HEAL Committee Meeting

37th PARLIAMENT, 3rd SESSION

Standing Committee on Health

EVIDENCE

CONTENTS

Thursday, May 6, 2004

Á

1105

The Chair (Ms. Bonnie Brown (Oakville, Lib.))

Mr. Tom Wappel (Scarborough Southwest, Lib.)

Á

1110

Á

1115

The Chair

Mr. Rob Merrifield (Yellowhead, CPC)

Á

1120

Mr. Tom Wappel

Mr. Rob Merrifield

Á

1125

The Chair

Mr. Tom Wappel

Mr. Rob Merrifield

Mr. Tom Wappel

Mr. Rob Merrifield

Mr. Tom Wappel

The Chair

Miss Deborah Grey (Edmonton North, CPC)

Á

1130

Mr. Tom Wappel

Miss Deborah Grey

Mr. Tom Wappel

Miss Deborah Grey

The Chair

Mr. Réal Ménard (Hochelaga—Maisonneuve, BQ)

Mr. Tom Wappel

Á

1135

Mr. Réal Ménard

Mr. Tom Wappel

Mr. Réal Ménard

Mr. Tom Wappel

Mr. Réal Ménard

The Chair

Mr. Tom Wappel

The Chair

Ms. Susan Whelan (Essex, Lib.)

Á

1140

Mr. Tom Wappel

Hon. Susan Whelan

The Chair

Hon. Susan Whelan

The Chair

Mr. Tom Wappel

Hon. Susan Whelan

The Chair

Hon. Susan Whelan

The Chair

Hon. Susan Whelan

The Chair

Hon. Susan Whelan

The Chair

Á

1145

Mrs. Bev Desjarlais (Churchill, NDP)

Mr. Tom Wappel

Mrs. Bev Desjarlais

Mr. Tom Wappel

Mrs. Bev Desjarlais

Mr. Tom Wappel

Mrs. Bev Desjarlais

Mr. Tom Wappel

Mrs. Bev Desjarlais

The Chair

Mr. Gilbert Barrette (Témiscamingue, Lib.)

Mr. Tom Wappel

Á

1150

Mr. Gilbert Barrette

Mr. Tom Wappel

Mr. Gilbert Barrette

Mr. Tom Wappel

The Chair

Miss Deborah Grey

Á

1155

Mr. Tom Wappel

Miss Deborah Grey

Mr. Tom Wappel

Miss Deborah Grey

Mr. Tom Wappel

The Chair

Hon. David Kilgour (Edmonton Southeast, Lib.)

Mr. Tom Wappel

Hon. David Kilgour

Mr. Tom Wappel

Hon. David Kilgour

Mr. Tom Wappel

The Chair

Hon. Don Boudria (Glengarry—Prescott—Russell, Lib.)

Â

1200

Mr. Tom Wappel

Hon. Don Boudria

Mr. Tom Wappel

Hon. Don Boudria

Mr. Tom Wappel

The Chair

Mr. Tom Wappel

The Chair

Â

1205

Dr. Karen L. Dodds (Acting Associate Assistant Deputy Minister, Health Products and Food Branch, Department of Health)

Hon. David Kilgour

The Chair

Dr. Karen L. Dodds

Â

1210

The Chair

Mr. Greg Orriss (Director, Bureau of Food Safety and Consumer Protection, Canadian Food Inspection Agency)

Â

1215

The Chair

Mr. Rob Merrifield

Â

1220

Dr. Karen L. Dodds

Mr. Rob Merrifield

Dr. Karen L. Dodds

Mr. Rob Merrifield

Dr. Karen L. Dodds

The Chair

Miss Deborah Grey

Â

1225

Dr. Karen L. Dodds

The Chair

Mr. Réal Ménard

Dr. Karen L. Dodds

Mr. Réal Ménard

Dr. Karen L. Dodds

Â

1230

Mr. Greg Orriss

Mr. Réal Ménard

Mr. Greg Orriss

The Chair

Mr. Greg Orriss

The Chair

Mr. Tom Wappel

Â

1235

Dr. Karen L. Dodds

Mr. Tom Wappel

Mr. Greg Orriss

Mr. Tom Wappel

Mr. Greg Orriss

Dr. Karen L. Dodds

Mr. Tom Wappel

Dr. Karen L. Dodds

Mr. Tom Wappel

Mr. Greg Orriss

Â

1240

Mr. Tom Wappel

The Chair

Mrs. Bev Desjarlais

Dr. Karen L. Dodds

Mrs. Bev Desjarlais

Dr. Karen L. Dodds

Mrs. Bev Desjarlais

Dr. Karen L. Dodds

Mrs. Bev Desjarlais

Dr. Karen L. Dodds

Mrs. Bev Desjarlais

Dr. Karen L. Dodds

Mrs. Bev Desjarlais

Dr. Karen L. Dodds

Mrs. Bev Desjarlais

Dr. Karen L. Dodds

The Chair

Ms. Mary L'Abbé (Director, Bureau of Nutritional Sciences, Health Products and Food Branch, Department of Health)

Mrs. Bev Desjarlais

Ms. Mary L'Abbé

Â

1245

Mrs. Bev Desjarlais

Dr. Karen L. Dodds

Mrs. Bev Desjarlais

Dr. Karen L. Dodds

Mrs. Bev Desjarlais

Dr. Karen L. Dodds

Mrs. Bev Desjarlais

Dr. Karen L. Dodds

Mrs. Bev Desjarlais

Dr. Karen L. Dodds

Mrs. Bev Desjarlais

The Chair

Hon. Don Boudria

Â

1250

Dr. Karen L. Dodds

Hon. Don Boudria

Dr. Karen L. Dodds

Hon. Don Boudria

Dr. Karen L. Dodds

The Chair

Mr. Gilbert Barrette

Dr. Karen L. Dodds

The Chair

Dr. Karen L. Dodds

Â

1255

The Chair

Mrs. Bev Desjarlais

Dr. Karen L. Dodds

Mrs. Bev Desjarlais

Dr. Karen L. Dodds

The Chair

Dr. Karen L. Dodds

The Chair

·

1300

Mrs. Bev Desjarlais

The Chair

Hon. Don Boudria

The Chair

Mrs. Bev Desjarlais

The Chair

Mrs. Bev Desjarlais

The Chair

Mrs. Bev Desjarlais

The Chair

Hon. Don Boudria

The Chair

Hon. Don Boudria

The Chair

Hon. Don Boudria

The Chair

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CANADA

Standing Committee on Health

---

NUMBER 015

l

3rd SESSION

l

37th PARLIAMENT

---

EVIDENCE

Thursday, May 6, 2004

[Recorded by Electronic Apparatus]

Á  (1105)  

[English]

    The Chair (Ms. Bonnie Brown (Oakville, Lib.)): Good morning, ladies and gentlemen. It's my pleasure to call to order this 15th meeting of the Standing Committee on Health.

    We're operating this morning pursuant to the order of reference on Tuesday, March 30, 2004, the subject matter being Bill C-398, an Act to amend the Food and Drugs Act--food labelling.

    Our first witness today will be the proponent of that bill, the member for Scarborough Southwest, Mr. Tom Wappel.

    Mr. Wappel, you have the floor.

    Mr. Tom Wappel (Scarborough Southwest, Lib.): Thank you very much, Madam Chair.

    I want to begin by thanking the committee for its rapid decision to consider this bill...or at least the subject matter of this bill; I must be clear how I phrase that. I really am thankful for that.

    It's a pleasure to be here today to testify to what I consider to be the importance of advancing public policy to address the subject matter of what is contained in my Bill C-398--namely, improvements to rules governing food information on pre-packaged food labels and large-chain restaurant menus.

    During the course of the debates in the House of Commons that led to the matter being referred to this committee, there was a great rhetorical flourish of criticisms leveled at this bill. Those polemics may have made good fodder for media sound bites, or unwelcome chuckles from the visitors' gallery--for example, when one member of Parliament defended Burger King's contribution to the nutritional well-being of Canadians--but I am hopeful that there is a full opportunity to set the record straight in this committee by being long on facts and short on hype.

    I am sure that the 29 health and citizens groups supporting the bill, collectively representing two million or more Canadians, are happy to see the subject matter of this bill get the attention it deserves at this committee. It is no doubt abundantly clear to members of this committee that diet-related disease is an urgent public health problem in this country. Cancer, heart disease, stroke, diabetes, osteoporosis, and dental health all have links to diet that are well recognized by scientists. According to Health Canada, diet-related disease costs the Canadian economy $6.3 billion annually due to health care costs and lost productivity.

    On the upside, the World Health Organization estimates that healthy life expectancy can be increased by over six years in countries like Canada by avoiding the top preventable health risks, four of them being diet-related factors--blood cholesterol, blood pressure, being overweight, and low fruit and vegetable intake--as well as physical inactivity and smoking.

    Most everyone agrees that improving our cherished health care system requires more money. Not only that, the system requires structural reform, in my view. Food label reform is an example of the type of upstream health promotion and prevention measures that can relieve the strain on our public health care system by at once reducing the demand for health care services, through preventing illness, and by increasing the capacity of Canadians to finance health care, through increasing economic productivity and by extension income tax receipts.

    In January 2003, the former Minister of Health announced amendments to the food and drug regulations to require that most prepackaged foods carry full nutritional information--calories plus 13 nutrients that are important from a public health perspective--on their labels in a standardized, easy to read format. These nutrients include saturated and trans fat, sodium, calcium, iron, vitamins A and C, etc. The rules will be enforced for most food manufacturers by January 1, 2006, and small companies with annual sales under $1 million by January 1, 2008.

    I was delighted, of course, to see these reforms finally become a reality, because I had introduced private members' bills on numerous occasions since 1990 to accomplish just that. Now that half a dozen countries have mandatory nutritional labelling rules, and the European Union is soon to follow suit, Canada is running with the pack. In my view, it's now time for this Parliament to break from running with the pack and show leadership.

    The new mandatory nutritional label rules finalized in January 2003 are predicted to lower the health care costs and productivity losses due to diet-related disease by at least $5 billion over the next two decades by reducing premature deaths and disabilities. This is a 20-fold return to the economy as a whole compared to the costs of modifying food labels. These are impressive benefits that no right-thinking steward of the public purse or champion of medicare could ignore.

    I am convinced that the label reforms proposed in Bill C-398 could also offer impressive dividends at a fraction of the cost to industry. Implementing these reforms would likely be comparatively much less expensive than the new regulations, because it limits the amount of chemical analysis to be done. That is, it only requires nutrition information for a small number of national chain restaurants that typically have standardized menus, many of which have already done the analysis; it permits meat packers to use common government-approved nutrition databases; and it requires readily available ingredient composition data on processed foods.

Á  (1110)  

    By introducing Bill C-398, I sought to achieve three objectives: one, to close a loophole for packers of fresh meat, poultry, and seafood; two, to extend a simplified nutrition disclosure requirement to large-chain restaurant menus and menu boards; and three, to add a requirement that multi-ingredient processed foods disclose the amount of key ingredients, especially for ingredients that are the subject of marketing claims, or for ingredients that are known by the scientific community to have protective or causative effects on major disease risks.

