Proceedings of the Standing Senate Committee on
Social Affairs, Science and Technology
Issue No. 26 - Evidence - June 7, 2017
OTTAWA, Wednesday, June 7, 2017
The Standing Senate Committee on Social Affairs, Science and Technology, to which Bill S-228, An Act to amend the Food and Drugs Act (prohibiting food and beverage marketing directed at children), was referred, met this day at 4:16 p.m. to continue its study of the bill.
Senator Kelvin Kenneth Ogilvie (Chair) in the chair.
[Translation]
The Chair: Welcome to the Standing Senate Committee on Social Affairs, Science and Technology.
[English]
I am Kelvin Ogilvie from Nova Scotia, chair of the committee. I will invite my colleagues to introduce themselves.
Senator Eggleton: Art Eggleton, senator from Toronto and deputy chair of the committee, reading my support letter from Jamie Oliver about the bill.
Senator Dean: Tony Dean, Ontario.
Senator Hartling: Nancy Hartling from New Brunswick.
[Translation]
Senator Petitclerc: Chantal Petitclerc from Quebec.
[English]
Senator Raine: Nancy Greene Raine from B.C.
Senator Stewart Olsen: Carolyn Stewart Olsen, New Brunswick.
The Chair: Colleagues, I remind you that we are here to deal with Bill S-228, An Act to amend the Food and Drugs Act (prohibiting food and beverage marketing directed at children).
We have our witnesses here and raring to go. I will call you in the order you are listed on the agenda. Seeing no immediate negative reaction, I will proceed to do that.
First, I will call on, from the Centre for Health Science and Law, Bill Jeffery, Director General. Please proceed.
Bill Jeffery, Director General, Centre for Health Science and Law: I am with the Centre for Health Science and Law; I was with the Center for Science in the Public Interest for almost two decades, and I would like to indicate that, as the previous organization, we accept no funding from industry or government.
I want to begin by emphasizing that I support efforts to restrict commercial advertising directed at children, especially for junk food advertising because nutrition-related illness is responsible for approximately 50,000 deaths per year in Canada related to heart disease, diabetes, stroke and certain forms of cancer. However, legislated safeguards should be as effective as possible at protecting children's health and should be designed in a way that anticipates that industry will take full advantage of regulatory loopholes and constitutional vulnerabilities inherent in nutrition-based advertising restrictions.
The world's first ban on advertising to children was implemented in Quebec in 1980. The Quebec Consumer Protection Act has prohibited all advertising directed at children under the age of 13 — not just food ads. Parti Québécois and Liberal governments in Quebec successfully defended the popular law for nearly a decade in the courts, culminating in a landmark freedom of expression legal decision in which the Supreme Court of Canada said that advertising to children is "per se manipulative. Such advertising aims to promote products by convincing those who will always believe.''
The Irwin Toy decision has become a pillar of Canadian constitutional law, having been followed approximately 200 times, including by more than two dozen subsequent Supreme Court judgments and nine appeal courts in three decades. This April, Justice Canada listed Irwin Toy as number eight in the top 35 decisions when marking the thirty-fifth anniversary of the Charter of Rights and Freedoms.
Also, many of the recommendations of this committee's report italic; Obesity in Canada pertain to the health benefits of physical activity and health disadvantages of excess screen time, which are not touched by this bill. According to the Global Burden of Disease report, physical inactivity caused more than 10,000 deaths in Canada in 2015.
Advertising to children probably promotes more physical inactivity, even more than poor diet, due to the sheer volume of advertisements, which are likely to rise following a junk food-only advertising ban.
The Minister of Health's mandate letter instructs her to pass legislation that would restrict advertising to children — which is an election platform commitment — though she does not have any direct control over most non-food advertising. Obviously, the committee is not confined in this way.
Proponents of the junk-food-only ad ban approach have been perhaps too optimistic about the resilience of that approach, even against numerous legal challenges by food companies of the sort that toy, tobacco and a host of food companies have used repeatedly in recent years in Canada and in the United States to undermine public health regulations.
That said, the combined health risks of junk food marketing are likely greater than for any other products, and it makes sense for children to benefit from the authority and vigilance of CFIA inspectors, and the Food and Drug Regulations is a good place to prevent food companies from using food labels to entice kids.
