food processors, importers and restaurant chains. We must consider what the financial impact will be on these same food importers, processors, restaurants and of course, the consumer. I will be opposing the bill.

[Réal Ménard, Bloc, Hochelaga—Maisonneuve, QC]

Madam Speaker, very quickly, since this comes under private members' business and, therefore, is a free vote, I would like to suggest that my colleagues vote in favour of this bill.

I must admit that I had a few reservations in the past about the bill presented by the member for Scarborough Southwest. However, this time, it makes sense.

The House tends to be cautious when it comes to mandatory labelling. I remember that, when the Standing Committee on Health was debating what information should be included on cigarette packages, the tobacco companies appeared before the committee. They said, “This will be the end of the tobacco industry. There will be layoffs. We will never be able to pay for the mandatory labelling costs”. Health Canada had asked the major cigarette manufacturers to include the mandatory warnings and to periodically change them during the year so people would not get used to them.

I was a member of the Standing Committee on Health which studied the regulations. If we had listened to the Canadian Alliance, we would never have gone ahead.

Certainly, when labelling and consumer information is changed, there are costs to the adjustment. That is not what the legislators need to be worried about. The question they need to ask is whether it is in the consumer's interest.

It is, in my opinion, in the consumer's interest to have information on key nutrients, and with that information we hope to see greater attention paid to the factors that determine health. The most important of these is diet.

Our colleague from the government majority has reminded us that it is, of course, important to save money in the health system and that the most serious problems at this time are the major diseases such as diabetes and cardiovascular disease.

This is a positive bill, and one that invites us to provide key nutrient information on retail labelling and as well as making it available for restaurant meals. This should bring about changes in eating habits.

I am very much attuned to the argument that $6.3 billion in health care costs may be linked to what we eat, and any incentive to change our eating habits should be seen as a something positive.

I can also understand that our colleague has the support of major consumer associations, as well as associations of health professionals. Once again, let us keep in mind what happened with the cigarette manufacturers when we looked into the tobacco regulations.

I do not want to take up more of the time of the House. I can assure our colleague that he can count on me to actively promote his bill to my colleagues in the Bloc Quebecois.

[Judy Wasylycia-Leis, NDP, Winnipeg North Centre, MB]

Madam Speaker, I am pleased to take part in today's debate on Bill C-398, an act to amend the Food and Drugs Act relating to food labelling. I wish to thank the member for Scarborough Southwest for initiating this debate and presenting the House with an important issue that ought to be pursued in great detail and given serious consideration.

As members of Parliament, we have become used to debating important health issues that affect Canadians from coast to coast to coast and we are used to debating those issues during private members' hour. At least we give some consideration to important issues, but unfortunately that reflects the fact that the government has failed to show the leadership that Canadians expect by introducing such changes through governmental proposals.

It sometimes appears as if the government believes that health promotion is not worth pursuing if it somehow impacts on someone's profit margins. It is as if these issues are either seen as minor and insignificant, or that they are to be avoided because they get in the way of some Industry Canada agenda.

We have encountered this kind of scenario on a number of occasions. I want to refer briefly to the struggle we have had in this place trying to convince the Government of Canada to address seriously the issue of mandatory labelling of genetically modified foods. That has been a matter that has been before the House in numerous different ways, through private members' initiatives and committee work, yet to this day the government has resisted allowing Parliament to have a vote, to make a decision, and to make recommendations.

I also want to reference the issue of labelling in terms of alcohol beverage containers. Members will know that it is a matter which I presented to the House and received overwhelming support from members of all parties. However, the matter of informing pregnant women about the dangers of drinking when expecting a baby has yet to be pursued in concrete terms by the government of the day.

It is important that we keep raising these issues of health promotion and health protection, and hope the government will act at some point on the wishes of parliamentarians and Canadians.