    The scientific basis for providing this information to consumers is tried and true, so much so that it's virtually ironclad and really probably boring. Refinements will be made, no doubt, to dietary advice that public health authorities promote, but the basic messages of the 14-year-old Canada's Food Guide to Healthy Eating are basically the same as the conclusions of expert reports commissioned by the World Health Organization. In short, the scientific consensus is that Canadians should consume more fruits, vegetables, whole grains, legumes, and beans, and less sodium, added sugar, or saturated and transfat.

    The challenge is to ensure that consumers get information about these and other important aspects of their daily intake in ways and places they can put it to best use. Information is knowledge, and knowledge is power. What has made the debate surrounding Bill C-398 so exciting--at least to me, unfortunately--is the absolutely madcap and hysterical arguments that self-serving opponents of the bill have made to undermine support in the House of Commons. And I'm prepared to back that up at question time.

    I must say that I was struck by two things during the debate in the House and in my informal exchanges with colleagues from all sides. First, I was struck by how almost all of the industry opposition to the bill seemed to come from the restaurant industry. Now, it may be that the food manufacturers, grocery store chains, and meat packers only lobby cabinet ministers, for all I know, and don't care much about ordinary MPs, or perhaps the Canadian restaurant federation is carrying the ball for the whole food industry. I don't know, but I just find it interesting that this is where most of the criticism is coming from.

    According to the Canadian Restaurant and Foodservices Association, one of the groups that vigorously opposes the bill, approximately 41¢ of every food dollar in Canada is spent outside the home. Statistics Canada says that Canadians spend about 30% of their food budgets on restaurant meals. So on the low side, it's 30%, and on the high side, it's 41%. Whichever statistics you prefer, the simple fact is that we're becoming increasingly reliant on restaurants to supply us with nutrients, yet we rarely see any information on restaurant menus, or indeed on menu boards. Plainly, it's no longer an occasional treat to eat at restaurants but rather a central feature of daily life in Canada.

    In the past two decades, obesity rates have doubled. A recent study indicates that childhood obesity rates have risen fivefold in the past two decades, while children's physical activity rates have remained stable. There's absolutely no question that our society would be healthier and the cost of health care would decline if we were more physically active. Indeed, promoting physical activity is the aim of another bill of mine, which we won't talk about. However, when obesity rates rise in tandem with physical activity rates, we can be reasonably confident that dietary intake is implicated.

    I should acknowledge that one valid criticism of the bill by restaurant owners is that it appears to apply to daily, weekly, or even monthly specials. That was not my intent. I hoped that my bill would promote healthy product innovation and information to consumers, not stifle it, so I recommend that if this committee proposes legislation, or makes any recommendations to the Minister of Health, it recommends nutritional labelling exemptions for foods that are sold for less than two months of the year.

Á  (1115)  

    My bill proposes to mandate the provision of information to consumers, primarily in ingredient lists on labels of processed foods, to furnish the percentages by weight of key ingredients as a bulwark against economic fraud by the use of filler ingredients, ones that have been subject to marketing claims and ones that are known to have scientifically validated health consequences. This is another aspect of my bill.

    The need for nutrition information to prevent economic fraud is obvious, I think.The health aspects of food are not adequately addressed by existing quantitative nutrition labelling standards, because the scientifically validated health benefits or risks of consuming certain foods cannot definitively be attributed to particular nutrients.

    The five ingredients named in my bill--fruits, vegetables, whole grains, legumes, and added sugars--are the major ones with recognized health effects.

    Percentage ingredient labelling rules are already in effect in Thailand, the European Union, New Zealand, and Australia. The Canadian Food Inspection Agency has acknowledged the need to establish percentage ingredient labelling requirements. However, the proposal leaves open many avenues for consumer deception about ingredient composition and fails to require disclosures that would effectively aid consumers in selecting more nutritious products.

    Under the meat labelling aspect of my bill, Health Canada and Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada have already done a thorough job of demonstrating the need for nutritional labelling on pre-packaged food, and they did so in the regulatory impact analysis that accompanied the amendments to the food and drugs regulations promulgated in January of 2003.

    What's not clear from the regulatory impact statement, or indeed from any public statement, is why meat, poultry, and seafood were exempted from the new rules. Without nutrition information, how many Canadians would know that a three-ounce serving of trimmed, broiled, top round beef steak has only approximately one gram of saturated fat, while a three-ounce serving of trimmed, broiled shoulder blade pork steak has four grams of saturated fat? That's a fourfold difference in saturated fat content between two cuts of meat the same size that is not evident from visual inspection or taste. The only way you can get that information is from labelling.

    In conclusion, I hope this committee will give a thorough airing to the issues raised by Bill C-398, listen to all the witnesses, listen to the criticism, ask challenging questions, and in the end make specific, pointed recommendations with realistic timelines to the Minister of Health for his active consideration.

    I'd be very happy to take your questions, but just by way of ultimate conclusion, may I say that just recently I had a pita at Extreme Pita on Richmond Street. I walked in there--and this is like any Subway, or Mr. Sub, or anything like that--and lo and behold, directly in front of my face was a menu board in the Extreme Pita location. The board had the nutritional information, more or less, that my bill has called for, on all of their different combinations of different types of pita.

    Now, if Extreme Pita can do it, there's no reason why everybody can't do it. We can get into this in questions, but I have the very same types of nutritional information that I'm calling for already being prepared by those people who are serving us our food--it's delicious food, by the way--except you have to write, or call a 1-800 number, or carry around 15 pamphlets with you and decide which one you're going into. So the information is already available, as I'll demonstrate; it's just not easily available to consumers when they're making their food choice selections.

    Thank you very much.

    The Chair: Thank you, Mr. Wappel.

    Our first questioner will be the lead critic for the opposition, Mr. Merrifield.

    Mr. Rob Merrifield (Yellowhead, CPC): Thanks, Tom, for coming in.

    You know, a lot of what you're trying to do I would agree with in the sense that you've identified a number one problem, obesity, which is certainly a chronic problem that's out of control in our country, especially among our youth. On labelling, I do have some questions about whether that's the right approach, necessarily. When I talked to you individually about this bill, and you wanted to know whether I would support it or not, my first question was on how it would affect those who are delivering those foods, because never before in history have we seen so much food produced by so few people--and when you talk about our farmers, I would add “for so little”.

    Nonetheless, it's the restaurant people who, as you say.... Why are they the ones who are opposing it? Because they're the ones who are affected by it. There's absolutely no question about that.

    Have you engaged them or sat down with them to talk about some options in terms of how it would affect them, to work at making this bill work to their benefit as well, in some way? Because if it's good for society, it's good for them. They're in the marketing business. They're there to serve the consumer. So I'm just wondering where you've gone on that since we talked last.

Á  (1120)  

    Mr. Tom Wappel: I can answer that directly. As you know, the process of private members' bills is somewhat restricted, and one of the purposes of a private member's bill is to bring up a topic of interest to the member, and perhaps other people, with a view to getting it on the national agenda. I've been doing this since about 1990 on the issue of nutritional labelling, working on it consistently, and at no time did anybody from the industry contact me. It's the same with this particular bill. Even after this bill was introduced, there was no effort by the industry to contact me to see if they could work with me towards making it better. The focus of the industry from day one was to defeat it before it even got to second reading, which I find odd. The reverse of that is, Mr. Merrifield, that I did not engage in an outreach to the restaurant industry or anyone else. My purpose was to bring forward something I considered to be important, so that it can be discussed at a national level. Now we're discussing it, and you'll have your opportunity to ask the restaurant industry why they didn't even want it to come to this committee.

    Mr. Rob Merrifield: I think that is quite obvious, because it attacks their product in many ways, and how it will affect them in delivering of food is a pretty significant interest of theirs. So if your interest is not so much in changing the law, but more in raising awareness, okay, that's the intent of your bill, and so be it.

    We had another bill here on Tuesday, which I actually quite agreed with, the concept of which deals with transfats. Transfats are a little bit different as far as just labelling is concerned. We are about to label transfats in this country, but some of the witnesses had suggested that maybe labelling isn't the way we should be going, we should be banning transfats to a very limited degree, and perhaps that is the way we should be going. My suggestion to you is that the labelling alone is not going to be a solution to the problem you address, which is obesity of a nation and health of a society.

    I'm a little frustrated, or maybe surprised, when you address the problem. We understand that obesity is such a problem, especially in our youth, but you sit with a government that pulled the rug out from under a program that was probably one of the best, the Participaction program, which was actually one the Liberal Party brought in back in the 1970s. You took that program out of existence in 1993-1994, which eliminated physical activity as mandatory in our school systems. That was a $300,000 a year program, and I was amazed when the minister last year initiated a $50 million study to determine why we have a society that is obese. The $50 million would have run that program for 20 years.

    So when I see what you're trying to do to deal with the problem, I'm saying there's a much more obvious solution, getting out more information, maybe globally, on the problem of overeating and lack of exercise. To just go in and attack the way food is delivered and to put labels on some of the products that are there I find an inappropriate way of achieving your goal.

Á  (1125)  

    The Chair: Mr. Wappel may respond if he so desires, and then we'll go on to Ms. Grey.

    Mr. Tom Wappel: Thank you.

    The federal government has absolutely nothing to do with school curriculums.

    Mr. Rob Merrifield: It sure does.

    Mr. Tom Wappel: Education is a provincial matter.

    Mr. Rob Merrifield: ParticipAction was a federal program

    Mr. Tom Wappel: Excuse me, Mr. Merrifield. Whether a grade five student takes physical education in Alberta has nothing to do with the federal government.

    This bill is not a magic bullet to provide a cure-all for every ill our society has in health matters. Obesity isn't the only problem. There are the other diseases I mentioned, heart, cancer, osteoporosis, dental problems, all of these things. The industry already knows the importance of providing information to consumers, because it already does it. Here's a brochure from Harvey's with a list of every one of its products. By the way, this is a company that said they can't do this, because every customer comes in and individualizes their order. That's what they told me. But here's the brochure that specifically shows the main menu items, what they are, what the serving size is, what the energy content is, proteins, total fats, saturated fats, carbohydrates, etc. They're already providing this information to consumers if you want to call a 1-800 number or if you want to ask the manager specifically for it. You can carry it around in your pocket every time you decide to go to Harvey's.

    Harvey's isn't the only one. Mr. Sub does the same thing. Subway does the same thing. White Spot is an excellent restaurant; I've eaten there myself. I've got copies of one of their menus. When it suits the industry, it's quite prepared to make room on its menu and quite prepared to provide information. Here, under “Lifestyle Choices”, White Spot says:

At White Spot we recognize that some of our guests may have specific nutritional and dietary needs. We've developed these items especially for you.

Then they have a number of meals, and what do you see? You see 2.4 grams of carbs, 58 grams of protein, because that suits them when they're marketing their product. There's enough room, as you'll see in these copies, still on that very same line where they have the price, where they could, without in any way expanding their menu, add the few other items I'm asking for in this bill. I applaud White Spot for providing some information, but how about providing all the information consumers need to make a rational choice, not saying you can't do it, because people individualize their orders?

    The Chair: Thank you, Mr. Wappel.

    Ms. Grey.

    Miss Deborah Grey (Edmonton North, CPC): By way of introduction, I'll tell you I waitressed at the White Spot in Vancouver when I was 15 years old, and I know almost everything that goes in.