So I'd want to emphasize two reforms to Bill S-228 to strengthen its public health impact and to help defend it against legal challenge.
First, protect minors from being misled, regardless of the product. Rather than imply it's okay to trick minors with non-food ads or food company logos as long as no nutritionally inferior products are shown, Bill S-228 should expressly recognize the vulnerability of all children and adolescents to commercial advertising for all types of products.
By focusing only on some foods and ignoring ads for all other products, Bill S-228 may also deprive the government of the justification for curbing advertising directed at children that has already been accepted by the Supreme Court of Canada, namely that children are vulnerable to such manipulation.
I have some specific examples of how that might apply in some circumstances, but perhaps we can come to that during questions or if there is time to talk about the nutrition criteria. In my technical brief, I have circulated some specific proposals for amending the Competition Act, two sections, 52 and 74.01.
The second major point I would like to address is raising the age of protection to 18 or 19, as per provincial age of majority legislation.
According to a review of food marketing to children and adolescents that was published by the U.S. Federal Trade Commission — that is the U.S. counterpart to Canada's Competition Bureau — using evidence extracted from food companies by subpoena, the typical American adolescent is targeted by approximately double the advertising intensity in terms of spending compared to preteens.
In Canada, provincial law sets the age of majority at 18 in six provinces and 19 in the other seven provinces or territories. Canada is also a signatory to the international Convention on the Rights of the Child, which defines a child as someone younger than 18. Ironically, subsection 9(1) of the federal Competition Act stipulates that, for someone to request that a misleading advertisement be investigated, the applicant must be at least 18 years of age.
Finally, Irwin Toy summarized the legal position of children in the marketplace as follows, to quote an excerpt from that judgment:
. . . to protect a group that is most vulnerable to commercial manipulation. . . . is reflected in general contract doctrine. . . . Children are not as equipped as adults to evaluate the persuasive force of advertising and advertisements directed at children would take advantage of this.
I do have some specific observations about nutrition criteria because I understand from Senator Raine that her intention is to put nutrition criteria in the regulations, or that is the minister's hope, and perhaps we can come to that later. They are included in my technical brief.
The Chair: Thank you. I will now move to two individuals: Dr. Mary L'Abbe, Earle W. McHenry Professor and Chair, Department of Nutritional Sciences, Faculty of Medicine, University of Toronto; and Dr. Monique Potvin Kent, Assistant Professor, School of Epidemiology and Public Health, Faculty of Medicine, University of Ottawa. I will just continue across, if that is okay, and I will begin with you, Dr. L'Abbe.
Mary L'Abbe, Earle W. McHenry Professor and Chair, Department of Nutritional Sciences, Faculty of Medicine, University of Toronto, as an individual: Thank you very much, chairman, and to Senator Raine for introducing this bill and to the members of this Senate committee. Thank you for giving me the opportunity to speak to you today. I think this is a very important bill to restrict the marketing of foods to children.
As you heard in the introduction, I am a professor in the Department of Nutritional Sciences at the University of Toronto. I am also a member of the Stop Marketing to Kids Coalition. Equally, I am also director of the World Health Organization Collaborating Centre on Nutrition Policy for Chronic Disease Prevention. In that role, I serve on a number of committees for the World Health Organization, and this is a topic of high interest globally to the World Health Organization.
I fully support Bill S-228. It is dear to my heart, a bill that I think is of great importance in helping to shape a healthy food environment for our children, the most vulnerable segment of our population. In nearly all areas of public health, we take the protection of children as paramount. Protecting them from the persuasive marketing of unhealthy foods is no less important.
There is now a strong evidence base that supports the role of unhealthy food and beverage marketing as one of the drivers of the global childhood obesity epidemic. This was mentioned in your report.
Food promotion has been associated with increased food intakes in children, and the marketing practices are known to shape children's preferences towards nutrient-poor, energy-dense foods high in saturated fats, sugars and sodium. These highly processed food products are in fact the ones most heavily marketed to children. As you will hear from Professor Monique Kent, our next speaker, she will speak to that issue.
