Mr. Speaker, I too am rising to support the bill. It is a sad commentary though that we are debating this issue once again. We previously approved a motion, with overwhelming support from the House. What we are seeing is a lack of action. We need to urge the government to do something with the bill, and hopefully it will pass.
I quote from a previous health committee meeting on April 26, 2001, where the former health minister said:
In connection with this, I want to draw attention to the motion adopted by the House of Commons only the other day, which was presented by my colleague [from Winnipeg North]. Her initiative, supported as it was by [the member for Mississauga South] and members of our own party, has focused attention again through another means on this challenge of FAS/FAE. I want to assure the committee—and particularly my friend, the member for Winnipeg North—we shall follow through with a sense of urgency on this issue.
If a sense of urgency means that three years later we still have no action on labelling, I am concerned about the government's definition of what is urgent.
Since 2001, if the estimates are correct, on average 3,000 children a year have been born with FAS-FAE. What does this do to our overall society and our health care costs? We continue to not take action on this initiative, which has been well identified and well supported by a number of people in the country, including medical associations and other organizations that work with children and women. We are dealing with one of the most preventable birth defects in our society, yet we are continuing to drag our heels. That it is a shameful statement on our commitment to our children. One has to ask why we have been unable to move forward on this.
Warning labels are not a panacea in and of themselves. Warning labels are simply part of a larger and overall strategy to educate and raise the level of awareness of the impacts of FAS-FAE. People who are going to drink anyway will not leave the bottle on the shelf just because of a label. However, what we have seen with other education and awareness campaigns is it broadens the level of awareness in society as a whole, so it does put peer pressure on people. The drinkers themselves may not look at the label but perhaps their friends will, and they will encourage them not to take that drink.
It is important that we also look at this in an overall education and awareness strategy. I know money is being committed right now to FAS-FAE. In fact, in my community a active FAS society is working very hard with the public in terms of education and awareness. One pub owner in my riding of Nanaimo--Cowichan has voluntarily put labels on all alcohol sold through the Cold Beer and Wine Store. This very progressive and forward-thinking pub owner should be commended for being concerned about alcohol and unborn children.
Yes, there has been a labelling campaign, which is interesting to me, although my colleague from across the House talked about the study of the U.S. labelling campaign from 1989, indicating that there was no demonstrable impact. I would argue that sometimes those numbers can tell us whatever they want to tell us. If a country like the U.S. could go ahead and label alcohol, since 1989 I might add, without any noticeable decrease in the industry, I would argue that Canada could do the same thing.
We have a number of tools at hand to increase education awareness around alcohol consumption, and labelling is an important part of that. Consumers should be made aware of the possible impacts of their behaviour through things like labelling. It certainly has been done in the tobacco industry for a number of years. It just seems reasonable that we follow through and have the same kind of initiative in the alcohol industry as well.
This is a very important initiative that could go a long way to continuing to raise the level of awareness, and we would like to see it included in a continuing overall education and awareness strategy about the impact of alcohol on unborn children. I would urge all members of the House to support this very critical and important initiative, and then I would urge the government to actually implement it.