    If the marketplace wants that and I'm going to go in and harangue them about it, that's where it's going to come into play for restaurants, don't you think, if there is that push on them? We've talked about transfats. If four million people go in demanding to know about transfats, the industry will respond. I think that's probably what has happened with White Spot, that they have responded to that.

    When we talk about mandatory labelling, I think right now about smoking. I am not a smoker, but I look at these packages. There are really scary pictures on the front and big warnings saying this'll harm your health. I'm wondering if people aren't smoking as much any more. I'm not sure the labelling is going to do it. There needs to be more than that, with people reading the labels and paying attention to them. That's one concern I think you and I, as consumers as well as parliamentarians, have.

    Also, when I taught school, after my White Spot days, ParticipAction was a federal program.

Á  (1130)  

    Mr. Tom Wappel: Yes.

    Miss Deborah Grey: Yes, it was a federal program. You made it sound, in your response to Rob, that it was just provincial, but as you know, it was a federal program that we in the provinces were all strongly urged to use with our kids.

    Tell me about the labelling. It's great to label, but how do they internalize that as consumers? What proof is there that it'll make things better? What do you think?

    Mr. Tom Wappel: ParticipAction, of course, was a federal program. Absolutely.

    I'm not an expert on smoking. I would only know anecdotally, but I believe the evidence is that smoking is down. The Parliament of Canada has spoken and believes that mandatory labelling on cigarettes will in fact make a difference.

    The problem with the Canadian food industry has always been that it has always wanted everything to be voluntary. It is true, you're absolutely right, that there is more demand by consumers for this information; otherwise the industry wouldn't be producing these pamphlets or providing these 1-800 numbers. The problem is that the industry in Canada, with all due respect, has been dragged kicking and screaming into mandatory labelling. Clearly, the government has decided that mandatory labelling of pre-packaged foods is the way to go, and many other countries are doing the same thing, but the industry didn't want that. They wanted it on a voluntary basis. The problem is that you cannot rely always on voluntarism to accomplish the objectives a society wants.

    We can lead a horse to water; we can't make it drink. We can give the consumer information; we can't tell them what to order. But without the proper information, the consumer cannot make the proper decision.

    Miss Deborah Grey: I wonder if they would, anyway. But we had that long discussion the other day, and we won't go around that block.

    Anyway, I'm sure my two minutes are up, so thank you very much.

    The Chair: Thank you, Ms. Grey, for being succinct.

    Mr. Ménard.

[Translation]

    Mr. Réal Ménard (Hochelaga—Maisonneuve, BQ): Madam Chair, I would like to give you a notice of motion, which I will table with the clerk, with your permission.

[English]

    Did you stop my time, Madame?

    Some hon. members: Oh, oh!

[Translation]

    Mr. Réal Ménard: I will read it so that it can be put to a vote on Tuesday, if the committee so chooses. My motion reads as follows:

That the Health Committee, in relation to its study of Bill C-398, organize a round table with the sponsor of the bill, representatives of the industries concerned and members of the Committee; and that this meeting take place no later than Thursday, May 13, 2004.

    I would like to discuss this with my colleagues from this committee, the sponsor of the bill, and industry representatives in order to have a healthy exchange that would allow us to delve further into the issue. I therefore wish to submit this notice of motion, which we can discuss on Tuesday.

    I have two questions for Mr. Wappel.

    We, the Bloc Québécois, are in favour of the bill. Obviously, we are a bit worried about its operational aspect. Incidentally, I was a member of the Committee on Industry when it reviewed all regulations on tobacco labelling. With all due respect, had we listened to the industry, never would we have passed mandatory labelling and regulated warnings. The industry said that it was impossible, that companies would go bankrupt and would be forced to move. However, there comes a time to move beyond industry pressure and act on the conviction that it is in the best interest of consumers. But that does not mean that we must not deal with the bill's operational aspect.

    Firstly, Health Canada already requires mandatory labelling with respect to nutritional content. Please tell us clearly how your bill goes further.

    Secondly, upon reading the interpretation of your bill by committee researchers, one gets the impression that you make a distinction between what is required of a restaurateur when the menu is displayed on a board, as opposed to when it is in a printed menu format. Would you like to clarify that?

[English]

    Mr. Tom Wappel: Yes, perhaps I'll deal with the second question first.

    There's a difference in the types of food that are offered, in the information that's offered, and in the amount of information that's available.

    Let's take what I would call a fast food outlet, a hamburger place. When you go in, you normally look at a board that describes the limited number of items that you can order, either in medium, large, or small quantities. All that my bill would require in those circumstances, for all intents and purposes, are the calories—and, of course, the sodium and transfat. What I mean by that is that when you go in to order a hamburger, you look at the board and you see that the hamburger.... Well, let's use Harvey's information, just so that I'm not plucking things out of the air. If I were to go to Harvey's, I would see that the serving size of a hamburger would be 129 grams, the calories would be 357, and the price would be x. That's what I need to know to decide if I want that or a cheeseburger, which increases the calories by 55 calories, etc.

    That information is already clearly and readily available, because here it is. It's also clearly and easily put beside the price, and that's all I'm talking about in a restaurant like a fast food place.

    Now, if you go to a sit-down restaurant, like White Spot.... Madam Chair, I wonder if you would be kind enough to ask the clerk to distribute the photocopies I've made of the White Spot restaurant menu, which I've specifically referred to.

    In this instance, you can see the size of this menu—although of course not every chain restaurant has a menu this size. But I've specifically referred to White Spot. You'll see that there are lines in between the orders; not every line goes all the way, of course, but there's ample room in such menus to be able to put the limited information that I'm requesting.

    Of course, these menus change—we all know that—but they don't necessarily change on a weekly basis. And when they change, most of these companies have already done market analysis as to whether a particular meal or a particular description would suit consumers, or would sell well, or whatever the case may be. And the nutritional information is usually prepared well in advance. So that's why I say there's a difference, because there's more of an opportunity to put more information on a menu like this, rather than in a fast food location.

Á  (1135)  

[Translation]

    Mr. Réal Ménard: I would like to know if I understand the industry's objections correctly, and I would like to know how you respond to them. I hope that we will be able to hold a round table because your bill is important for the health of the population, but we should also perhaps put the industry's arguments into the mix.

    For example, we are told that in chain restaurants, there are different menu combinations. If I go to Subway and order a submarine made of lettuce, smoked meat and cheese, whereas my neighbour decides to have lettuce, tomatoes and cucumbers, it is not at all the same thing, and it is difficult to monitor that. How do you reply to this concern?

[English]

    Mr. Tom Wappel: I reply that it is not difficult in operational terms. Here's my proof; this is a brochure from Subway, and it says, among other things, “Sandwiches with 6 grams of fat or less...”. It lists, for example, the “6-inch Veggie Delite”, and it tells us that there are 230 calories, with the calories from fat as 30; total fat, 3; saturated fat, 1; and cholesterol, 0.

[Translation]

    Mr. Réal Ménard: Are all menu combinations indicated?

[English]

    Mr. Tom Wappel: It's all here.

    Now, obviously if a consumer goes in and orders a six-inch Veggie Delite and says “I want three squirts of mayonnaise on that”, clearly, the consumer knows that's going to affect the figure. It isn't up to the industry to figure out six trillion combinations of what a consumer might want on a six-inch Veggie Delite; but the industry can, and already does, give a reasonable guideline to consumers so that they can make a reasonable decision. The proof is right here in their own documentation.

    Mr. Réal Ménard: Thank you.

    The Chair: Thank you, Mr. Ménard.

    Mr. Tom Wappel: Merci, Monsieur Ménard.

    The Chair: Ms. Whelan.

    Ms. Susan Whelan (Essex, Lib.): Thank you very much, Madam Chair.

    Mr. Wappel, I take great interest in the bill you have proposed because I take great interest in the health of Canadians.

    I want to be clear on something. Earlier in your comments you suggested that 30% of the food dollar is spent away from home by Canadians. This doesn't mean Canadians eat away from home 30% of the time. I think that would be a mistake. If I understand the stats right, Canadians eat away from home one out of ten meals, and there's also the stat that they skip one out of ten meals, so they're eating the eight other meals at home. So if we have obesity problems, if we have diabetes problems, it means people aren't properly preparing their own meals. The restaurant industry is not necessarily what should be targeted.

    If I understand your bill correctly, you're not just targeting the restaurant industry, but the biggest problem seems to be with the restaurant industry. I think we have a challenge here. Even the menu you've provided doesn't do what you claim. It does for four items, “Lifestyle Choices”; it doesn't do it for all the rest of the menu. They've provided the information for the healthy ones but not for the others. I guess they could go through all of them. I'm not sure how much research would be involved and who's going to pay for it. I do take great offence at Mr. Geffery's providing it to you, though.

    I think it's important for us to discuss things here as members of Parliament with the information and knowledge that we have. I know you haven't met with the restaurant industry; you didn't see any need to seek them out. A lot of restaurants in my riding have contacted me. A lot of chains have contacted me. I have a great concern about this bill the way it's proposed. I also think some consumers may make the wrong decision. When you suggest that the menu options on the menu board should just have the number of calories per serving, it's misleading in a lot of places.

    I'm also a big fan of something Mr. Merrifield said earlier, ParticipAction and encouraging people to have healthy lifestyles. I don't think ParticipAction--the last time I saw the program anyway, when I was a child--actually did what it needed to do for children. I think that idea is great, the concept, but the program was actually inhibiting to children who were slightly overweight because of the way they were ranked. It needed to be redeveloped and remodelled, and not cancelled. That would have been a better way to deal with it.

    So my question is, could we not come up with something that would offer a better incentive for healthy meals? Could we not come up with something like the idea I mentioned at the last committee meeting, for example, the removal of perhaps the PST and the GST--or HST, depending on which province you're in--on healthy meal choices to encourage people to choose those healthy meal choices in restaurants?

Á  (1140)  

    Mr. Tom Wappel: Thank you for your questions.

    First of all, I'm not targeting anybody. I'm trying to give consumers information. If there's a better way to do it--great. But I'm not looking to put a bullet into, or to target in any way, any industry. Let's be clear about that.

    Secondly, let's also be clear that there is no question that people are eating outside the home more than they were ten years ago, and the trend is to continue. McDonald's advertises that it serves three million people a day.

    Hon. Susan Whelan: They're only eating outside of the home one out of ten meals. Let's be clear.

    The Chair: Just as a point of clarification, Mr. Wappel, Ms. Whelan seems to think this only applies to restaurants.

    Hon. Susan Whelan: No.

    The Chair: Does it not also apply to all packaged food in the grocery store, plus all meat and poultry and fish?

    Mr. Tom Wappel: It applies to packaged meats, for example, because they were exempted from the mandatory nutritional labelling that has already come into effect.

    If there's a better way of doing it, or if there are a number of combinations of ways of doing it, that would be great. I'm hoping the committee can come up with a good solution to this. But it seems to me that the industry itself has clearly recognized that consumers want this information because it's already providing it, in written form or through 1-800 numbers. Some restaurants are already providing it in exactly the method I'm requesting. So if the committee has a way of making this better, if the committee has a different way of doing it--great.

    Hon. Susan Whelan: On that point, I think I've been in a couple of fast-food chains that have provided this information on a board off at the side, not on the menu board. Your bill talks about the menu board, which is very different from providing this type of detailed information on the side, if you want to go and research it. But I've seen it in some places.

