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.