Mr. Speaker, that is a very interesting point because the member for Mississauga South brought examples of some of the labelling in the United States to the committee and challenged us to find the label. We could not find it. It was placed vertically; the colour was the same as the bottle. It was virtually unreadable. So of course the industry was going to say the labelling was effective because it was effective in its view of not reducing any alcohol consumption.
We really want Canadians to understand the potential for risk. One of the witnesses that came before the committee, Tim Stockwell who was the director and professor for the centre for addictions research of B.C. at the University of Victoria, specifically talked about how we could make labels effective. He talked about the fact that tobacco packages have essays written on them about quite simple health effects of tobacco in huge detail.
However, he also talked about how else we could make those messages effective and this is what we really wanted to see. The message could be rotated and be illustrated with pictures. He went on to talk about the low risk drinking guidelines that were developed in Australia with which he had been involved. A whole series of punchy messages were developed that the alcohol industry actually climbed on board with.
Initially there was a huge resistance; the world was going to end if labels had to be put on bottles. However, eventually the industry came on board and has actively supported a very proactive campaign in Australia. It would be a model that we could look at in Canada for effective labelling.