Mr. Speaker, I rise to support the member's bill, but I always find this a surprising debate.
In 1988-89 the NDP member for Surrey North, the constituency that I represent, raised this issue in Parliament at that time. Six years ago, April 23, the NDP member for Winnipeg North had a motion passed in the House, 231 to 11 or a number like that, supporting the labelling of alcohol.
Therefore, I find the debate puzzling because we are prepared to do all of the things that the Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Health spoke of, brochures and so on, but somehow labelling a bottle of alcohol seems to generate all of this debate about the reasons that we cannot.
I am puzzled by that. We can do all kinds of other things. We can spend money on all kinds of other resources, but we cannot ask alcohol producing companies to label a bottle. I just do not understand why this is so hard for people to understand or for people to be prepared to stand up and support.
No one would suggest that labelling an alcohol bottle is somehow the solution for people with alcohol addiction or fetal alcohol syndrome, but there is never in any situation only one solution. This is part of what should exist as a national strategy which has been called for regarding alcohol and a national strategy around fetal alcohol syndrome. Therefore, it is one piece.
I can think of very few products that do not have warning labels on them. Some have so many warning labels on them we are afraid to buy it because it lists 27 things that can happen to us if we take this particular medication or product. We label tobacco packages all the time. That was possible to do. Has it stopped smoking? No. Has it made a difference? I believe it has.
I do not think there is any conclusive evidence that this does not work because I do not know how we would know, having not done it.
The United States, 18 years ago, decided to label alcohol bottles. The labels could be better, but that was 18 years ago and we are still standing here debating about whether alcohol, which we all know has tragic effects on this country, should be labelled.
People talk a lot about fetal alcohol syndrome, the fetal alcohol effect and the effect of alcohol on pregnant moms, and so they should. I think the member quoted 3,000 babies. I do not actually care if it is 3,000 babies or 3, it is too many. Is there some magic number we have to get to before we are prepared to stand up and take a position on this?
We know as well that it is a tragedy for the baby. Anyone who has ever seen a newborn, and I have said this before in the House, suffering from alcohol withdrawal symptoms, I do not think could not stand up and support this bill. It is not something we would ever want to imagine for any newborn who has entered this world, hoping for a wonderful journey, and coming in with a number of challenges already there.
It is not only the “most at risk people” who need to have a label on a bottle of alcohol. I do not know why we would suggest it is only going to be there for the most at risk people. Why would it not be there for any consumer just like labels on medication, or on other things that consumers purchase? This is not only about the most at risk.
The most at risk may not be the people who actually pick it up and look at it, but the regular consumer might be. So this is really for everybody, not only for the most at risk. We know people who are most at risk, but I am not sure we know who all those people are. Maybe people are most at risk if their family has a history of alcohol addiction, but at this stage have had no problem or maybe have never bought a bottle of alcohol. Maybe they are most at risk because there is a particular stress time in their life. We have to expand our definition of who is most at risk and be prepared to put that label on the bottle for anybody.
The financial resources that we need in this country are enormous in terms of people with all kinds of challenges: addiction challenges, health challenges and educational challenges. Many of those are unavoidable. This is avoidable. Why would we not do something to help something that is avoidable when there are, so many things on which we spend our budget that we cannot avoid? We might be able to do something on this one piece as part of a multi-prong that might help us do something to avoid this.
It is not only the further health costs of raising an infant with fetal alcohol syndrome, it is the health costs to the system of people who abuse alcohol. But it is also the health costs to the system of people who are in car accidents, either because they have been drinking or may simply be a passenger in a car, or they may be in the other car that has been hit and nobody in that car has been drinking. There is still a health cost that is related to alcohol.
There are family costs. The cost to a family of having someone who in the beginning did not understand that a couple of drinks after work, or maybe at noon and then after work, was going to start to affect their family life. Any of us can stand here and tell stories of families we know who are in that situation. So there is a huge cost to families.
There is also a cost to children because very often for the people who did not know they were at risk, there is no label. I am not suggesting that would have been the only preventive, but there is no label and the child becomes the caregiver of the parent. We see that in many circumstances, so we have 10, 11 and 12 year olds who are actually looking after their parent because the parent is not able to look after them. Twelve year olds should not be caregivers, they should just be 12 year olds and do what children that age do, at least all the healthy things.
I have heard that it is cost prohibitive to industry. I do not believe it is cost prohibitive to industry, but it is cost prohibitive to this country if we do not do it. Since the Americans are able to do it in the United States, why would it not be cost prohibitive there? The costs that we pay as a country are very prohibitive, so that is a somewhat facile argument.
The member read the list of endorsers and the list would go on and on, including pediatric societies, et cetera. I would not dream of continuing to talk about those, but we do need a comprehensive approach. That is true. We do need a multi-pronged approach, but to say that we are prepared to have a national strategy on alcohol and fetal alcohol syndrome, but we are not prepared to put a label on a bottle of alcohol as part of that strategy makes absolutely no sense whatsoever. It is not fair to the consumers in this country, the adults in this country, and children in this country who are future consumers of that product.