In 2016, the World Health Organization Commission on Ending Childhood Obesity established a set of recommendations for member states in order to effectively combat childhood obesity. One of these recommendations was to implement the 2010 World Health Organization recommendations to reduce the exposure to and the power of the marketing of foods and beverages high in saturated fatty acids, trans fatty acids, free sugars and sodium to children and adolescents.
With the goal of protecting our children and youth, this bill has called for a complete restriction on marketing all foods and beverages to children. That is similar to the Consumer Protection Act that is currently in place in Quebec and has been since 1980. This type of ban will provide the highest level of protection for children.
I hear that the committee may be considering some changes. I would like to say, however, that if such a complete prohibition is not your final recommendation, then I think it is imperative for this committee that a robust nutrient profiling system based on the best public health practices is used in which to define which foods can be marketed to children. I will define a couple of these terms.
Nutrient profiling has been defined by the World Health Organization as the science of classifying and ranking foods according to their nutritional composition for reasons related to preventing disease and promoting health. Nutrient profiling models are based on objective, transparent and reproducible nutritional criteria to characterize the level of unhealthfulness of food products and hence to determine whether a food is eligible or not eligible to be marketed to children.
I should point out that Canada is not alone in this goal. A number of countries, including Chile, Denmark, Ireland, South Korea, Mexico, New Zealand, Norway, Singapore and the United Kingdom, have all taken steps in this direction, and they use a nutrient profiling system to regulate different forms of marketing to children. I can provide you with references to all their legislation, if you are interested.
I would also like to point out that other countries, such as Finland and Sweden, have implemented a total ban on marketing food products to children. They don't even require a nutrient profiling system to decide which ones should be marketed or not.
I would like to also illustrate the point to you that at the University of Toronto, with research funding from the Canadian Institutes of Health Research, we've established a large database of the nutritional information of Canadian packaged foods from the largest grocery stores in Canada. We call our food database FLIP, the Food Label Information Program. That food database has more than 15,000 foods in it. It's per year that we have collected them.
When we examined those 15,000 packaged foods, we evaluated the healthfulness of the Canadian foods using a variety of these nutrient-profiling systems that are out there. These are systems that have been developed to restrict marketing of unhealthy foods to children. I haven't looked at the systems that food companies, for example, have examined. These systems are quite strict. If you choose to go down that road, we should be as strict so that only the healthiest foods would meet the criteria and be eligible to be marketed to children.
I will speak about two such systems that are developed by two different regions of the World Health Organization: the regional office for Europe and the regional office for the Americas, called PAHO. Using their models for our database of packaged foods, using the regional office of Europe, only about 30 per cent of our foods in Canada would meet the criteria. These are the foods in our marketplace. If we use the PAHO region, only about 16 per cent of packaged foods would meet the criteria.
We need cutoffs that have been established around the world, but they need to be strict ones that achieve the level of safety that we want to occur.
I would also like to point out that we also see marketing on many food packages, which is a large gap that has not been covered by any of the voluntary systems that industry has adopted. However, the marketing we see among food packages varies greatly by food category. The most worrisome we see that are the most marketing are those food products not recommended by Canada's Food Guide — that is, the least healthy foods. Those are the ones high in saturated fats, sugars and sodium.
We have excellent examples that such nutrient profiling can be done. As a matter of fact, Health Canada passed new nutrition labelling regulations last December. In them, they already defined that 5 per cent of the daily limit for unhealthy nutrients would be a little and 15 per cent would be a lot. They have already defined for us that we should select foods with less than 5 per cent of these unhealthy nutrients. At a minimum, we want to clearly signal which foods should not be marketed to kids. We definitely would not want to exceed that 5 per cent threshold — in other words, more than 5 per cent of our daily limit for unhealthy nutrients.
In conclusion, we already have tools called nutrient-profiling systems that have been developed by the World Health Organization and our newest nutrition labelling guidance to help us meet this objective: protecting children and adolescents from the marketing of unhealthy foods to children.
Thank you very much for allowing me to speak to you today.
The Chair: Thank you very much. I will now invite Dr. Potvin Kent to go ahead.
Monique Potvin Kent, Assistant Professor, School of Epidemiology and Public Health, Faculty of Medicine, University of Ottawa, as an individual: Thank you. I am also a member of the Stop Marketing to Kids Coalition, and I have been doing research on food and beverage marketing to kids since 2008.
