Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to take part in this important debate. The hon. member has done a remarkable job on this issue. So did the former NDP critic on health, who also tabled a bill on fetal alcohol syndrome.
I think I am speaking on behalf of all my colleagues in saying that, of course, we support this bill, which seeks to promote information and education.
If I may, I would like to make a comparison which, like any comparison, is not perfect. I am inclined to make a comparison with an experience that we had a few years ago in the Standing Committee on Health. The committee was reviewing regulations, as required under the Tobacco Act, on the whole issue of the mandatory warnings to tobacco consumers.
At the time, the goal was quite ambitious. Indeed, 18 different messages had to be presented to consumers. They covered half of a cigarette pack. This was such an important issue that major cigarette companies went all the way to the Supreme Court to challenge what they called commercial expropriation. They partly won their case, but I will not get into the details.
This is to say that, as parliamentarians, we must recognize that we have a responsibility regarding the information provided to our fellow citizens. Of course, we cannot force people to stop smoking. We cannot decide, in a bill, that people will live a successful life, that they will eat properly, or that they will reduce their alcohol consumption. What we can do is help people develop an awareness, so that they will change their habits over the short, medium and long terms.
This is interesting, because it is the challenge for the coming years. We know that, even if we were to increase health budgets exponentially, the main variables in the costs of our health care system are the determinants of health.
These determinants are linked to healthy behaviour, that is, whether we eat well, have a healthy diet and sleep well at night and what we put into our bodies. It is obvious there is a link between life expectancy and tobacco use, life expectancy and alcohol, life expectancy and physical activity.
More and more, our governments, in Quebec City and in Ottawa, are campaigning to reduce obesity. There is something very striking about the generation of youngsters who are facing worrying problems of obesity. When I was 8, 9, 10, 11 years old, it was a phenomenon that did not exist. Our parents did push us outside to play a lot more than people do today.
Today there are new technologies and video games and the Internet. All these games mean that young people have more information. They are much brighter, with a larger vocabulary, and more aware of their environment, but the trade-off is that they are more sedentary, with all that means for health determinants, and obesity, of course.
Thus, the hon. member for Mississauga South, who has been working on this issue for a considerable time, is right to ask us to adopt his bill. It will oblige the manufacturers of alcoholic products to add standard labels the content of which, I understand, will be determined later by regulation. Of course, we do not claim it will be the magic bullet, nor will it, in itself, change behaviour. But we are entitled to think that, in combination with other factors, it could reduce the problem of fetal alcohol syndrome.
It is interesting to recall that the hon. member for Mississauga South talked about one child out of twenty in Canada. Fetal alcohol syndrome is not like cerebral palsy or other degenerative diseases which are often accidents of nature and are not due to behaviours per se. Fetal alcohol syndrome is due to excessive alcohol consumption by the mother during pregnancy, exposing the child to an abnormally high amount of alcohol. It is not always so, but this can cause all sorts of problems. I know that the link between fetal alcohol and learning disabilities is very well documented, as is its link with certain nervous system disorders.
Once again, the hon. member for Mississauga South has done an outstanding job. For me, the place given to private members' bills is important. I have known this since my early days as a parliamentarian and I have always been consistent on this issue. I may not have been consistent on other issues but it must be recognized that I have always been very consistent on the freedom members should be given. This is a fine example of the fact that, sometimes, even without the support of civil servants and the various machines such as party machines, it is important that the commitment of members, combined of course with strong convictions, be able to bring about changes.
Last week, we adopted a motion on trans fats put forward by the NDP. I wonder if our colleagues from the NDP had a chance to read the half-page article on trans fats published in La Presse today. If Canada made the regulations the NDP is vigorously calling for, it would be the second country, after Denmark, to ban the use of trans fats, with all the savings this would entail for the health care system.
I do not want to get off track so I will get back to the issue before us, which is fetal alcohol syndrome. I know that the hon. member is quite pleased to have the support of the Canadian Centre on Substance Abuse, which is a not-for-profit agency supported by the Government of Canada. As parliamentarians, we have been able to work with this agency, particularly those of us who sat on the Special Committee on Non-Medical Use of Drugs, which considered the whole issue of the use of so-called soft drugs, although we know this term could be tendentious. It is a bit unrealistic to make a distinction between soft drugs and hard drugs.
The fact remains that the hon. member should be pleased with the support from the Canadian Centre on Substance Abuse. He also has support from nurses, whose contribution in primary care we are well aware of. The hon. member also has support from the Canadian Medical Association, which is a credible association. It sometimes has corporative leanings, but it is credible nonetheless. We have met with representatives of this association many times in our work as parliamentarians.
This bill was already passed at second reading. I would not hesitate to recommend that all my colleagues support it. It has the credit of working for information and awareness purposes.