The central issue of the bill before us deals with the question of providing Canadian consumers with health information. That is a very important matter. Let us reference the report released last month by the World Health Organization entitled “Diet, Nutrition and the Prevention of Chronic Disease”. That report detailed in part the scientific evidence concerning the relationship between diet and disease. It urged the global community to design strategies to address these serious problems. The findings of that report cry out for innovative measures and for proactive positions by the Government of Canada. That is why the bill before us is so important.

Let us also put it in the context of the recently released Romanow report, which identified the need to tackle disease prevention much more aggressively. In his final report, Commissioner Romanow reminded us that more than 90% of adult onset diabetes and 80% of coronary heart disease could be prevented through an improved diet in combination with exercise and not smoking. Diet plays a significant role in the development and treatment of many chronic diseases. Heart disease, stroke, diabetes, osteoporosis, and some forms of cancer wreak havoc on tens of thousands of Canadians and their families every year.

As many as 25,000 Canadians die each year from cardiovascular disease, cancer and diabetes alone. The toll is great in terms of human cost and in the loss of surviving family members and loved ones.

Of course we have to remember that there is considerable financial cost, not only to individuals but to our entire system. These costs are incurred because of the poor dietary choices, often ill-informed choices, that we make.

My colleague, the member for Churchill, wanted me to mention in today's debate that for a person like herself who has high cholesterol, it makes a big difference to have appropriate information and labelling details so she can make informed decisions to avoid relying on very high cost cholesterol drugs. That point should never be forgotten in this debate.

Canada loses an estimated $6.3 billion per year in health care spending and lost productivity through diet related disease. Mr. Romanow in his report pointed out that in the single year of 1997 obesity cost Canadians $1.8 billion in medical costs. These figures continue to mount. According to the government's own calculations, 15.2% were obese in 2001. We are now more likely to be obese than adults in most other OECD countries.

The tragedy of all of this is that diet related diseases are preventable. The irony is that the government has finally acknowledged the importance of identifying problems associated with diet and has taken some responsibility in terms of nutritional labelling. However it has refused to go the extra step to ensure that we have taken advantage of every opportunity to inform consumers about diet and about choleric content.

That is why we have to give very serious consideration to the bill. The bill before us may not be perfect. There may be some issues that can be dealt with at committee but it is in overall terms a very important contribution to the debate. It ought to be approved and forwarded to a standing committee for further deliberations and to hear from various witnesses.

We know the hotel and restaurant association has expressed concerns. We know there are questions around how this would be enforced and implemented and what the cost would be. Those are issues that ought to be pursued at the committee which would receive the legislation. Under no circumstances should those concerns be the barrier to further deliberations by the House on this very serious legislative proposal.

Bill C-398 attempts to do a fairly simple thing. It insists that all foods sold in Canadian retail stores and at least large restaurant chains be required to disclose the amounts of nutrients that are important from a public health perspective. In the end Canadians will have to make up their own minds about what foods to choose for their families and themselves when they do their grocery shopping or order a restaurant meal.

Canadians today spend 30% of their food budgets on restaurant and cafeteria meals and that percentage is rising. Yet very few restaurants provide point of purchase nutrition information.

What we support today is the idea that there should be access to this fundamental information in to make healthy choices without having to be professional nutrition experts. Fast food restaurants and food marketers generally recognize that Canadians want healthy options. We see all sorts of promotions, whether salads or subs, but we are still here today fighting for the right to know whether these products live up to their claims.

Food and health are two, yet the same issue. Canadians deserve to determine their future health by more than guess work, and guess work is what the government has been offering so far. We have with this bill a constructive proposition to address this serious matter. We have a proposal that deserves consideration by parliamentarians in this chamber and at the committee level.

I would urge members to consider the value of the work and the contribution by the member for Scarborough Southwest and to give support for this legislative proposal to go the next step.

[Greg Thompson, Progressive Conservative, New Brunswick Southwest, NB]

Madam Speaker, I want to begin by thanking my colleague from Scarborough Southwest for this thoughtful bill. The bill is to amend the Food and Drugs Act, food labelling. Specifically, it would do some of the things I think all of us would like to see done.