I want to start off by saying that I support Bill S-228, particularly since the self-regulation of food and beverage marketing in Canada has been a complete failure and is not protecting Canadian children or teens.
Right now, what do we know about food and beverage marketing to kids? On kids specialty channels, kids are seeing 4.7 food and beverage ads per hour per station. The rate for teens is even higher, at about 5.2 food and beverage ads per hour per station. When we do nutritional analyses of those ads, we find that about 90 per cent of them are either high in fat, sugar or salt, so 90 per cent are unhealthy.
I have done a number of studies, pre and post, looking at what marketing looked like to kids before the Canadian Children's Food and Beverage Advertising Initiative, CAI, was implemented. After it was implemented, what were the differences?
One of the shocking differences we found is that children's exposure to food and beverage marketing actually increased after the self-regulatory pledges were implemented. They increased by 17 per cent in Toronto and by 6 per cent in Vancouver.
The other thing we found is that the power of food and beverage ads has increased since the implementation of the CAI. Children and teens are targeted more frequently — about 92 per cent more frequently. The use of spokes- characters like Tony the Tiger increased by 27 per cent; and licensed character use, which is using characters like Dora the Explorer and Spider-Man, went up 151 per cent after the CAI was implemented.
The final thing we looked at was the healthfulness of food and beverages advertised before and after the CAI was implemented. We found that the healthfulness of the ads remained unchanged, pre and post.
In December 2015, the CAI implemented new uniform nutrition criteria, so now all the food and beverage companies have the same nutrition criteria. I did an evaluation with some colleagues — Mary was one of them — back in the fall. We again did a pre and post study to see if the healthfulness of the food and beverages advertised to kids has changed since these new uniform criteria have been implemented. We found no changes whatsoever: 74 per cent of the foods were classified as unhealthy before, using the U.K. nutrient profile model, and after they were implemented, 76 per cent were classified as unhealthy.
Then we looked at a subset of the ads that belonged to those companies that were participating in the Canadian Children's Food and Beverage Advertising Initiative, because surely we would see a difference. Again, we found no difference: 79 per cent of their products classified as less healthy before, and 79 classified as less healthy after, exactly the same number.
Other drawbacks to the Canadian Children's Food and Beverage Advertising Initiative are that participation is voluntary. There are many exceptions to what's considered advertising to children. For example, packaging is not included. Fundraising and reward programs in schools and sponsorships are not included. Settings where children gather wasn't included. There were no limitations regarding spokes-character use and no limitations on the volume of marketing. The final thing is that the evaluation of compliance is not conducted by an impartial third party.
The recommendations that I have for Bill S-228 are the following: To strengthen the bill, I would recommend raising the age to 16 and under in order to protect our most vulnerable populations. I also recommend adopting a robust nutrient-profiling system — that is, if the committee decides to limit unhealthy food and beverage marketing. It is also important to have independent monitoring conducted to ensure compliance.
Finally, it is important to broadly define the term "marketing.'' I finished a bunch of research in the fall looking at digital food and beverage marketing. It is absolutely essential that digital food and beverage marketing be included in your definition of marketing. Children and teens are vulnerable to this form of marketing because it is interactive. It uses behavioural targeting, so they can target individuals with ads based on their online behaviour. It uses geo-targetting, which means it can target ads to children based on their location; and there are no limits whatsoever on exposure.
On the children's top 10 websites, we found more than 54 million food and beverage ads — just banner and pop-up ads — over a one-year period. The top five advertised products on these 10 sites were Kellogg's Pop-Tarts, Kellogg's Frosted Flakes, the McDonald's Happy Meal, Redbull and Kraft Lunchables. These are not exactly products we want to be pushing our kids to eat.
About 74 per cent of all the products advertised, not just the top five, were classified as "less healthy'' according to the U.K. nutrient profile model. When we use the PAHO model, 93 per cent of the foods and beverages advertised on those 10 popular sites fell into the excessive category in either fat, sugar or salt.
