Mr. Speaker, there can be no more fundamental right for consumers than the right to know what is in the food they eat and yet this basic right continues to be denied to Canadian consumers.
In March of this year I asked a question of the Minister of Industry. It was answered by the Minister of Health. I pointed out that over three years ago the Minister of Industry set up an industry dominated task force to write its own rules for voluntary labelling of genetically engineered food. It was a group that was set up by the Canadian General Standards Board, and it was basically an industry run body. Earlier this year, the head of that group admitted that it was going nowhere and that it was basically a farce.
I called on the government at that time to recognize that over 80% of Canadians wanted to know what was in the food they ate and I urged the government to agree to the mandatory labelling of genetically engineered foods.
Instead of responding that, yes, the government was prepared to move ahead on that, the Minister of Health told the House that “we have voluntary labelling requirements” and, “we were trying to figure out if agreement could be reached around mandatory labelling”.
Of course the minister was completely wrong on that. We do not even have voluntary labelling requirements today, let alone mandatory.
In July of this year, a couple of months after that process obviously was going nowhere, the Consumers Association of Canada withdrew from the committee that was working on the standard for voluntary labelling of genetically engineered foods because it said that the standard was so weak that it would not represent consumer concerns. The process has lost any vestiges of integrity.
I would point out that this process was set up in response to a motion by the member for Davenport who came before the House of Commons which effectively called for mandatory labelling. Instead, four ministers of the Liberal government wrote a letter to members of Parliament saying that the government would have a serious, indepth study of the issue. That study has never taken place. In fact, it was Liberal members of the committee, together with the Canadian Alliance, who subverted that study when I tried to have the committee move ahead on it.
The president of the Consumers Association of Canada said:
Canadian consumers deserve to know whether or not their food contains genetically modifiedfoods and they deserve a strong mandatory standard that holds industry accountable. The committee has beendeveloping a voluntary standard that may satisfy industry, but does not meet the needs ofconsumers.
This so-called voluntary standard would have allowed 5% as opposed to 1% in the European Union, and other provisions as well that were quite unacceptable.
Today I am once again calling upon the government to do the right thing, to recognize that its so-called voluntary process, which is an industry driven process, is going nowhere, to allow for consumers to know what is in the food they eat and to recognize that we have the right to mandatory labelling of genetically modified foods.