A little later on I will go into some of the problems of the bill because there are always problems with any legislation initiated in the House, whether a government bill or a private member's bill. We are here to intelligently debate the bill, to point out some of the flaws and deficiencies and also to support the bill. What the member is attempting to do would be very difficult to argue against.

There are a few things the member is attempting to do with the bill.

First, the bill would require large chain restaurants to post the number of calories in menu items beside the corresponding price on menu boards, and, where menus are used, also the amounts of saturated fat plus trans fat and sodium per serving.

Second, it would require that full nutritional information on all fresh meat, poultry and seafood, not just ground meat, sold in retail stores be disclosed. This nutrition information already is required for most other foods by new regulations finalized January 1, 2003.

Third, the bill would require that prepackaged multi-ingredient foods show the percentage by weight of key ingredients, especially those relevant to health such as added sugar, fruits, vegetables and whole grains.

The member has tremendous support across the country for this and I just want to list some of the supporters. It is basically a partial list of supporters for this initiative. They include: National Pensioners' and Senior Citizens' Federation; Community Nutritionists Council of British Columbia; the Ontario Society of Nutrition Professionals in Public Health; the Canadian Women's Health Network; the Toronto Food Policy Council; the Canadian Society for Exercise Physiology; the National Eating Disorder Information Centre; the National Retired Workers' Advocacy Council, and so on. I also received a letter also from the Centre for Science in the Public Interest.

There is clearly support for this type of legislation. This is an interesting day for this to be debated in the House. I would mention to the hon. member for Scarborough Southwest that I just left a committee meeting where the witness was Mr. Roy Romanow, former premier and author of the Romanow report, which we debated in this House and the government responded to not too many weeks ago in terms of an accord for the provinces, the funding issues and generally I guess the state of health care in Canada.

Today in questions and answers one of the questions put to Mr. Romanow by another member had to do with healthy living and the benefits that were derived in our society with healthy living. He came under slight criticism for not addressing that as much as the member thought he should have in his report to Parliament, which was tabled in the House in November.

I guess the point the member is trying to make is there is a huge cost in our society for not maintaining a standard of healthy living. A lot of that has to do with lack of exercise, but more important not knowing what we are eating.

This gets back to the member's bill which we are discussing now. In relation to that is the cost. This point was brought across today in health committee when we were speaking to Mr. Romanow. These were some of the numbers that were used. The cost of dietary related disease is $6.3 billion in health care spending and lost productivity every year in Canada.

If unchecked, these costs will likely increase substantially in the coming years as a result of rising pharmaceutical drug costs, the rising rates of obesity and the aging baby boomer population, which includes at least myself and possibly the member for Scarborough Southwest. We are talking about dollars but dollars do not tell us the whole thing. There is a human cost. As many as 25,000 deaths annually in Canada are due to cardiovascular disease, cancer and diabetes, and that number is growing as the population continues to age.

Those are the types of things that have to be considered when we look at a bill like this. The point that we have to speak on is the cost to industry. There is a way that we can get around this. Some of the ideas can be fleshed out at committee. I support moving the bill to the next stage so we can flesh out some of the details that could make a bill like this a reality.

I will quote from a letter I received yesterday from the Canadian Restaurant and Foodservices Association. This letter was signed by Joyce Reynolds, the Senior Vice President of Government Affairs. In the third paragraph the letter says:

This simplistic proposal would be highly impractical and unworkable for food service operators. It would effect food served in a wide variety of settings including full service restaurants, quick service restaurants, hotel dining and banquet rooms, catered functions in institutional cafeterias, schools, clubs, hospitals, airplanes, trains and boats.

They are all in there.

The letter then goes on to talk about the multitude of choices that are available in a restaurant and the problems in attempting to comply with the bill if those multitude of choices had to be considered in adapting the restaurant industry to fit the details of the bill.