When we looked at the top 10 teen websites, we found similar products fell into the top five: Kellogg's Pop Tarts was number one for teens, followed by Kellogg's Froot Loops, Redbull, Kellogg's Frosted Flakes and then Tim Horton's coffee. When we did the nutritional analysis of all the food and beverage products on teens' favourite sites, we found that 84 per cent fell into the less healthy category when you used the U.K. nutrient profile model, and 93 per cent were considered less healthy when we used the PAHO model. That means they were either excessive in fat, sugar or salt.
In conclusion, I would like to end by saying that mandatory food and beverage marketing restrictions are an effective strategy to improve our children's food intake, obesity levels and health. I thank the Senate and the Standing Senate Committee on Social Affairs, Science and Technology for examining Bill S-228.
Thank you very much.
The Chair: Thank you all. You have given us some food for thought. Sorry for the pun.This is very interesting. We will go to question, starting with the sponsor and the critic of the bill.
Senator Raine: Thank you very much for appearing. I know you've all done a tremendous amount of work in this field. When reviewed the documentation on preventing the proliferation of marketing food to kids, I went back as far as 2004 with studies recommending this.I want to find out how long each of you have been following this, and do you think that Bill S-228 will actually move it forward to the next step of effective regulation?
Ms. Potvin Kent: I feel that this bill will definitely move things forward. I've been working on this topic since 2008. I started doing research on this topic during my PhD. I got into it because there was not a lot of Canadian data showing how much food and beverage marketing kids were seeing. There was a little bit of data in Quebec and not very much in the rest of the country. I started doing research in the field. There are other Canadian researchers as well, but the body of evidence now clearly shows that food and beverage marketing to children is a very big problem in Canada. This bill does go a long way to move us forward in the area. I'm very excited about it.
Ms. L'Abbe: I actually wasn't doing research, but I looked at the first self-voluntary system from the CAI quite critically. My comment to some of my colleagues was there were so many loopholes in it, you could drive a truck through. That was the system we had for a number of years until they put out the nutritional criteria in the last couple of years.
I probably really started looking at this after about 2010, when we got our food database up and running. I had one of our master's students looking at the marketing to kids. We started looking at how much marketing was on packaging and we found it was a lot and on the least healthy foods.
To give you an example, one of the studies we did looked at the European world health and the pan-American health. In the European model, about 30 per cent of food would pass the criteria. In other words, 70 per cent would be unhealthy and 30 per cent would be healthy enough to meet the criteria of all the foods in our database. When we actually looked at those foods with children's marketing, 93 per cent would not meet the criteria. The ones that are being marketed are much less healthy.
We had this database, and it was an obvious move to start looking at the criteria. They were just so weak. There were so many foods out there that were supposedly meeting the criteria, yet were being marketed to children.
Mr. Jeffery: I've been following the advertising to children issue specifically since 2000 because our initial campaign when I was with the Centre for Science in the Public Interest was about nutrition labelling. It seemed clear by that point that we were going to see some success with the first round of nutritional labelling changes, and we wanted to explore other public policy areas.
The report you refer to in 2004 was the task force of the American Psychological Association. That was a big deal at the time. It was following up on a report from the U.S. Federal Trade Commission from the late 1970s that actually inspired the Quebec law. They couldn't implement it in the United States, I would venture to say partly because so many senators and Congressmen are actually funded by the food industry. We have laws preventing that kind of thing from happening in Canada. But they were unable to implement it. The lobby against restricted advertising for some food in the United States was so strong that Congress threatened to defund the Federal Trade Commission. So they went away with their tail between their legs and haven't been able to do anything with it since then.
Senator, we've had many conversations about your bill. It's great that you've attracted so much interest and it has very strong points in it, but I do worry a little bit about the legal defensibility of it because it does look like it's constitutionally vulnerable to me. Those two little amendments to the Competition Act in my technical brief would go a long way to strengthening it in that respect.
Senator Eggleton: I want to explore how far this bill should go in protection of minors.
We've heard a range of suggestions here. Mr. Jeffery suggests the vulnerabilities of minors, both children and teens, influenced by commercial advertising should involve all products, not just food.
The two of you have talked about food and primarily, Ms. L'Abbe, you've talked about nutrient profiling. That is one possible route to take, just deal with the unhealthy foods as opposed to all foods and beverages. You point out there's a number of countries that have gone that route. Finland and Sweden have implemented a total ban on marketing of food products to children, which I take it is similar to Quebec.
