Health committee  Thank you. Good afternoon, everyone. I'm Mike Hammoud, president of the Atlantic Convenience Stores Association, ACSA. On behalf of the ACSA, I'd like to thank the Standing Committee on Health for inviting us here today to speak on the labelling and packaging of retail cannabis

Health committee  I'm sorry. Could you repeat the question?

Health committee  Are we funded...? We are funded through a membership, just like Coca-Cola would pay its membership, just like—

Health committee  Yes, but you're making it seem like they're the only ones that give us funding.

Health committee  Okay.

Health committee  If you're excluding gas and food service...?

Health committee  Yes.

Health committee  Stopping plain packaging...?

Health committee  It would have no impact.

Health committee  It would have no financial impact on our business.

Health committee  I don't understand how you think that we would lose 40% of our business. Do you think everybody would stop smoking tomorrow because of plain packaging?

Health committee  It doesn't make any sense.

Health committee  If you make something very easy to make.... I know we're comparing ourselves to jurisdictions across the world, but Canada is unique because we have some of the highest contraband rates in the world when it comes to tobacco, and the experience that we have in the tobacco sales...

Health committee  So if you want to make it look illegal, you might as well keep it illegal. What's the difference? You should be able to move a product and have quality assurances, and there should be things in place to show that this is a legal product. This is why it's here. We already have ov

Health committee  And they're selling it illegally. You don't think for a moment that, as soon as you come up with a standardized pack.... Think about that for a moment. You're going to come up with a standardized pack that could be made very easily by anyone. What would stop them from duplicating