They are shaking their heads, but it has been making mistakes. I will provide a specific example for the Minister who is shaking his head on the other side of the House. At the end of November he brought out a personal analysis kit for consumers, so consumers themselves could make sure that consumer products are harmless. Really! We opposed that measure. The government was shifting responsibility to consumers. Every consumer had a testing kit and responsibility now lay with the consumer. Imagine! The government made a mistake, and because of that we can see that it was not very realistic to think that consumers could be their own product safety watchdogs. Shifting responsibility to consumers like this was a mistake, it was kind of out in left field.
Then, in December, he brought out his Food and Consumer Safety Action Plan. There again, we asked questions to find out what human resources were going to be needed. If so, we wanted to know what kind of training these new inspectors were going to receive. We have to admit that introducing Bill C-52 seems a little bolder, but we will have to see what comes of the regulations.
I would also like to raise another aspect of the question that has not been addressed in relation to this bill. I have introduced a private member’s bill dealing with expiry dates for food products. There are no expiry dates on some consumer products now available. In other countries, like France, there is an expiry date on all products. I hope the Minister will be listening when he comes to the committee. I would like him to make this amendment to the Food and Drugs Act, so that the expiry date for all consumer products can be read on a label or could be added to the nutritional content label.
I would like this information to be available to consumers so they can make the most informed choices possible about the products they buy.
Bloc members will be voting in favour of this bill on second reading for the reasons I mentioned earlier. The purpose of this bill is to reassure consumers and make changes to the process for evaluating dangerous and harmful consumer products.
We cannot speak today about the way these five measures will be covered by regulations but we hope that the minister will be able to table the regulations. We cannot simply indulge in wishful thinking and give the minister carte blanche. We have questions to ask him.
Earlier, we wanted to know how the problem of the number of inspectors would be resolved and what kind of training they would receive. In addition, we wanted to know how the minister’s discretionary power would be used to carry out a recall and how, in certain cases, the minister might decide not to recall a product for various reasons. How will the minister decide whether a product is dangerous? What will the limits be for recalling one product rather than another? On that score, we still have questions for the minister and we hope that he will make his intentions clear in committee and that his officials will enlighten us about the regulations.
As I said previously, the Bloc Québécois is in favour of approving this bill on second reading. However, this is an issue we will watch closely in the coming months as the bill progresses toward third reading.
We still have questions that need to be answered before we give final approval to this bill. We also want to hear from the various consumer rights groups, as well as from the business community. At the same time, we must keep our guard up. We realize that we are no longer in a market where we know who has produced a product, especially with all the imported products coming in from all over the world. We know that in some countries the standards are not as safe or as easy to identify.
So, we must not close our eyes but rather try to balance the danger from a product against the viability of a company. Earlier, a member of the Liberal Party said that companies must not suffer either. However, the owners of companies all have a duty to ensure that the food and products they provide to the public are safe. We cannot put aside the primary objective, which is to reassure the public. Above all, products for children must be safe. We must also eliminate the dangerous elements of some products.