It's a question of how far we go. Ms. Potvin Kent, you've also talked about broadly determining the term "marketing.'' Perhaps there are some aspects of the bill that don't get at all of the marketing possibilities that are out there, the tricky methods of getting advertising out.
Given these international experiences, is there any one thing that you think particularly stands out as being successful or any that is vulnerable?
One of the things that has been suggested if we go to nutrient profiling and unhealthy, maybe it doesn't provide as much protection, but on the other hand, if we don't go that route, if we keep it for all foods and beverages to children, then it might be more readily challenged legally.
Mr. Jeffery, you raised this question of a constitutional aspect. We want to protect our children, but where exactly should the line be drawn in terms of this bill?
If you could comment on all of those possibilities.
Ms. L'Abbe: The question of all products versus food is probably a legal question. We're here talking about foods, and that's my area of expertise. I'm not familiar with all the others. I'm very familiar with the Food and Drug Act, and absolutely, regulations on food can be handled in the Food and Drug Act and the regulations.
You asked a second question about nutrient profiling or a complete ban on food. There are different systems around the world. They reflect the regulatory tools that different governments have available within their legal systems in order to either institute a complete ban or a nutrient profiling system.
I was part of the technical group that helped the European region of the World Health Organization and PAHO come up with nutrient profiling, and that was done because governments may have wanted to do a total ban but they didn't feel their regulatory system or their legislation framework would allow them to do so.
Nutrient profiling is a transparent way to define what you consider healthy and less healthy. If you go down that road, particularly in this case where we're talking about protecting children, a vulnerable group. You really want to have a stringent system.
Dr. Potvin Kent mentioned the United Kingdom system. They were one of the first countries to institute restrictions at a national level on marketing to children. It was just for advertising on TV. They set a system for its day, being the first, that was fairly modest. If we looked at our food supply, nearly half of the foods would be permitted under their level. Now they're faced with the situation of having to open up their legislation because they've had scientific reviews that are focused on sugar and sodium recommendations, for example. They realize the limits they set 10 or 15 years ago were way too high, too lax. Now they're in the process of reopening their legislation because they've had their scientific committee on foods who have said we should really lower sugar intakes to less than 5 to 10 per cent of calories and sodium levels should go way down.
When you set a nutrient profiling system, you also face the possibility, particularly if it's not very stringent, of having new scientific evidence that comes out saying you then have to be more restrictive. That's one of the challenges.
I think that right now there are a couple of systems. That's why I recommended some of the world health ones. They are the most recent ones. They were taken with the view of being quite stringent in terms of applying the nutrient profiling system. Even Health Canada, when they came out with nutritional labelling last year, defined the foods to limit should be less than 5 per cent. That's a fairly stringent cut point if you have to choose one.
I think if you're going to use that system, use a system that gives you the tools to be protective in the limits that you set.
Mr. Jeffery: When I evaluate the three different approaches, namely, restricting all food advertising, restricting junk food advertising and taking the Quebec approach, which is on all products, in my view, the Quebec approach is the most protective and the least vulnerable to legal challenge, even if you raise the age to 18 or 19.That's why I support that so forcefully.
Blocking all food advertisements is more protective of children than just the junk food ads, and I can illustrate that by referring to this image in a moment. I think, as the minister of health has acknowledged, it's highly vulnerable to legal challenge.
I would say that the approach of restricting just junk food advertisements, while it may be a little bit more amenable to defence against a constitutional challenge, is not very protective. To illustrate that, I prepared this PowerPoint slide chart, and you can see the image of some foods whose advertisements would obviously be prohibited by any kind of reasonable nutrition criteria. A can of Redbull or Coke or a box of Lucky Charms cereal or a Big Mac or whatever plainly would run afoul of any reasonable nutrition criteria.
However, Ronald McDonald does not have nutrition, he doesn't have a certain amount of fat or whatever use of character, so it's not at all clear that nutrition criteria could prevent the use of logos or mascots of food companies.
Also, the relatively nutritious version of a lot of products looks almost identical to the non-nutritious version, and the classic example is Diet Coke and regular Coke. They look almost identical; they use the same brand. It's very difficult. You have to stare at them to tell which is which.