There are some problems. I do not want to read this letter in its entirety because it becomes a bit mind boggling. However it goes on to say:

The multitude of choices available to customers ordering a simple sandwich, illustrates the complexity of mandatory menu labelling. The make-up of a sandwich consisting of just five items or toppings (such as bread, meat, cheese, lettuce, and tomato) can be ordered in 120 ways. A sub comprised of 10 items or toppings could provide 3,628,800 combinations. When the items for a sub are expanded to 15, then 1.3 trillion combinations are possible...

In other words, she is trying to say that it is virtually impossible to communicate that kind of information to the consumer.

In all practical terms there is a way this can be overcome. I want to be as generous as I can. This is something we have to consider. We are concerned with the health of Canadians. They have a right to know what they are eating. It would serve the purposes of a lot of people in Canada if we could find a way to adopt this legislation. Details have to be fleshed out in committee. We support moving Bill C-398 on to the next logical step.

[Jeannot Castonguay, Liberal, Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Health]

Madam Speaker, we are here to discuss a private member's bill. As you already know, I am referring to Bill C-398. This bill proposes amendments to the Food and Drugs Act that would make it mandatory to provide labelling of nutritional information for raw meat, poultry, fish and seafood.

More specifically, Bill C-398 would prohibit the importing or packaging of meat, poultry, fish or seafood for retail sale unless the labelling indicates, in both official languages, and in the manner stipulated, portion size, the number of calories, and the quantities of 13 nutritional elements that are found in the nutrition information panel.

I would like to make a few comments regarding the enormous amount of work that has been done in the area of food labelling.

On January 1 of this year, changes to food and drug regulations came into force. The new regulations require that most labels for prepackaged foods provide a nutrition information panel containing information on calories and the 13 essential nutritional elements contained in a specific portion size.

January 1, 2003, also marked the culmination of a four-year process as a result of the recommendations contained in the National Plan of Action for Nutrition. The purpose of this plan was to improve the effectiveness of nutritional labelling by providing more nutritional information and providing more information to the public as to how to use it.

An external advisory board was responsible for the process, which included research into consumer needs, as well as indepth consultations with all sectors, including consumers and the health and food industry sectors. It was a massive undertaking.

The nutrition information panel is an important way to help Canadians learn more about the foods they consume. This is important. The current nutritional labelling, combined with effective information, provides a significant opportunity to improve the nutritional health and welfare of Canadians.

This measure will allow Canadians to compare products more easily, to evaluate the nutritional value of a greater number of products and, finally, to better manage specific diets.

The new nutritional labelling will be easy to find, easy to read and easy to use. The nutrition information panel will only be a useful tool to help consumers make healthy nutritional choices if they know how to use the information. That is fairly obvious.

That is why Health Canada is committed to launching a large-scale education program. The Minister of Health recently launched an information package on nutrition labelling, as you are no doubt already aware, Madam Speaker.

This information package was specially designed for dietitians and other health providers to help them inform Canadians about nutrition labelling. It was sent to 8,300 dietitians, diabetes experts, provincial nutritionists and other essential partners in the area of nutrition across Canada.

The new regulations represent an enormous challenge for many sectors of the food industry, because certain foods must be tested and new labels must be produced.

These sectors need time to adjust. While some can spring into action very quickly to add the nutrition labelling format on their labels, others will need all the time provided under the regulations that will come into force.

For each product, the nutrition labelling format provides information on the nutrient content of food at the point of sale. The nutrient content of most foods varies for any number of reasons, and it is not possible to test a sample of each food before it is sold.

It is therefore necessary to provide for some exemptions, to accommodate situations where it would be difficult, and perhaps even impossible, to list nutrition facts for a variety of reasons.

Ensuring that a nutrition label contains valid information requires the testing of many samples of each food over time to take into account factors related to variability. These factors include the time of year, climatic conditions, soils and the feed given to animals.