    So I'm not saying that certain things are impossible. I'm suggesting that the way your legislation is drafted...to put the information on the menu board is very difficult, particularly if you look at the number of options already there. For example, think about the number of different types of muffins a store may have--it won't be just one. They won't all have the same content; they vary depending on what's in them. I know that as a baker. You know that as a researcher, having done the research for this bill. I think we have to look at this.

    The other question I have, though, is--

    The Chair: I'm sorry, Ms. Whelan, you're out of time.

    Hon. Susan Whelan: I thought I had ten minutes, Madam Chair.

    The Chair: No, you had five.

    Hon. Susan Whelan: I thought it was ten, ten, and ten, and then it went to five.

    The Chair: It's ten for the official opposition only, and then five for everybody else.

    Hon. Susan Whelan: I apologize.

    The Chair: Thank you.

    Mrs. Desjarlais.

Á  (1145)  

    Mrs. Bev Desjarlais (Churchill, NDP): Thank you.

    I want to thank you for bringing this bill forward. You've made a stand on the substance of your bill before committee, and you've made a point of going that route so it would be brought before committee. I did that once before on a bill, and a committee actually looked at the issue and dealt with it very reasonably. As a result, today we have a corporate manslaughter bill--a corporate liability bill here in Canada.

    I want to emphasize that we're not dealing with your legislation; we're dealing with the substance of your legislation. Therefore on any issues or concerns people have that they want addressed within the changes, we're not dealing with a piece of legislation. The substance of the legislation is the issue you're talking about, which is crucially important.

    I'll state outright that I think this type of labelling is excellent and would be very beneficial. My riding has huge problems: diabetes, people on kidney dialysis, obesity problems, and everything that goes along with that. We don't have the market opportunities in those communities, so there would be a push for the marketers, so to speak, to change the way they do business in some instances.

    I recognize that there is real concern out there about the restaurant industry and it's going to be very costly to do this, so I want to give you an example, and I want you to tell me how this would be approached.

    I have two different restaurants with different names, both operating differently. There's a Greek restaurant, and a wonderful hamburger place that operates all year, but everybody just waits for the first nice weather. The parking lot is just packed, everybody is getting their fries and their hamburgers, and it's fantastic. I've committed to only going once a year, for obvious reasons. But I'm wondering how that owner would deal with it. The hamburger is so many ounces, and you have the order of fries. How would that lone marketer address that? What would that person do?

    Mr. Tom Wappel: Thank you, Mrs. Desjarlais.

    You're right that this legislation is not the Holy Grail. We're talking about the topic, not the legislation. However, the legislation does provide what I consider to be a reasonable exemption for the mom-and-pop or local restaurant. You would need to have at least $10 million in gross annual sales to be involved in giving this nutritional information.

    We don't want to over-regulate and put people out of business. We recognize that the larger chains--McDonald's says it has three million customers a day and it brags about it--would be able to spread the cost around in a much more equitable way, as they do with other costs, and as all industries do when they encounter costs. That's how.

    Mrs. Bev Desjarlais: Okay. Can I just interject, because I only have five minutes? I thank you for your answer.

    On the $10 million, would that be the sales of one franchise, or would it be the sales of the whole organization? Let's take A&W.

    Mr. Tom Wappel: That would be a good discussion for the committee. In the bill, it is $10 million for the entire organization.

    Mrs. Bev Desjarlais: I think it would be fair to say they'd probably make that amount, so it would apply to A&W.

    Mr. Tom Wappel: Yes.

    Mrs. Bev Desjarlais: It wouldn't apply to a single restaurant owner, unless they were making $10 million. So to suggest it would be cost-prohibitive to an organization making $10 million is really not a good argument.

    Mr. Tom Wappel: That would be my argument.

    Mrs. Bev Desjarlais: Thank you.

    The Chair: Mr. Barrette.

[Translation]

    Mr. Gilbert Barrette (Témiscamingue, Lib.): Thank you, Madam Chair.

    From what I understand of your answer, this bill concerns large restaurant chains and not small family restaurants. We are not talking about small restaurants found here and there, but large restaurant chains which turn profits of up to $10 million. Is that correct?

[English]

    Mr. Tom Wappel: Again, I don't want to play semantics, but I'm not targeting anyone, Monsieur Barrette. The mandatory package labelling, as I understand it, already exempts certain small businesses--if you're making local pasta, for example. There has to be some reasonableness to the provision of information; otherwise, government is going to drive people out of business.

    The answer, in short, is I'm not targeting, but we would want to spread the cost over the largest number of people to make it as inexpensive as possible, and that would exempt mom-and-pop family restaurants.

Á  (1150)  

[Translation]

    Mr. Gilbert Barrette: My concern is that it will be complicated for restaurants that change their menus on a weekly basis or every three days to give specific information on the nutritional content of menu items. This concerns mostly large chains, who change their menus on a monthly or annual basis. For example, McDonald's and Harvey's have the same menu all year around. In any case, I think it would be easier to implement these measures in large chains rather than in small restaurants.

[English]

    Mr. Tom Wappel: I agree. Before you came in I mentioned that a suggested improvement in my bill would be to exempt menus that were not on the menu for at least two months.

[Translation]

    Mr. Gilbert Barrette: My last comment is on education. What role must we play to educate the public and make it aware of the dangers or consequences of that, in terms of what is found in restaurants, as well as on the food labels of products we buy on a regular basis?

    This week, we looked into the issue of trans fats. This was not exactly a revelation for me, but we heard some highly important information on the long-term health consequences and dangers of trans fats.

[English]

    Mr. Tom Wappel: I guess it's the role of this committee to determine what role government should have in providing information to consumers on a variety of subjects. The Parliament of Canada, of course, has already spoken on a number of issues, including smoking and pre-packaged foods. We turn to Health Canada and rely on it to examine foods to make sure they're safe for us, and make sure we're able to consume what we want to consume. I hope we're increasingly relying on government to provide us with the information we need to make the choices we want to make.

    The Chair: Thank you, Mr. Barrette.

    Miss Grey.

    Miss Deborah Grey: Thanks, Madam Chair.

    Tom, this is interesting. I'm having a bit of difficulty here. I think all of us probably agree it's a great idea. I don't think anyone is philosophically against that. As Bev said, we're talking about the substantive portion of the bill.

    This is what I'm having a difficult time with. If it is such a good thing to do, why are we stopping at just the big guys with $10 million gross? Could we all just rationalize then and go to Bev's place and have hamburgers and fries there because they don't label them? I understand that the costs would be prohibitive, but if we're talking philosophically here, why are we saying we'll just hit the big guys because they can afford it, but we're just going to forget about the other guys? You could mull over that, I guess. I don't even know if I need an answer.

    I'm thinking here again about the fats, and here on the White Spot menu.... You took probably the least of all evils, because White Spot was started in 1928 as a hamburger joint, and they have probably the best hamburgers, at least in western Canada, if not all. Did they label the grams of fat of the hamburgers on the menu? It is a hamburger joint. This classy stuff was just added in the last few years. People go to White Spot for hamburgers. It says 4.6 grams of fat. Now we've all learned there are saturated fats, transfats, unsaturated fats, partially hydrogenated fats--it makes me dizzy. I don't understand that part--how we can break all that stuff down. I don't know about that, as well as all these things.

    We have to realize too that we have a huge number of illiterate people in our country who couldn't read this stuff if it were up on the board. How do we educate people on all those issues I just brought up? I don't know.

Á  (1155)  

    Mr. Tom Wappel: Goodness me, if I had the answers to all that....

    Miss Deborah Grey: Well, Bill's passed you notes--

    Mr. Tom Wappel: By the way, there have been two references to Bill Geffery. I haven't asked the committee if he'd be able to come up here, but he is my technical adviser on this bill. It's just as if a minister were to appear before a committee--the minister would not expect to appear without advisers.

    We have to start somewhere, I would argue, so why not start where my bill starts? What happens 15 years from now, when there's more and more information and things are more technically possible, is a different matter.

    As to why some items have information in the White Spot menu and others don't, I would suggest you ask the White Spot management. To me, it's clear. Where marketing indicates that consumers want a healthier choice, they're prepared to put in the information. They could just as easily put it in for their regular hamburger, as you put it. They've chosen to add that information in certain places and chosen to keep it out in certain others.

    Miss Deborah Grey: But they've chosen that marketing because the consumers have pressed them on it.

    Mr. Tom Wappel: Yes, that's absolutely true.

    The Chair: Thank you, Ms. Grey.

    Mr. Kilgour.

    Hon. David Kilgour (Edmonton Southeast, Lib.): Thank you, Tom, very much for coming in.

    Again, I'll quote from the Centre for Science in the Public Interest. You probably helped write this. It makes a number of points--and I'm sure you know them better than any of us. They include banning ads for junk food, restoring funding for the ParticipAction program, shifting sales taxes from healthful foods to junk foods, publicly funding preventative nutrition counselling, cracking down on weight-loss gimmicks, ridding junk food from all school vending machines, and setting nutrition criteria for school cafeteria food.

    I take it you see your bill as part of the whole package. You may have already answered this--and I'm sorry I wasn't here earlier--but some people say it's going to cost the restaurants a huge amount of money. Have you dealt with that already in one of the questions you've been asked?

    Mr. Tom Wappel: That is one of the arguments. The witnesses will be here and they will bring whatever evidence they have. All I would ask is that you ask at least as stringent questions of them as you have of me.

    Hon. David Kilgour: All right. And I think it's fair to say, too, that the Centre for Science in the Public Interest is very supportive of your bill.

    Mr. Tom Wappel: That is fair to say, yes.

    Hon. David Kilgour: Is there anything you want to add?

    Mr. Tom Wappel: I think you will see, on close questioning, that much of the information that I'm requesting be provided has already been obtained and provided by the various players in the game.

    Going back to the chair's point, it's also about pre-packaged meats and things of that nature. If you go to the website of the Alberta beef industry or whatever it is and take a look, they'll have much of this information already on their website. I know that people are carrying around their palm pilots and they can go in and look it all up just before they buy, but let's be realistic. It's a lot easier if you pick up that cut of meat, read the label, and then make your decision.

    The Chair: Thank you, Mr. Kilgour.

    Mr. Boudria.

    Hon. Don Boudria (Glengarry—Prescott—Russell, Lib.): I find these subjects fascinating, particularly after the one we had just the other day. I'm just wondering whether the overall approach is the correct one. I'm questioning myself in a lot of this here; I'm not firm on it.

    You know, our colleague Mr. Kilgour is reading out some of these things, for example the banning of so-called junk food. Well, how does one define what that is?

    There's a complete school of thought in nutrition that carbohydrates should be eaten sparingly at night. That's kind of the Atkins way of looking at it, and a lot of others too, for that matter. Carbohydrates should be eaten earlier in the day and proteins later at night and so on, because of the length of time they take to digest and the amount of exercise you do at the time. This means that there's probably nothing wrong with eating spaghetti at noon, but eating it at night is probably a lot worse.

    Add to that what we're learning as of late, particularly about the transfats. From what we hear, you can increase a person's heart attack rate by 40% if they consume 10 milligrams of it a day. I'm not sure there's anything else that could cause that much damage, even deliberately.