I will put this to you: Would it be a good idea to have Diet Coke ads and white bread ads, even if they are low in sodium and added sugar and saturated fat, advertised during Saturday morning cartoons? I would submit to you it's not a good idea.
It's highly problematic also to advertise places. A good part of food products that are advertised to children currently are fast-food restaurants. What's to prevent a company from advertising its restaurant as long as it doesn't show a picture of a hamburger? I would say that's a gigantic loophole that can't really be prevented by the strongest nutrition criteria.
Ms. Potvin Kent: Bill framed it very well as to whether we restrict all products, taking the Quebec model versus the all foods versus unhealthy foods. The reason that I have always leaned away in from the all-products approach is the huge loophole in the Consumer Protection Act in Quebec.
I've done quite a bit of research looking at how much food and beverage advertising kids are seeing in Quebec. What we see is that kids in Quebec are still seeing on children's speciality channels a lot of food and beverage advertising. It's just different food and beverage advertising than the kids in Ontario are seeing. They're seeing the McDonald's ad with the guy in his office eating a breakfast wrap. They're not seeing the happy meal ad, the sugary breakfast cereals or the candy ad. They are not seeing all those child-targeted products in Quebec. But they are seeing a lot of unhealthy food and beverage ads. When you actually do a comparison, looking at the healthfulness of products advertised to kids in Quebec and in Ontario, there's no difference in the healthfulness. It's equivalent. It's just that the ads themselves have less power. We don't have data showing whether that happy meal ad is going to have more impact on the child than the guy in his office. You're still seeing the big M branding.
That, to me, is the big loophole in Quebec because the law was not designed to restrict food and beverage marketing. It was designed to restrict all food and beverage marketing.
On the other side of the equation, Bill made an interesting comment about unintended consequences and, if you ban all food ads, what are we going to see an increase in. One of the things that he mentioned is toy ads. I just finished an analysis of toy ads that showed that the majority of toy ads encourage sedentary play. We did an analysis: Does it encourage active play or sedentary play? It is targeted at little boys or little girls? There are many more ads targeted at boys, and they almost all encourage sedentary play. It's interesting. If you look at obesity rates, male obesity rates for that age group tend to be higher than the female obesity rates. Anyways, we do have to think about unintended consequences.
I want to make a comment about the definition of marketing. One thing that I think that the Province of Quebec has done very well is their definition. They talked about no commercial advertising directed at children. I think that's a strength. They've interpreted that to mean all forms of marketing. There are obviously a few exceptions in their law, but with keeping it vague, because marketers are such creative people, as soon as we define that definitive list of what is included in marketing, they're going to come up with something else.
The other thing is that there is not a huge amount of brand advertising, at least on television, but it would become, again, another unintended consequence. Bill referred to this as well. These are, for example, just the golden arches, or just an advertisement for Ronald McDonald House, so it's the corporate social responsibility. Tim Hortons has a lot of these corporate social responsibility ads that advertise summer camps but also advertise their brand. Because there's no food in that actual ad, that has to be included in marketing, for sure.
In terms of age, I think it's very important that the age that we restrict marketing to go up at least to 16 years of age. In digital food and beverage marketing right now, the research is showing that kids between the ages of 10 and 12 are not able to identify all the different types of digital marketing when they see it. There's about 12 different types of digital marketing that can be seen on a computer screen, be it a tablet, smart phone, desktop computer or laptop. Kids between the ages of 10 to 12 are not even recognizing it. In terms of understanding advertising and marketing, being able to identify an ad is just the first cognitive step. You also have to be able to defend yourself against it. Because of the techniques they are using now, they've made marketing online, in particular, entertainment, and entertainment and marketing are so meshed together that it's very difficult for kids to pull that apart. I think that age needs to be set.
One of the reasons 16 has been picked as an age is that was the model set by the U.K. It was believed that that might be feasible since another country has picked that age. With respect to cognitive development, we know that the human brain isn't fully developed until age 30. I'm not suggesting we have regulations up to age 30. Certainly, if we had regulations up to 16, I'd be very happy.
The Chair: I think we'd better try to understand what we have just heard because I hear a number of overlapping things here.