The data do not exist for all products at this time. Because of the lack of information on nutritional composition, an exemption from including a nutrition information panel has been granted with respect to raw, single ingredient meats that are not ground, meat by-products, poultry meats, poultry meat by-products, and raw, single ingredient marine or freshwater animal products. That is the reason.

Bill C-398 further proposes that information on calories and nutritional composition may come from an independent chemical analysis of the product or from representative nutrition composition data recognized by the Department of Health.

During the public consultations that led to the new regulations on nutritional labelling, consumers and dietitians told Health Canada that the quantities of nutrients shown on the nutrition information panel should be accurate.

Industry wants to analyze these products in order to be able to provide consumers with nutrition information. However, there are many cuts of meat, and fat content varies significantly according to the grade of beef or the season in which seafood is harvested. Taking these factors and other variables into account, an unrealistic number of samples would have to be analyzed in order to obtain standardized data for nutritional labelling. Such analysis is expensive and time-consuming.

This change would obviously create precedents; moreover, the repercussions on all categories of products regulated by the act and the constitutionality of such a change have not been evaluated.

In conclusion, the intent of Bill C-398 is clearly to provide consumers with more information about the nutritional value of the foods they eat. However, the current lack of representative data on meats, poultry and raw fish and seafood creates a risk that it might become mandatory to provide consumers with inaccurate information. That is not what we want to do. The information provided must be correct and that is what the dietitians told us.

[Jim Karygiannis, Liberal, Scarborough—Agincourt, ON]

Madam Speaker, we are here today to discuss a very important bill, Bill C-398, an act to amend the Food and Drugs Act.

However, in realizing that health is important in my riding of Scarborough—Agincourt we have had a devastating occurrence. We talk about the war in Iraq, but I want to talk about what is happening in my part of the world.

Scarborough Grace Hospital is ground zero for the war against SARS. I call it the war against SARS because we are in an area where on a day to day basis we constantly have to be vigilant and we have to make sure that the public is healthy. One of my staff members was voluntarily quarantined because that individual had visited Scarborough Grace Hospital.

One thing I am pleased to talk about is that the Government of Canada, after a phone call to the Minister of Human Resources Development, automatically moved to recognize that this is an important issue. If working Canadians who provide for their families on a day to day basis need to have support, EI will kick in immediately. I want to elaborate on this for the benefit of all of my colleagues here as well as the Canadian public.

Under employment insurance there is a two week waiting period before people can qualify to collect benefits. The minister has moved very rapidly to forgo the waiting period and immediately kick in support for people who are voluntarily or mandatorily quarantined. If an employer recognizes for one day that an employee is sick and that employee receives benefits for the one day from that employer, employment insurance will automatically kick in immediately after that.

This is very important as we talk about health and see what is happening around the globe. Gone are the days when it would take two or three months for people to travel from England to Canada. Gone are the days when it would take four months for people to travel from Hong Kong to Vancouver. Today a flight takes 16 hours. People can contract SARS before getting on the flight and by the time they arrive in Canada it has been incubated and is ready to spread.

We have to do whatever we can to battle this disease that has hit our population. This disease is not confined to Canada. It is a global situation. A lot of people have said that we should not allow people from a particular country into Canada. I for one, being in ground zero and working with people, do not sympathize with those views. I do not even agree with those views. This disease does not affect just one person or one country. It affects the whole world.

[The Acting Speaker (Ms. Bakopanos)]

Order. The member will have another seven minutes on the subject the next time it comes before the House.

The time provided for the consideration of private members' business has now expired and the order is dropped to the bottom of the order of precedence on the Order Paper.

A motion to adjourn the House under Standing Order 38 deemed to have been moved.

[Jean-Yves Roy, Bloc, Matapédia—Matane, QC]

Madam Speaker, first, I would like to repeat the question asked in this House during oral question period on March 24. Naturally, it concerned the wharf belonging to Fisheries and Oceans Canada at Mont-Louis. As I said at the time, this wharf is in terrible disrepair. The breakwater and the front of the Fisheries and Oceans wharf are in need of major repairs.

