Mr. Speaker, the Canadian government is charged with the responsibility of ensuring the health of Canadians. There are many ways in which the health of Canadians is monitored and services are delivered to Canadians. Many of them of course involve regulations that need to be enforced. There are already labels for prepackaged foods and there are serious penalties for breaching these labels. However, clearly what occurs many times is that consumers themselves will notify the appropriate government agency if they happen to notice that something is not properly labelled or if information is missing. Inspectors will then take a look at that. As with the Income Tax Act, where we do not have enough people to examine everybody's income tax return, there are spot checks, spot audits and spot examinations. This is how it works.
As for the claim that this would be terribly, terribly expensive, that is simply not true. Already we have menu boards, so instead of a large picture of a “big mac” there could be a smaller picture of a big mac, and right beside the price we could put “700 calories as shown”. That is all that needs to be done. This does not involve a lot of costs, particularly for chain restaurants that do not have a lot of changeover in their menus. There is some nuance in the bill to allow for those restaurants that do have some changeover.
Any of these problems can also be examined in depth in committee by bringing expert witnesses before committee to answer these questions.