    So when you think of all these things, are we focusing on the right approach? If the information we've been hearing as of late is as strong as we were led to believe, isn't that what we should be focusing on instead? Shouldn't we tell restaurants that if they use transfats, it has to be printed on their menu, or something like that? Would that be more valuable?

    Clearly, the idea behind making more information available to the consumer is the right one. Given, as Mr. Wappel suggested himself, that consumers don't really read it all, and they're not going to get their palm pilots out, should we focus on the most glaring thing that consumers should be focusing on? And is this the one?

    I don't know if Mr. Wappel could respond to some of this. It's kind of food for thought--pardon the pun--the way I express it.

  (1200)  

    Mr. Tom Wappel: Mr. Boudria, thank you.

    I don't believe I ever said that consumers don't read. I was illustrating what would be easier to obtain--information from a label as you pick up the meat, or having to access a 1-800 number or a website. That was the illustration. This is simply one part of the overall puzzle that I'm suggesting. As I said before, it's not a magic bullet. In my opinion, information provided to consumers would help. I don't think you will hear any witnesses who will say “Do not provide information to consumers”. The dispute, I suppose, will be over the mechanism by which that information is delivered. Of course, these are all deliberations for your committee for future recommendations to the Minister of Health.

    Hon. Don Boudria: I'd like to get back to the other subject, which Madam Desjarlais raised and which interests me as well. It's this whole business of this $10 million threshold. I was at an opening of a little restaurant in my constituency last weekend. The restaurant was there to begin with, but they now have purchased the authority--I'm not even sure it's called a franchise--to sell a particular kind of chicken. I think the only thing the chicken place supplies them with is the sign and the sauce, and the rest of the ingredients are theirs. I'm sure that this chain, overall, probably has huge sales, and I'm wondering whether that would count in that $10 million figure.

    I think it's clear that if you have the franchise for a McDonald's, their recipe is probably very strict. You don't buy your hamburger meat wherever you like; you probably buy it from only their supplier, and you buy only their buns, only Coca-Cola, if that is what they serve--I don't eat there much. It's probably very structured. There are probably various gradients of that structure if it's a franchise that you buy to sell a particular product.

    Has anyone thought of this, how it would work?

    Mr. Tom Wappel: It's an excellent question.

    As far as my bill is concerned, first, your example would not fall within the requirements of the bill unless it were legally encapsulated as either a subsidiary or a franchise. That's a legal question, of course, that would be worked out by the regulatory--

    Hon. Don Boudria: Say it is franchised, but the franchise includes only two or three ingredients out of the whole thing; it doesn't actually include—

    Mr. Tom Wappel: I'm not sure that it would be a franchise because of that. If they're using Lilydale chicken, for example, but they are selling all kinds of other things, I'm not sure that would be a franchise, because a franchise has to follow certain rules and sell only the things the franchise requires. There are certain agreements in that regard. If the people who are being supplied with Lilydale chicken can also sell pork, hamburger, and various things like that, I doubt very much if it would be considered a franchise.

    But that could be put to the justice department officials at the appropriate time.

    The Chair: On behalf of the committee, Mr. Wappel, I want to thank you. You have a reputation around here for being thorough, and you've proved it once again this morning. However, I have to congratulate my colleagues, because they have opened up a whole variety of outlooks on this topic, and Mr. Ménard has put a motion forward that we get more people in to have a more thorough discussion.

    For your leadership on this issue since 1990 and your sponsorship of this bill we thank you, and we invite you to join us at the table if you so wish.

    Mr. Tom Wappel: Thank you, Madam Chair. I do so wish. I appreciate the invitation and I thank the committee again for taking up the issue. Good luck in your deliberations.

    Thank you very much.

    The Chair: Thank you, Mr. Wappel.

    I'll now ask to come to the table people who could be described as our new best friends from the Department of Health: Ms. Dodds, Ms. L'Abbé, and Mr. Greg Orriss, who is the director of the bureau of food safety and consumer protection from the Canadian Food Inspection Agency.

    I think you will find presentations coming to you from both the department and the agency.

    Welcome, Ms. Dodds, Ms. L'Abbé, and Mr. Orriss. I think we will begin with Ms. Dodds. She will have the floor first.

    Ms. Dodds.

  (1205)  

    Dr. Karen L. Dodds (Acting Associate Assistant Deputy Minister, Health Products and Food Branch, Department of Health): Thank you, Madam Chair.

    I'm pleased to be here today with my colleague Dr. Mary L'Abbé to speak with you about the subject matter of Bill C-398, an act to amend the Food and Drugs Act with respect to food labelling.

    I would like to begin by outlining Health Canada's role under the Food and Drugs Act.

    Hon. David Kilgour: I'm sorry, on a point order, we can all read, so why don't we just read the thing and you could simply give us the highlights? Would that be a fair way of doing it?

    The Chair: I think so. It doesn't look too long.

    Could you manage that, Ms. Dodds? If you have to pause, we'll understand, as you're picking out your highlights.

    Dr. Karen L. Dodds: What I will do then is jump to the bottom of page 3.

[Translation]

    I would like to talk about the reason why, in the new regulatory framework on nutritional labelling, Health Canada did not include meat, poultry, fresh seafood or foods for immediate consumption, and I would like to point out some of the things we are doing currently in this area.

[English]

    We obviously looked at these issues ourselves and for a number of reasons decided not to include them. I'd like to highlight some of them.

    Right now when we look at fresh meats, poultry, and fish we do not have appropriate data on nutrient composition for these foods that is comparable to the information we have for pre-packaged foods. When you go to your meat case or your poultry case in the grocery stores now, the sale of these products is not done in the same way as for processed foods, where you have one manufacturer being responsible. So it becomes more difficult to know who is responsible for the nutrition content of that package. Has the fat been trimmed from the beef before it got to the grocery store? Has it been trimmed by the butcher in the grocery store?

    I do want to clarify, though, that under the new regulations a very significant proportion of the meat sold in Canada is required to carry nutrition labelling. In this area we are at the forefront internationally. All cured products, such as ham and bacon, all seasoned meats--and these include the meats that have had phosphate added, which also then adds water--and ground meats must be labelled. No one else has mandatory labelling of ground meats.

    We knew there was interest in the food service and restaurant sector having to use nutrition labelling. Nutrition labelling is only feasible when you're producing food to standardized recipes in a standardized format. Most restaurants aren't like that. Food preparation simply isn't that standardized.

    You discussed previously the issue about customization. That is a challenge. Clearly, fast food chain restaurants, which do have highly standardized procedures, highly standardized food components and ingredients, would be in a better position to meet the requirements.

    The pre-packaged food industry has been using voluntary nutrition labels since as early as 1988, so we had a lot of information about how consumers used those labels. The information we had was that over 85% of consumers will refer to the labels. They may not read them every time, but before they buy a product for the first time, they refer to the labels. We do not have that kind of information with respect to restaurants and food service. We do think it would be interesting and useful to know if, when, and how consumers would use that information.

    There is also, from our perspective and out of the Food and Drugs Act, a question of jurisdiction. Restaurants and food service establishments typically fall under provincial jurisdiction. Inspection is the responsibility of the provinces, and most provinces have put that down to the municipal level.

    I want to talk a little bit about what we're doing right now. Certainly we're working very hard with our colleagues at the Canadian Food Inspection Agency and with industry to make sure that the date of mandatory application of nutrition labelling passes with new labels in place with as little consternation as possible. That has required an enormous amount of work from all sides.

    When we talk about the exemptions to food labelling, which include the single-ingredient meats, poultry, fish, but also single-ingredient produce, I'd like to tell you that we have met with the industry to examine this issue. We've talked about creating a database of nutrient information that could be used. It wouldn't be exactly the same approach as would be used for processed, pre-packaged food; it would require a somewhat different approach. But we've been working with the industry on that.

    We've also looked at the issue of providing information in the restaurant sector and the food service sector. From our perspective, we've been clear so far. The information that we think is critical is that required under the new regulations. You'll recall that on Tuesday we said the nutrition information, how you use it, and what you look for may depend, for instance, on whether you are a diabetic and need to know about carbohydrates. Are you somebody who's 35 or over and are worried about fats? Are you somebody who's predisposed to hypertension and need to worry about sodium? It is not the same concern for everybody, so we have maintained the position that the core list we have is the listing you would need to have if you want us to say you're providing appropriate nutrition information. But we have been clear in our discussions so far.

    In terms of how the information is presented and how representative it is of that specific batch of food, vitamins in fresh fruits and vegetables will vary depending on when they're grown, where they're grown, how long they've been stored. We have to have more flexibility in our approach there.

  (1210)  

    We have learned from our past experience that consultation is important. We would encourage further consultation with associations and individuals representing consumers; industry, not just food service but also the meat packers, etc., of the world; our provincial and territorial colleagues, because if we want to impose something, it has a huge impact on colleagues; public health organizations with an interest in healthy eating, and in addressing issues such as obesity and chronic-disease risk.

    The Chair: Thank you very much, Ms. Dodds.

    We'll move now to Mr. Orriss from the Canadian Food Inspection Agency. Mr. Orriss, perhaps you could follow a similar course. Although your presentation isn't that long, could you highlight what you really want to get across to us?

    Mr. Greg Orriss (Director, Bureau of Food Safety and Consumer Protection, Canadian Food Inspection Agency): Thank you, Madam Chair. I will adjust and abridge the comments, as the Honourable David Kilgour has suggested.

    I first want to set out our relationship with Health Canada and what our responsibilities are at the agency.

    Health Canada, of course, is responsible for setting the policies and standards related to health safety and the nutritional quality of food. The Canadian Food Inspection Agency is responsible, then, for the enforcement of those policies.

    The first part of my written speech simply indicates some of the challenges we're facing and what we are doing at the Canadian Food Inspection Agency to put forward a credible enforcement regime for this very important public health legislation.

    Madam Chair, it does present some very large challenges to the agency when you look at basically all pre-packaged foods in this country requiring this nutrition fact panel to ensure that in fact the information is truthful, not deceptive in any way, and is properly labelled with the regulatory requirements.

    Madam Chair, at this point I would like to focus, if I may, on the latter part of the substance from Mr. Wappel's bill. This relates to the proposal to amend the Food and Drugs Act to include a quantitative ingredient declaration on labels, to require a percentage declaration of ingredients highlighted in words or pictures on the front panel of the label. This provision would further require that the first three ingredients and any amount of a specific type of ingredient, like whole grains and fruit, in the ingredients list be accompanied by a percentage declaration on the amount of the food.

    The CFIA is certainly concerned about fair and informative labelling of foods. In fact, the agency is now conducting public consultations on a labelling proposal similar to the one contained in Bill C-398 concerning highlighted ingredients.

    The CFIA is following a systematic regulatory analysis process and is consulting widely with all interested stakeholders. The purpose of our consultations is to amend the food and drug regulations to require percentage declaration of ingredients that are highlighted in words or vignettes.

    Unless emphasized, however, the CFIA proposal does not include the requirement for the percentage declaration of the first three ingredients, nor does it include the requirement for specific ingredients such as fruits and vegetables.

    It is important for Canadians to know what they are eating. Pre-packaged foods in Canada already require an ingredient list that is presented in descending order by weight. This means that the first three ingredients listed are the most prominent in the food. Based on the ingredients list, consumers can choose products that have higher amounts of healthful ingredients or lower amounts of unhealthful ingredients.