The parliamentary secretary—who is here this evening and who will answer me shortly—told me at the time that the small craft harbours program for this year had not yet been announced, but that it would be forthcoming quite soon, it being that time of year.

Currently, the Standing Committee on Fisheries and Oceans is considering the department's budgets. I noticed that the small craft harbours program budget was decreasing each year. Even though the government had increased the overall budget by $20 million per year, and this money was starting to be invested—fortunately for all fishing regions—the department's small craft harbour program budget was decreasing.

I want to point out that the Mont-Louis wharf is connected to a plant, a seafood processing plant named Cuisimer. The wharf is essential to the operations of that plant. It is very important, because that plant creates jobs for residents of Mont-Louis.

Mont-Louis is located in the Gaspé, not far from Murdochville. Following the crisis that occurred in Murdochville with the closure of its main business, many people were laid off, not only residents of Murdochville, but also Mont-Louis.

So, as the president of the corporation said, if we do not repair the Mont-Louis wharf rather quickly, the plant will have to move, because it will not be profitable to transfer port operations elsewhere and to transport by trucks the seafood products that the company wants to process in Mont-Louis.

Moreover, as the president of the corporation also pointed out, another seafood processing plant located in Matane, the Matane shrimp plant, is interested in using the Mont-Louis wharf, and the reason is very simple.

As we know, and the parliamentary secretary knows it as well as I do, in the Gaspé, there is a very high concentration of northern shrimp not far off the coast of Mont-Louis and Rivière-Madeleine. Therefore, the Mont-Louis wharf is the closest facility and it would help ensure the safety of fishermen, while making it possible to continue to adequately supply the Cuisimer plant.

In a letter that he sent on March 21 to Mr. Malouin, the director of Fisheries and Oceans in Gaspé, Mr. Normand insisted that the Mont-Louis wharf should not only be repaired quickly, but urgently, adding that the work should be done, if at all possible, this summer. In fact, the work should begin this spring because, as I pointed out, there is a processing plant adjacent to the wharf.

In his letter of March 21, which was addressed to all the stakeholders involved in small craft harbours, Mr. Normand also adds that this is a safety issue for shrimp fishermen.

[Georges Farrah, Liberal, Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Fisheries and Oceans]

Madam Speaker, I thank my colleague, the member for Matapédia—Matane, for his comments and for raising this debate here in the House, during what we call the late show. This is an issue that is very important for the community of Mont-Louis in the Gaspé and in his riding.

The minister and the department are very conscious, as am I, of the importance of port infrastructure for communities like Mont-Louis and others in eastern Quebec. The same is true for my riding, where there are a great number of these facilities, as well as in the maritime provinces and in western Canada.

Already last year, the member and even the fisheries committee, of which he and I are both members, had raised the issue of the situation regarding small craft harbours across the country.

For the benefit of my colleagues in the House, I would like to point out that the small craft harbours program is responsible for approximately 1,400 fishing harbours in Canada. In all, these facilities accommodate and serve close to 30,000 fishing vessels and 20,000 pleasure craft.

The department is also responsible for more than 4,700 different structures, including wharfs, breakwaters, boat ramps and channels in fishing harbours.

So it will be understood that, as far as assets are concerned, we have a fairly considerable number, which translates into enormous pressure on the departmental budget.

As the hon. member has also said, that is why the government, in its 2001 budget, showed sensitivity to the situation of small craft harbours by investing, or adding, $100 million over five years to the present budget, over and above the regular small craft harbours budget, precisely so as speed up construction or repair to these wharves so that fishers and fish processing companies would have access to quality facilities.

As I had already indicated to the hon. member when he asked me a question in the House of Commons a few weeks ago, Mont-Louis is definitely one of the ports to which the department attaches importance. In fact, the departmental planning is based on a determination of the relative importance of ports, based on economic activity.

