Health committee  I just have a comment about how the last discussion really emphasizes the need to take a very broad look and include all marketing avenues, including sponsorship and product placement. It also emphasizes the need to have a robust monitoring framework, because industry is very cre

Health committee  From a public health perspective, we should be looking at all ways in which children are marketed to. Certainly there are regular media, social media, digital media. We have to look at the Internet. There's product placement, in-store placement, and sponsorship. If we're going to

Health committee  As key points, we need to look at Dr. Hammond's comments on the set of vehicles that are used, as well as the criteria on what constitutes an unhealthy food. We have a range of expertise that needs to be brought to bear. Health Canada is hopefully going to have a robust engagemen

Health committee  Thank you very much, and good afternoon. Thank you for the opportunity to appear before the House of Commons Standing Committee on Health. As the chief medical officer of health for Nova Scotia and the chair of the provincial/territorial public health network council, I'm here

Health committee  My understanding is that it's vaping products as they pertain to the delivery of nicotine.

Health committee  We certainly, in low-risk cannabis, use guidelines. One key point there is to have a non-smoked or non-vaped form of cannabis, because there's growing evidence that even vaping produces ultrafine particulates, which are then inhaled, and which, as I said in my remarks, are the li

Health committee  My understanding is that the plain and standardized packaging still requires tax stamps and other identification that will allow a distinction to be made between legal tobacco products and contraband tobacco products.

Health committee  Every time any successful steps have been made in tobacco control in the last couple of decades—whether it's smoke-free places, restricting point-of-sale advertising, increasing pricing—the same argument is always brought out: that it will increase contraband. I've had direct c

Health committee  I don't think you can actually do harm reduction on tobacco products themselves. We need to look at other alternatives for how we help people move to other forms of delivery of nicotine. We have patches. We have gums. We have the potential for vaping products. That's where we sho

Health committee  I'm not sure what you're referring to. I think we all bring a perspective.

Health committee  Well, I think we all bring our opinions to the table to be heard by the committee, and sometimes those opinions may be in conflict with other people's opinions and interpretation of evidence.

Health committee  I think it's a selective use of evidence. As I said, when you look at anything, you have to look at the totality of all the evidence available, and when you look at the totality of all the evidence on plain packaging, it is very clear that plain and standardized packaging has an

Health committee  So also is advertising.

Health committee  Well, again, if you look at the totality of the evidence.... My understanding from people who have looked at this in detail is that the evidence does not support that plain packaging creates a significant increase in the use of contraband products, especially when you have plain

Health committee  No, as I said, I'm representing the provincial and territorial chief medical officers of health from the 13 provincial and territorial jurisdictions.