    The objective of the CFIA proposal is fair labelling that provides clear and relevant product information for consumers. It is intended to prevent misleading ingredient claims for ingredients that are emphasized, and is a less onerous regulatory change for industry than that proposed in Bill C-398.

    The CFIA suggests that our proposal would adequately address consumer needs for an informed food choice. We have five reasons for saying that, Madam Chairman.

    First, the amended food and drug regulations include five health claims with criteria for foods to make if making the claim. This approach taken by Health Canada for the use of health claims appears to more adequately address the issues of diet and risk for chronic disease than requiring the content declaration of the five classes of ingredients identified in Bill C-398--namely, fruits, vegetables, whole grains, legumes, and added sugars.

    Second, label space is becoming limited due to necessary health and safety information, such as nutritional labelling as well as allergen labelling and public health warnings proposed for products such as ground beef. I would invite the committee to consider whether adding information about percentages actually makes it more difficult to find health and safety information that consumers do need.

    Third, many industry sectors have advised us that including percentages of ingredients on the labels would provide proprietary information to their competitors. In fact, even the present CFIA proposal for highlighted ingredients and flavours is receiving considerable negative feedback from the processing industry.

    Fourth, the labelling requirements proposed in Bill C-398 could create difficulties with our trading partners, whereas CFIA's proposal is consistent with international obligations, is similar to the FAO and WHO Codex Alimentarius general standard for the labelling of pre-packaged foods--this is the international standard that is referenced under the WTO agreements--and is comparable to labelling requirements in U.S. legislation.

  (1215)  

    Finally, Madam Chair, the CFIA has reservations about this bill because such extensive quantitative ingredient declaration requirements as are proposed in Bill C-398 would require reallocation of agency resources. The agency has been very busy, as I'm sure the committee appreciates. In addition to responding to the requirements of nutritional labelling, we have had to respond to outbreaks such as BSE and avian influenza and continue to respond to other important food safety, emergency response, security, and consumer protection issues.

    Thank you, Madam Chair. I would be pleased to respond to any questions.

    The Chair: Thank you very much.

    We'll begin our questioning with Mr. Merrifield.

    Mr. Rob Merrifield: Thank you.

    My concern is that a label is only as good as the accuracy of the information it's purporting to give. As a farmer and a consumer, I know, when we produce our beef cattle, what that animal eats for the last two or three months prior to being butchered makes a considerable difference in the amount of fat the animal has. When we talk about buffalo meat or elk meat, compared to the difference between a Holstein cow and an Angus cow, the meat varies in a quite different way as far as concerns the amount of fat and calories per product. You've addressed this to some degree, but is this the root of the problem when you're talking about fish, poultry, and beef, that because of the variability of the raw product, it would be prohibitive to put the labelling on the way the bill is asking for?

  (1220)  

    Dr. Karen L. Dodds: Clearly, when we were looking at our nutrition labelling regulations, you could not use the same approach as is used for a processed pre-packaged food for fresh single-ingredient foods. With a batch of carrots, you cannot do anything in a formulation to raise or lower the level of vitamin C. That is why we're working with industry on what the appropriate ways are of developing nutrient databases that would not be as specific for the product the consumer may be purchasing at that time, but may be representative of, say, McIntosh apples or grade A beef in Canada with a certain kind of trim, because it clearly can't have exactly the same one-to-one relationship of nutrition information for this specific package of food.

    Mr. Rob Merrifield: So that's why you're saying it would be too clumsy to label to that degree. That, I think, is the root of the problem. The intent is right, in that the consumer should have the opportunity to know as much as he can about the product, but it really becomes a prohibitive thing when you look at the variability of those raw materials. I think that's what you have said, and that's why we have some limitations with regard to the labelling the department came up with a couple of years ago.

    I would concur, from my experience talking with people from the industry, as well as consumers. They're saying the same thing. In fact, I've had individuals lobbying me about this bill and saying, we have to have this information. When I explain to them my opposition to it, every one of them, unanimously, has said yes, that makes sense; I understand why that would be so clumsy.

    Dr. Karen L. Dodds: Industry is interested in being able to provide similar nutrition information to consumers. For example, the fresh produce people have said to us they don't want consumers to pick the frozen produce over the fresh produce because they can get the nutrition information on the frozen produce that's in a packaged bag in the freezer section. Again, we're looking at developing an approach with them to provide nutrition information, preferably at point of purchase, though it may not be right on the label of the package. It certainly won't be as specifically tied to the package of fresh produce as we are able to do for frozen.

    Mr. Rob Merrifield: So we could be leading the consumer in the wrong direction.

    Dr. Karen L. Dodds: We're working on an approach that we believe will address it, and obviously, we would have discussions, as we have had, with consumer representatives, health professionals, and industry on what is appropriate. It's a slightly different approach.

    The Chair: Ms. Grey.

    Miss Deborah Grey: Thanks.

    Tom, are you aware of what the proposals were for the CFIA before this morning? Have you been in contact with each other? You're just hearing it now. Okay.

    I can see that this is a mammoth task, and again, I think we're philosophically agreed that it's a great idea to let consumers know as much as possible. Between you two, I feel as if I'm watching a show go on in front of me. Do these proposals look like a solution, a half-way mark? You people have obviously been working hard. I frankly can't believe that you've had any time to even think on this, with the crisis you've been dealing with across the country. It seems to me that this may not be as much as Tom wanted, but I look at it as someone who, I have to confess, doesn't read labels very much at all, and I probably represent a huge proportion of the population--Bonnie, I won't ask how many labels you read. Could there be a compromise here, so we can do something? I don't even know if Tom is allowed to answer that, but if we're all agreed that we have to do something on it, it seems to me, as a layman, that this would be a really good start. Somehow you have to come to a compromise.

    What I see happening down the road here is that somebody with some scientific background is going to take something that's labelled and do some scientific tests on it. Then there are going to be a million lawsuits, and then where are we? Or am I just cynical? I think that could happen, I can see people doing that, and boy, then we'd be in the soup. I don't know if there's a compromise between the groups here, but it looks sensible to me.

  (1225)  

    Dr. Karen L. Dodds: I'll just perhaps start again, talking about our initiative looking at the fresh meats and poultry and the raw fruits and vegetables. Canadians purchase them, we want Canadians to purchase those products, and we want them to have the nutrition information available. What we don't want is to have a consumer purchase something and think they were misled by the nutrition information. So we do need to develop the nutrient databases. We also need to develop a way of getting them to understand, for example, that in fresh fruits and vegetables the levels of many vitamins can vary enormously from zero to 100% of your recommended daily allowance. That is not something the grocery store has control over. It's growing conditions, it's length of time the product has been in storage. So we need to work out some tools that are different from those for the pre-packaged foods.

    The Chair: Mr. Ménard.

[Translation]

    Mr. Réal Ménard: Thank you, Madam Chair.

    To my knowledge, since the January 1, 2003, there is a requirement to provide information on the 13 most important ingredients of a product bought in Canada, with the exception of fruits and vegetables. This is what has been proposed. You said something which surprised me in your remarks. On page 5 of your written statement, you explain why Health Canada does not support Tom's proposal: “Appropriate data on the nutrient composition of these foods do not currently exist.” Are you telling us that we should not impose mandatory labelling because current science and knowledge does not allow us to determine the nutrient composition of poultry, seafood, and other items proposed by Tom? Is that what Health Canada is advancing this morning?

[English]

    Dr. Karen L. Dodds: We have nutritional information available for broad classes of these products, but I think you can appreciate that if you just take a T-bone steak, the amount of fat will depend on how much trimming has been done. That is something that is done at the grocery store, and you would not expect the grocery store to submit that trimmed piece to the analysis. So we are now developing information that isn't specific to the piece of T-bone steak purchased by the consumer, but is more representative of a T-bone steak trimmed to five millimetres, or something like that, of fat. So again, it provides the consumer with information, but it is not specific for the particular steak the customer buys on Friday afternoon at a grocery store in town X; it is representative of T-bone steaks in Canada with that kind of cut.

[Translation]

    Mr. Réal Ménard: With your permission, I'd like to put a second question to you.

    In fact, you are saying that the Canadian Food Inspection Agency is unconstitutional, since you said that the responsibility for food inspection falls to the provinces. I do not understand your logic. You are saying you have some reservations with regard to Mr. Wappel's bill because food inspection is a matter of provincial jurisdiction; however, we have a Canadian Food Inspection Agency. Therefore, either your agency is unconstitutional, or Mr. Wappel's bill is. Something is unclear. If food inspection falls under provincial jurisdiction, why is there a Canadian Food Inspection Agency?

[English]

    Dr. Karen L. Dodds: I'll start, and then I'll turn to my colleague for further detail.

    The Food and Drugs Act applies to all foods sold in Canada, irrespective of where they're produced, where they move, or whether they come into Canada from the United States, Europe, or wherever. However, there are a number of other acts, at both the federal level and the provincial level, with respect to food. Such things as sanitation and food safety practices in food service, in restaurants, have typically been considered part of the public health mandate that is more at the provincial level, because it applies at the local level.

    So it's not a clear-cut case that we do or do not. The Food and Drugs Act does apply to all foods sold in Canada. We would have discussions with provincial and territorial colleagues about enforcement.

  (1230)  

    Mr. Greg Orriss: Just to add to what my colleague has indicated, the Food and Drugs Act is also criminal law, and there are some constraints around the enforcement of criminal law in terms of proving the intent and so on. Each province, of course, has different legislative authorities and different capacities. We try to work collectively, with each province, to develop the best synergism we can and to provide the best coverage we can.

    As Dr. Dodds indicates...and I don't profess to be a lawyer here, but from what I've heard from our legal folks in the past, under the Constitution Act, responsibilities such as the inspection of restaurants have been considered to be matters of principally local and private interest. I think that's the way it reads, but I'm going by memory here.

[Translation]

    Mr. Réal Ménard: If Tom Wappel's bill is passed, there would be a requirement to provide the nutritional value of foods found on printed menus in restaurants. You saw earlier, when I asked the question, that there are different and distinct types of information according to the format of the menu. In your opinion, who is responsible for ensuring that the display requirements are properly enforced, the provinces or the Canadian Food Inspection Agency? Let us suppose that Tom Wappel's bill is passed. If there is a violation of the labelling requirements, who will be responsible for enforcing the law?

[English]

    Mr. Greg Orriss: Thank you for the question.

    If it falls under the Food and Drugs Act and regulations, the agency is responsible for the enforcement. That said, because of the criminal law nature of the Food and Drugs Act and regulations, we enforce based on complaints. We enforce based on identifying risks and prioritizing risks. We would certainly encourage the provinces, and we have encouraged the provinces in the past, to incorporate by reference requirements that are under federal legislation to improve consistency and improve our ability to partner effectively with the provinces.

    As you can imagine, there are tens of thousands of restaurants across the country, and to have a system that would be truly credible, enforceable, and in place, you would have to call on all partners to engage. Certainly the CFIA, with the resource base we have, would not have the capacity to be proactive at all in this matter.

    The Chair: Thank you very much, Mr. Ménard.

    When you say you're complaints-based, I would ask if you could tell us how many people are receiving those phone calls, e-mails, and letters in the CFIA to even log those complaints, much less respond to them. In other words, how many civil servants are dedicated to the task of receiving the complaints?

