Health committee  Thank you, Madam Chair, for the member's question. The answer is simple too: an integrated plan is a more effective plan. Simply put, a plan that is more integrated, that uses different multimedia technologies, as we've seen from Australia and others, is more effective. While the member is correct that we could simply renew health warning messages, the impact those have over time and their reach is less than if we're able to go out with a larger, more integrated, more multimedia strategy that not only has images on packages but that drives people to the web and other content.

Health committee  The government, as I understand it, through the minister's statement, has every intention of directing the department to continue to do further work on this, and health warning messages will be part of an integrated strategy. She has asked us to refine those. I believe that was the minister's response, and it still stands.

Health committee  Thank you. Very briefly, in response to the member's question, we've tabled...and I will reiterate that we had 15 meetings with health NGOs and 16 with industry. We take all meetings. With respect to lobbying, I'm not able to speak to the number of times various people were lobbied.

Health committee  Thank you, Madam Chair. We have two estimates, a high and a low, given that we had provided what information we could given the seven-day response to the request from the committee. To fully satisfy the committee, the timelines have been furnished. We believe the low estimate is around $312,000 and the upper end would be around $475,000 to gather all of that information, have it vetted, reviewed, translated, and have copies made available to the committee.

Health committee  The short answer is absolutely. That's part of why the minister, in her remarks at this committee, said it was appropriate to step back at this time and learn from other large public health initiatives with respect to their success, the level of interjurisdictional cooperation, and the explosive use of new media and new technologies.

Health committee  Absolutely. While it is acknowledged and has been pointed out through public disclosure that the department and my officials take meetings with health NGOs and industry, those meetings were always with respect to the project, the pace of the project, an attempt to further improve the project.

Health committee  Yes. There were a number of images that we worked on with her estate. So there were several images that included Barb Tarbox in the work we did and had tested through POR.

Health committee  As part of our overall advice and research, as Mr. Strang said, we have been working with provinces and territories to try to find a way to leverage the various quit lines that exist in all jurisdictions. We have not fully resolved the issue. There are a number of outstanding concerns with a number of jurisdictions, but we continue to work on the feasibility of having one national quit line to be included as part of the proposed package.

Health committee  Furthermore, with respect to the number of meetings we had--there's an impression by the committee that we only met with industry. We had 15 face-to-face meetings with industry groups and 16 health groups during the same period.

Health committee  In response to the member's question, absolutely, $3.1 million has been invested. We've made that publicly available. That was to both acquire rights to images that we felt would be appropriate, to test those with different audiences in cities across the country, with different age groups, and to make sure we had images that were effective.

Health committee  I'll turn to my colleague, Jane Hazel, who is an expert in this area, Madam Chair.

Health committee  I thank the member for the question. There are a number of elements to it. I'll try to deal with all of those in the order that they were presented. Contraband is an issue that Health Canada is concerned about. But more to the point, Health Canada is concerned about all cigarettes being consumed, legal or contraband, and the impacts they have on health.

Health committee  Yes, certainly that is one measure. That said, Internet use is skyrocketing at the moment. At the time, that was not one of the measures in the plan. So we have since realized that it is possible to improve our action plan in order to better meet all the challenges that tobacco poses.

Health committee  We were, at that point, as I said, Madam Chair, working with all stakeholders to indicate that further work was necessary on the package to refine the images.

Health committee  Thank you, Madam Chair, for the member's questions. There are a number of points to respond to. First off, the honourable member indicated that this project was stopped dead in its tracks. I believe the minister was eminently clear that this is not the case. She has instructed the department to do further work to actually continue to improve this package, as she was not satisfied with the package as presented to her.