However, as the member has pointed out, the wharf at Mont-Louis is vital to maintaining the economic activity of that community. Consequently, I can assure the member that the department, the minister and myself are very much aware of the situation there.

At this time, as I said in my response in the House, it is still too soon to inform the member, or to announce a definite decision, since departmental programming for the 2003-04 budget in terms of small craft harbour investment is not yet known. In light of the importance of this issue, however, and the work required, I can assure the member that the department will be doing its utmost to be able to meet the needs of the people of Mont-Louis, particularly the fishers and the fish processing companies.

[Jean-Yves Roy, Bloc, Matapédia—Matane, QC]

Madam Speaker, I thank the parliamentary secretary and I assure him of my full cooperation on the Standing Committee on Fisheries and Oceans to settle the issue of the Mont-Louis wharf. In my opinion, and in the opinion of the industry and of the fishermen who use it, this is an urgent situation. It is absolutely essential that the work begin in 2003.

[Georges Farrah, Liberal, Bonaventure—Gaspé—Îles-De-La-Madeleine—Pabok, QC]

Madam Speaker, I too will be very brief. I think we agree on the need for or the importance of the small craft harbour at Mont-Louis.

As regards the studies that are currently being done concerning the department's priorities, including for Quebec—because the money for this port must come from the budget allocated to Quebec—we will ensure, as we have done in the past, that we can adequately respond to the desire of the public and meet the needs expressed.

This is not just a question of what people want, but of what the department must do, given the importance of the small craft harbour at Mont-Louis and the work that needs to be done.

[Peter Adams, Liberal, Peterborough, ON]

Madam Speaker, I asked a question on SARS on March 18 and followed with the more general question that we are following up on tonight. I thank the minister for replying to both.

The second question dealt with infectious disease control in general and specifically how the federal government works with local authorities that inevitably have to deal with an outbreak. I deliberately introduced my question by comparing our system for coping with disease among animals, for example, hoof and mouth disease or TB, with that for human diseases, for example, SARS and West Nile virus.

I did this for three reasons, the first being that I have been working for a long time on how to keep our food safe and how best to protect citizens, animals and plants from deliberately or accidentally introduced diseases or poisons. I am very interested in how the Canadian Food Inspection Agency works and how to make it more effective, and I am interested in making Health Canada's and Agriculture Canada's protective systems more effective.

Second, health care workers, farmers, people involved in emergency preparedness and a distinguished veterinarian in my riding have persistently raised these matters with me.

Third, I raised these topics because food safety and animal and human health are highly interrelated. The link between mad cow disease and Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease is one example of this. That between SARS and the use of acutely ill animals for food in China is another. The link between birds, horses and West Nile virus is yet another rather different example of the same thing.

The reality is that in this tiny modern world we need both powerful checks and controls at the national level and powerful, effective, local agencies with truly effective communication, with linkages between the two levels.

At the national level, this involves Health Canada, Agriculture Canada, the armed forces, including emergency preparedness, and others. At the local level, among other things we need effective public health bodies, emergency preparedness groups, well informed farm organizations and a well informed public.

At the national level, I urge that CFIA and relevant parts of Health Canada and Agriculture Canada be studied and reformed. Once this is done, the agencies concerned should be well funded and staffed in recognition of the urgency of infectious disease and food poisoning risks.

At the local level, we need to put resources in the hands of local authorities, such as, for example, a symptom surveillance system that could give early warning of a new outbreak. These authorities need adequate resources and full knowledge of the national support they will receive in the case of an emergency.

I urge that the CFIA and Health Canada parts of this be given special attention. I look forward to the comments of the parliamentary secretary, who is particularly well qualified to respond on such matters.

[Jeannot Castonguay, Liberal, Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Health]

Madam Speaker, I wish to thank my colleague for raising an important point.

It must be understood that communication about how services are provided across the country is very often poor. Sometimes we realize that, rather than making clarifications in this House on such matters, people try to throw curve balls. As a result, Canadians do not benefit. I would therefore like to cast some light on this.