    Mr. Greg Orriss: It's pretty limited. Across the country, with respect to our fair-labelling practices program, I think there are approximately 90 inspectors.

    The Chair: Ninety, you say? That's better than somebody else we talked to recently.

    You said you weren't a lawyer, so we'll go to one. Mr. Wappel is the next questioner.

    Mr. Tom Wappel: Thank you, Madam Chair.

    Just by way of a brief preamble, yes, there is room for compromise. There is always room for compromise. And I'll leave it at that other than to say that I personally have been involved in the nutritional labelling aspect of things since 1990. It took 13 years to get regulations to make it mandatory in prepackaged foods, so if it takes another 10 years, well, it will happen. I won't be around, likely, but it will happen.

    I'd like to challenge you, Dr. Dodds, on a comment you made on page 7, just to follow up on Mr. Ménard's question on jurisdiction. Your statement, in my view, is absolutely correct:

Restaurants and food service establishments typically fall under provincial jurisdiction. Inspection is the responsibility of the provinces....

    Kellogg's makes cereal. Kellogg's has a plant in the province of Ontario. Is it not true that Kellogg's is an establishment that typically falls under provincial jurisdiction, and inspection is the responsibility of the province?

  (1235)  

    Dr. Karen L. Dodds: Kellogg's, as a maker of cereal, would have to comply with all of the provisions of the Food and Drugs Act that apply to a product such as cereal.

    Mr. Tom Wappel: That's not my question. My question is that Kellogg's makes food in the province of Ontario; you would agree with me that it falls under provincial jurisdiction, and you would agree with me that the inspection of that plant falls under the responsibility of the province.

    Mr. Greg Orriss: Perhaps I can try to respond to Mr. Wappel's question.

    Again, based on the constitutional division of powers and so on, when there is an establishment that manufactures products that are intended to cross provincial or international boundaries, the federal government has the principal responsibility, from my understanding, for such establishments and such firms as you mentioned. Now, please understand, I am not a lawyer, so I am offering my understanding in a limited context.

    Mr. Tom Wappel: But that's my point. So a Tim Hortons franchise or a McDonald's franchise that ships by transport truck, from Kingston to Montreal, its hamburger meat for the day would be crossing provincial boundaries. So then the Food and Drugs Act would have application.

    Mr. Greg Orriss: As Dr. Dodds indicates, the Food and Drugs Act actually has application regardless; it applies to the sale of all food in the country. But there are constraints because of the criminal law nature of the Food and Drugs Act.

    There is trade and commerce legislation under the Fish Inspection Act, the Meat Inspection Act, and the Canada Agricultural Products Act that in fact does provide specific requirements and regulations for all products that cross provincial or international boundaries and that fall under those acts.

    Dr. Karen L. Dodds: Madam Chair, we do have legal counsel from Health Canada, from the Department of Justice, here with us. With your permission, he could come to the table and answer some of these questions.

    Mr. Tom Wappel: Madam Chair, I have limited time. Perhaps they could provide a written answer. I suggest this is a red herring, so I'd like to just go on.

    Is it not true that prior to five years ago, more or less, let's say prior to 1997, Health Canada was an advocate of voluntary labelling on pre-packaged foods, agreed with the industry that it should be voluntary, and subsequently changed its mind? Is that not an accurate statement?

    Dr. Karen L. Dodds: I'm not sure at what point we began work on mandatory labelling, but I believe it was before 1997. As members may appreciate, it is part of regulatory policy in Canada that you first have to prove that a problem exists. For voluntary labelling by industry, the industry was very good in terms of providing nutrition information, but it was very variable in style and format and the kind of information that was produced. It was felt that the public health gains from consistent labelling of the nutrients considered to be a public health concern would be appropriate for a mandatory regulatory approach.

    Mr. Tom Wappel: Amen, and that's what my bill tries to do.

    I have one final question, Madam Chair, for Mr. Orriss.

    Let's take a visual picture: three-fruit jam. On the picture on the three-fruit jam jar you have beautiful blueberries in the front, beautiful raspberries in the front, and a small apple at the back. The actual composition of the three-fruit jam is 60% apple, 20% blueberry, and 20% raspberry. One of the purposes of my bill would be that consumers could see that even if the picture showed blueberries and raspberries as greater in the composition in the picture, the consumer would know that in reality 60% of the product is apple even though the apple is hidden behind the blueberries and the raspberries.

    That's part of what was in the bill that you were addressing, Mr. Orriss, in your comments. Would that not be something your organization would be able to examine as truth in labelling, if I could use the phrase?

    Mr. Greg Orriss: Thank you, Mr. Wappel.

    Certainly we share that concern. Our function is essentially to enforce provisions against labelling that is false, misleading, or deceptive or is likely to create an erroneous impression related to its character, value, quantity, composition, merit, or safety. We share those kinds of concerns, and that is why we've introduced the proposal for highlighted or emphasized ingredients and flavours that would address this type of concern you have.

    We started a consultation process back in January 2003 and it's still ongoing. We've had three phases to the consultation, we've received broad input from a variety of stakeholders, and we certainly still encourage stakeholders to provide us with their comments.

    What we're trying to do is find a reasonable balance that ensures that our mandate is fulfilled in terms of preventing this kind of nonsense you have mentioned and protecting consumers from this type of deceptive representation. We do believe we are coming close to an appropriate response, one that is balanced in terms of meeting that responsibility but not being overly intrusive or unnecessarily onerous for the industry.

  (1240)  

    Mr. Tom Wappel: Thank you, Madam Chair.

    The Chair: Thank you, Mr. Wappel.

    Mrs. Desjarlais.

    Mrs. Bev Desjarlais: Thank you.

    I have a couple of questions. First off, I just want to be clear on the Department of Health's mandate, so to speak, while trying not to be too broad. Just generally my impression is that Health Canada is there to ensure that Canadians are getting healthy food products, and when I see the Bureau of Food Safety and Consumer Protection, I look at that in terms of consumers being protected from food that wouldn't be good for them. Is that a fair statement?

    Dr. Karen L. Dodds: Health Canada's responsibilities are for setting all of the standards and policies with respect to food safety and nutrition.

    Mrs. Bev Desjarlais: So it wouldn't necessarily be a mandate to ensure food that's going to Canadians is there for good health?

    Dr. Karen L. Dodds: There is authority under the Food and Drugs Act where if there is an issue with respect to health, we can regulate it.

    Mrs. Bev Desjarlais: But it's not your mandate to promote foods that are there for good health.

    Dr. Karen L. Dodds: We try to do that in various ways with things like the food guide.

    Mrs. Bev Desjarlais: Is it part of the mandate?

    Dr. Karen L. Dodds: We would say yes, for Health Canada.

    Mrs. Bev Desjarlais: Correct me if I'm wrong, but I got the impression from you that you were doing some testing to see whether or not it would be possible to put out nutritional information available for fresh vegetables, because it's already available on frozen vegetables or canned vegetables--whatever. Was I right in assuming that this kind of stuff is going on right now, that you're in the process of doing that?

    Are you in the process of possibly checking meat products and those kinds of things to see whether or not you can provide labelling in that area? I say meat products but there could be other products as well. Are you doing work in that area as well?

    Dr. Karen L. Dodds: For the fresh, single ingredients?

    Mrs. Bev Desjarlais: No. Are you doing it from the meat side of it as well, say, for certain types of meat? You were mentioning different portions and different cuts; some had fat and some didn't. Are you doing work in that area as well to see whether you can make labelling available with that type of information?

    Dr. Karen L. Dodds: Yes.

    Mrs. Bev Desjarlais: I know you mentioned your resources are really slim, so which area is getting more consideration right now? Are you giving more consideration to getting information out on the fresh vegetables as compared to the frozen vegetables or the meat side of it, the products we tend to think are not as healthy?

    I don't think anybody thinks of vegetables as unhealthy. Whether they're frozen carrots or fresh carrots, you're thinking, that's a lot healthier for me than the nice prime rib with that nice juicy piece of fat on the side.

    I'm just wondering which area is getting the most attention right now.

    Dr. Karen L. Dodds: What I'll do is ask my colleague Mary L'Abbé to describe it, because she's been working with the different parts of the industry right on this initiative.

    The Chair: Ms. L'Abbé.

    Ms. Mary L'Abbé (Director, Bureau of Nutritional Sciences, Health Products and Food Branch, Department of Health): Thank you, Madam Chairperson.

    Actually, the industry group is representative of all the industry stakeholders, so there were--

    Mrs. Bev Desjarlais: I'm asking about Health Canada's side of this.

    Ms. Mary L'Abbé: I'm from Health Canada, yes, and in trying to deal with the idea of labelling these raw fruits and vegetables and the meat and poultry products, we assembled a group of industry representatives. They were representative of the beef, poultry, and fish industries as well as the fruit and vegetable industries. It wasn't targeted at any one component of the fresh, raw foods but involved all of them because they all had equal interest. They may have had different challenges that were more--

  (1245)  

    Mrs. Bev Desjarlais: Yes, but as to using the resources of Health Canada to identify the nutritional content of that piece of meat or of those fresh vegetables, which side is getting more of Health Canada's attention right now? That's what I'm trying to find out.

    Dr. Karen L. Dodds: We're not doing the analysis ourselves at this point.

    Mrs. Bev Desjarlais: Oh, so who's doing the analysis?

    Dr. Karen L. Dodds: We are working with industry to develop the approaches to the analysis. One of the issues internationally is that there's a huge cost to analysis. We do hold the Canadian nutrient file, so we will do some analytical work on representative things. But in terms of knowing about a specific McIntosh apple versus a Granny Smith apple versus a Spartan apple, we would not do all of that analytical work unless the industry gave some support.

    Mrs. Bev Desjarlais: Let's say I'm a Canadian consumer and I'm worried about one type of product this industry is selling me--I just relate it to the tobacco industry--having assured us for years, no problem. Now we have Health Canada telling us we have industry doing the nutritional content of products, and we have consumers out there who are concerned about the nutritional benefits of those products; but it's not Health Canada that's doing the testing, it's industry that's doing the testing.

    Somehow I find that hard to handle, especially since in your comments one of you--and I'm sorry, I can't recall which one it was--talked about having consumer input. So I'm wondering as well, which consumers are involved in this process?

    Dr. Karen L. Dodds: Which process?

    Mrs. Bev Desjarlais: Well, it was mentioned here somewhere along the way that you had to make sure you had consumer involvement, and I'm thinking, if there's consumer involvement, at what levels?

    Sorry, I was trying to go through all the notes really quickly, but it did mention consumer involvement in the process. Which process are the consumers involved in with this?

    Dr. Karen L. Dodds: The example was in the development of the nutrition labelling regulations that were published last year. In that we had a very wide-scale consultation process. CSPI certainly was involved. We had either an expert--

    Mrs. Bev Desjarlais: CSPI would be...?

    Dr. Karen L. Dodds: That's the Center for Science in the Public Interest; it's one kind of association that represents consumers. The Consumers' Association of Canada has had a long-standing interest in food and food safety issues. So it's a combination of associations that represent consumers, and I believe on that one we have some consumer reps as well.

