Mr. Speaker, I will be brief because it is not so much a matter of discussing the bill as referring it to the Standing Committee on Health for further study. This is a motion the Bloc Quebecois agrees with and it will have our support.
I do, however, have a few comments to make. Of course we subscribe to the objective of better informing the consumer of calorie content, and particularly saturated fat content, and anything that can provide information to help Quebeckers and Canadians improve their diets is a good thing.
When we discussed this bill in caucus, however, the colleagues in the Bloc Quebecois were uncomfortable with the idea of supporting the bill in its present form, because we were not convinced it was workable.
Some of my colleague have used the example of Subway or other major chains, where there are multiple choices because of the number of foods and ingredients available. We wondered how it could be workable for owners of franchises or restaurant chains to provide the specific information listed in this bill.
No doubt some mid-way solution would have to be found. I understand that the restaurant chains have themselves indicated some degree of openness toward sharing this information and, in a number of the major chains, it is already available to consumers.
At the same time, we realize that every time it is a matter of providing the consumer with information there is a cost associated with it, and what is more arguments based on cost cannot be definitive.
When this House discussed tobacco labelling, and the possibility of having, not content information, but rather notices or information concerning the harmful effects of tobacco on packaging, I remember the major manufacturers and tobacco companies coming before the Standing Health Committee to tell us this was absolutely impossible. Yet, three years after regulation, we can see this was in fact totally feasible.
So the Bloc Quebecois attitude is that we want to see this motion go to committee. We feel it is important for the Standing Committee on Health to seek a workable solution that will make it possible to provide consumers with information. This is why we are going to support the proposal by the member for Scarborough Southwest to refer this to committee.
I know that there has been considerable support for the objective of this bill. I am thinking in particular of the National Pensioners' and Senior Citizens' Federation; the Association des diététistes du Québec, and the Ontario Society of Nutrition Professionals in Public Health. Several dozen groups in all supported the bill. The challenge for parliamentarians is to ensure, within an appropriate framework such as the Standing Committee on Health, that we seek a workable way to achieve that objective.