Health Canada has worked in conjunction with our provincial and territorial partners in order to ensure that the resources are in place to respond as required to local, provincial or territorial emergencies and outbreaks. This cooperation is—and I stress this point—essential to any intervention during health emergencies. That must be understood. Action cannot be limited to one province, one municipality, or to this level of government; we must work together.

When there is an outbreak of an infectious disease, local municipal health authorities are the first to intervene. If they need assistance, they call upon provincial health authorities. If the province needs more support, it will call upon Health Canada for assistance and such assistance will be immediately forthcoming.

The role of Health Canada in the case of a disease outbreak is, in fact, twofold. First, Health Canada provides proactive assistance to ensure that there is a maximum level of emergency preparedness, both at a provincial and local level.

This is done through a variety of activities, including: ongoing monitoring of diseases, which allows officials to play a role in updating vaccines, planning programs and developing guidelines; training emergency doctors to help them recognize, diagnose and treat biological and chemical agents; developing general guidelines to take charge of the diagnostic and logistic aspects of outbreaks; maintaining lines of communication and an effective planning network with the provinces and territories to ensure that the guidelines are developed together and that there is an honest and ongoing exchange of information.

Health Canada also has stockpiles of drugs, vaccines and other emergency supplies in various locations throughout the country, which can be shipped on request in a matter of hours.

Finally, Health Canada can provide additional support if requested, in order to assist provinces and municipalities or communities to manage the most difficult situations.

Health Canada can provide assistance in many ways, such as offering laboratory diagnostic services at the National Microbiology Lab in Winnipeg; delivering emergency medical supplies, and all the provinces and territories can have direct access to these emergency supplies with a simple phone call; mobilizing federal specialists to help contain an outbreak or trace it back to its source; liaising with the provinces, which might be experiencing similar outbreaks; and coordinating a nation-wide response.

Health Canada also calls upon other departments and non-governmental agencies, when the need arises. Our role is not necessarily to be the first on the scene, but it is important to ensure that those who are the first are prepared to deal with health emergencies. Consequently, cooperation is essential. When provincial health authorities ask us for help, Health Canada does everything in its power to assist.

In particular, Health Canada can mobilize the National Office of Health Emergency Response Teams, or NOHERT, if the provinces so request. NOHERT's all hazards approach encompasses emergency medical response to natural disasters, explosions, or to major chemical, biological or radio-nuclear incidents.

[Peter Adams, Liberal, Peterborough, ON]

Madam Speaker, I wish to thank Tom Gastle, Garry Humphreys and the Peterborough City-County Health Unit, Rod Manley and his emergency preparedness colleagues, farm and health care groups in the Peterborough riding, and the Havelock--Belmont--Methuen and Peterborough county councils for their input.

I send my sympathies to everyone affected by these terrible diseases and to the families of those affected, and my thanks go to all those who help with outbreaks. These people risk their health and lives to keep us safe.

I believe we need a full public debate on these matters of infectious disease among humans and animals, and food safety. I thank the parliamentary secretary for his thoughtful remarks.

[Jeannot Castonguay, Liberal, Madawaska—Restigouche, NB]

Madam Speaker, I was trying to demonstrate the importance of working together, and I believe that we are now experiencing a particular reality given the SARS situation in Canada.

Local authorities, assisted by the provinces and the federal government, are working around the clock. There are many unknowns at the present time. This situation must be closely monitored; it is essential to collect information as it becomes available and ensure everything is under control.

By cooperating and working together, we will succeed. Fighting and pointing fingers will accomplish nothing; that is not the right approach.

[The Acting Speaker (Ms. Bakopanos)]

The motion to adjourn the House is now deemed to have been adopted. Accordingly, the House stands adjourned until tomorrow at 10 a.m., pursuant to Standing Order 24(1)

(The House adjourned at 7:04 p.m.)