    We also had discussions with literacy experts across Canada to, again, address the issue of whether our target was a label too few Canadians could read. So again, the design of the final label was something that was reviewed by literacy experts to make sure it was as easy to understand as possible so people could recognize its technical information.

    Mrs. Bev Desjarlais: Thank you.

    The Chair: We'll go now to Mr. Boudria.

    Hon. Don Boudria: I want to start off with the proposition that too much information on the label isn't necessarily the best thing. Please challenge that. If you put too much information there, nobody reads it and it becomes very confusing for the consumer.

    At one period in my life I was a member of the Ontario legislature. We used to ask Ontario Hydro for information. They would simply back up a truck and give you information. Of course, you couldn't find anything because they gave you too much of it. It was completely buried. When labelling, there's also a danger of burying stuff.

    When you think that our purpose is to help the most vulnerable, mainly teenagers, teenagers don't spend a lot of time worrying about the thirteenth item on a list of ingredients. It's not one of the main objectives in life when you're fifteen years old. They have other things to think about.

    Is there any kind of study that has been done on how many items one can logically add before the attention span ceases, in a general way, with consumers?

    Secondly, in terms of the actual reach of consumers, what about the size of lettering? As of late, I find letters keep getting smaller on everything that I see. That's the second proposition.

    There's the attention span issue. There is a point beyond which consumers, I'm sure, won't read. I'm sure studies have been done in U.S. jurisdictions and other places, where ingredients are written on labels. They must have studied this. What's your response to all that?

    Finally, there is one thing I want to challenge a little bit. It's in Mr. Orriss' brief, I believe, where it says “many industry sectors have advised us that including the percentages ofingredients on their labels would provide proprietary information to their competitors”. I really wonder about this. Is anyone going to tell me that no chemist had ever been able to figure out what's in Colonel Sanders' secret recipe, as it used to be in the jingle of fifty years ago? Am I supposed to believe that? I don't. I'm not a chemist. I don't believe it at all, as an argument. I don't think it makes your argument any stronger to have that in there.

  (1250)  

    Dr. Karen L. Dodds: I can address your first two questions.

    With respect to the number of nutrients, in the development of our regulatory proposal we were clear that our interest was in nutrients that were of public health importance. Obviously, even when you talk about public health importance, you will get some different opinions from some different people.

    As per our regulations, we have calories and 13 nutrients. It included transfat. We were the first to do it. It was a difficult issue to have transfat included.

    Hon. Don Boudria: Except for baby food.

    Dr. Karen L. Dodds: There is also a list of optional nutrients that industry can add to the nutrition facts table, but we have even limited the list of optional ones. It's extensive, but it could be even more extensive, except for the simple reason that, as you said, you don't want to have too much information. Industry recognizes there is actually a danger in putting too much information on labels. Sometimes, some of the names of the nutrients can even alarm consumers, instead of having consumers think it is good.

    In terms of the size of the letters, as I said, we considered the format of the nutrition label very carefully. We did look at font size, and we did look at label size. Again, it was clear from the literacy experts that the requirements are black on white, absolutely consistent, presentation of material.

    This is the regulatory package. We are incredibly restricted in terms of saying you must meet these standards. It's very detailed and it was done with the assistance of literacy experts.

    Hon. Don Boudria: On the regulatory aspect generally, I used to chair the cabinet committee doing that stuff.

    The final point is on the number of items one can logically put on, where you will retain the consumer attention span—if I can call it that, if it's the correct term—so we get the biggest bang for our buck in what we're trying to do. What is it? Do we know what it is?

    Dr. Karen L. Dodds: We don't know what it is, and this is one of the reasons we come back to the label clearly not being the only solution. We need to have the educational approaches on it.

    My son is a type one diabetic. For him, it is carbohydrates that are of concern. Unless they're on the Atkins diet, I don't think a lot of other people are so concerned about carbohydrates. Diabetics need to know about carbohydrates--not sodium, not fat, but carbohydrates.

    If it is your risk factor for cardiovascular disease you're concerned about and you're hypertensive, sodium is key. If you're not hypertensive, sodium isn't key.

    So part of the education is try to work with different sectors to say this is the issue you should be looking at. We're just in the early days of doing that kind of work.

    The Chair: Thank you, Mr. Boudria.

    Mr. Barrette, do you wish to question?

    Mr. Gilbert Barrette: As a prevention concern, do you think the labelling would be good for public health?

    Dr. Karen L. Dodds: Absolutely. That's what we've worked on the last number of years, that's what we've published, and we're continuing to work on the provision of information on fresh fruits and vegetables, information on food service and restaurants.

    The Chair: It seems to me the last few minutes have all been about what you're doing, which doesn't seem to affect restaurants. I think Mr. Barrette is trying to get you back onto the restaurant situation.

    Dr. Karen L. Dodds: As I said in our opening comments, we have had some discussions with the food service and restaurant sector. They haven't been as detailed or as advanced as the single-ingredient fresh foods, but we have had some discussions with them. We've said we believe this is the kind of information you should be presenting. We need to consider again how it is presented and have a lot more flexibility in terms of approach.

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    The Chair: One more question, Madame Desjarlais.

    Mrs. Bev Desjarlais: Just as you were commenting on your son, it struck me that for diabetics, when they're trying to adjust their meals and what they should eat, there are amounts that are put out, I believe through Health Canada or maybe through some other agency, that recommend that with this type of portion, you're generally getting this much. It doesn't give it exactly; it says roughly this weight of a portion is what you're going to need, for a diabetic.

    If we can do that right now for diabetics with portions of prepared foods, why is it such a hazard or improbability to do that for other foods within the industry?

    Dr. Karen L. Dodds: A lot of the information is presented by the Canadian Diabetes Association, and it is based on the information we have in the Canadian nutrient file. So they're a big user of the information that Health Canada has in its nutrient data file. But it is clear that it is representative, and--this speaks to the enforcement issue--there is an understanding that it's a generic group of carrots that's represented, versus holding a specific vendor of fresh carrots.

    Mrs. Bev Desjarlais: But does it not seem reasonable that if we've been doing this for years with diabetics and they've been surviving, it shouldn't be that tough to do it for everything else and have that information?

    Dr. Karen L. Dodds: That's exactly what we're working out right now in discussions.

    The Chair: Thank you very much.

    I think I have to reflect Madame Desjarlais' concern. I was as startled as she was when she asked questions about what Health Canada is doing and the first three words out of the answerer's mouth were that “the industry says” or “the industry met”.

    Maybe I'm naive. I know some are very responsible people in the industry, but essentially they're there to make profit, and I see the offset to that as being the work that Health Canada does. So it's very jarring to hear the answers from Health Canada officials starting off with the words, “the industry”, and how many times they've met with the industry.

    We have you here because we want to know what you're doing yourselves, because we know the industry is very strong. They have lobbied this week. Particularly the restaurant industry has lobbied probably almost every MP in the House. So we know the strength of the business lobby; you don't have to tell us.

    We want you to be doing things on your own with science. Maybe you don't have enough money to do that, I don't know, but we don't want to hear from you what the industry is saying and doing.

    Dr. Karen L. Dodds: I'll give you a little bit more detail, then, on what Health Canada is doing and has done.

    With the consultations on nutrition labelling, we clearly included the health profession. We included the voluntary sectors that represent the chronic diseases, the Canadian Diabetes Association, the Heart and Stroke Foundation. Our own scientists are involved. Our scientists are the ones who will say, for this kind of nutrient, here are the appropriate methods of analysis and here is the appropriate range. We keep the Canadian nutrient file. We do a total diet study year after year, where we are analysing a composite of foods Canadians eat. We look at toxic compounds in them.

    The CFIA enforces, and they will do analytical work as they enforce, but if it is a specific brand package of the this type of cracker, it is that manufacturer that is responsible for doing the analytical work to put the numbers on that label. We have worked with the Canadian Food Inspection Agency by saying, on that label, here are the things we consider of highest importance from a health perspective.

    Those are the kinds of things we're doing.

    The Chair: That's somewhat reassuring, because so far today we hadn't heard about anything other than the development of the labels and mainly what the industry was saying. In any case, with that final thought, I want to thank you very much for coming.

    Mr. Ménard put out a motion for a round table next Thursday. I have a couple of things to put in front of you. We were thinking about having a meeting about transfats on Tuesday and a meeting about this subject on Thursday. It turns out that the witnesses for transfats are from the same groups that would be coming on this restaurant labelling. So actually, Mr. Ménard was a little bit prescient when he suggested we do something on Thursday. Following on his idea, how do you feel about a three-hour round table, ten to one, on Thursday, skipping Tuesday? Instead of having two meetings, we can have one. It will be the same people anyway, and we can ask them questions about both transfats and this restaurant food labelling business, because they are sort of integrated.

    Does everybody approve that?

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    Mrs. Bev Desjarlais: How about Tuesday, rather than Thursday?

    The Chair: It's Thursday now.

    There's another problem here. We have $3,500 left in our operating budget. I think we see five witnesses on one side of the question and five on the other side, so we have fairness in the room. I don't think we can bring ten witnesses by plane. A number of them are in Ottawa. Do I have your authority to work with the clerk and get the best representation we can get? It might only be eight, not ten, but it would four and four or three and three.

    Hon. Don Boudria: As long as it's balanced somewhat.

    The Chair: Yes, okay.

    Madam Desjarlais.

    Mrs. Bev Desjarlais: Would you mind if I had a copy of the witness list?

    The Chair: No problem, we can give you a copy. For your information, it's Heart and Stroke, Canadian Cancer, Diabetes, the Union of Consumers in Quebec, the Centre for Science in the Public Interest. Those are the five groups that would, I think, be in favour of more restaurant labelling. On the other side are the Food and Consumer Products Manufacturers of Canada, the Canadian Restaurant and Foodservices Association, and three of the large chains of restaurants. I've got about seven to choose from here.

    Mrs. Bev Desjarlais: Can I suggest that the Canadian Restaurant and Foodservices Association would be representative of a number of those?

    The Chair: They would be, but if I just stick with them as the representative of all the others, I end up with a panel that's five on one side and one on the other.

    Mrs. Bev Desjarlais: What's IDQ, if you don't mind my asking?

    The Chair: It says Toronto, IDQ. But we're all familiar with McDonald's, Cara Foods.

    The other thing is with our budget. Some of these may want to pay their own way. I could probably go for a little supplementary money, though.

    Yes.

    Hon. Don Boudria: Madam Chair, at some point, though maybe there isn't enough time for this, especially if we happen to go into an election or stuff like that, perhaps it would be of interest to us to get the Danish nutrition council experts to come and speak to us.

    The Chair: Maybe we could have a teleconference. We've done that before; it's fun.

    Hon. Don Boudria: Perhaps, but with the testimony given to us by the Ambassador of the Kingdom of Denmark, I'm just wondering whether there wouldn't be an interest in doing this at some point.

    The Chair: We can't afford to bring them from Denmark, but you're saying another time, unless you want to include the ambassador.

    Hon. Don Boudria: It's particularly with regard to our work with the transfats, but it's related to this issue too. The only thing I'd want to know if I went to a restaurant is that on the label.

    The Chair: Maybe the researchers could call the ambassador and find out what they do about restaurants, if they're into that yet, because they seem to be ahead of us on transfats.

    I thank everybody very much for their participation and Mr. Wappel for his leadership.

    This meeting is adjourned.