Dr. Potvin Kent, if I heard you correctly, you indicated that in the Quebec law banning all advertisements, there is a loophole based on the overall regulatory approach that allows, effectively, marketing the logos and the concepts to children. Did I hear you correctly?
Ms. Potvin Kent: That is correct.
The Chair: I don't want to get into a long discussion; I just want to make sure that we get the points clear. So I heard that correctly.
Ms. Potvin Kent: Yes.
The Chair: Does the same thing exist at the national level with regard to a federal law making the same statement as the Quebec law?
Ms. Potvin Kent: No.
The Chair: Mr. Jeffery?
Mr. Jeffery: I want to respond to that. That is a narrow aspect of the implementation of the Quebec law. There is an enforcement principle that advertisements shouldn't excite the interests of children in Quebec. Enforcement officials in the office of consumer protection have decided that a McDonald's commercial during Saturday morning cartoons that features an adult drinking a cup of coffee doesn't excite the interest of children. I think that's ridiculous. Obviously, they put it during Saturday morning cartoons because they want children to see it. That's not a defect of the overarching approach; it's just a narrow aspect of the implementation that I think could be corrected with enforcement guidelines.
The Chair: Okay. When we came to your comments with regard to the nutritional definition issues, if I heard the comments overall, if there is a nutritional standard applied, then you could take the logo on a product of that logo company that meets the nutritional standard that would convey the same broad message as if they went directly with the logo and the product that is less nutritious. What I thought I heard from you was that the nutritional ban has considerable flaws with regard to how the advertisement can be carried out. I hope I misinterpreted. Can you tell me I misinterpreted you?
Mr. Jeffery: I'm not sure that I understood your explanation of what I said, but just to illustrate —
The Chair: I took that back and said what I thought I heard from all of you collectively with regard to the nutritional issue.
Mr. Jeffery: If Coca-Cola decided to broadcast an advertisement on television during Saturday morning cartoons featuring the Coca-Cola logo, the polar bears, the picture of Santa Claus drinking a brown fluid from a glass, there's nothing to say that that's not Diet Coke, so that would not be prohibited under nutrition-based criteria.
The Chair: That's the point that I referred to.
Mr. Jeffery: To me, that is such a glaring omission. As I say, the implications of the regulations seem like there is no change, like the before and after picture might not be detectable.
The Chair: This is a crucial issue. If, in fact, there is not a specific statement in law that will have an overall constructive effect on children with regard to what they think they want to go out and obtain, then there wouldn't be any point.
I assume that, instead of an overall ban that is in the bill that we have before us and the one that is in Quebec, if this has the weaknesses that you have described, then simply using a term like "unhealthy food ads'' would suffer the same issue that, Mr. Jeffery, you have just described. Not all of the products marketed by certain fast food outlets fall into the category of being really unhealthy. They can clearly put out products that would meet a nutritional guideline if they wished.
Mr. Jeffery: Right. To illustrate from a personal example, when one of my sons was quite young, six or seven years old, he saw a McDonald's advertisement on tv. It was for a salad, which I think would probably meet any good nutrition criteria. He said, "Look, Daddy. Let's go to McDonald's. They sell salads there. Mommy likes salads. Let's go there.'' To my mind, McDonald's was being very clever in manipulating the mind of my son, who is a little harder to manipulate now, but he's still a teenager. So I think that's what makes it problematic.
The Chair: So what is the term to use?
Mr. Jeffery: As I say, I strongly advocate the Quebec approach, just a ban on all advertising. One of the features of Senator Raine's bill is this focus on the Food and Drugs Act and how it can help with food labels, which the Quebec act can't. If you get a box of Froot Loops and lots of other cereals from the cereal aisle in the grocery store, they are festooned with cartoons characters and mascots and contest entry forms and those kinds of things that are designed to excite the interest of children. I think that is deeply problematic, and amendments to the Food and Drug Regulations could help with that.
The Chair: I think I have taken this as far as we can go. We have other witnesses coming with whom we will explore it further, but, clearly, you have, to my mind, articulated the issues around each of the approaches that are on the table at the moment.
Senator Petitclerc: Thank you very much for your presentations. My formal question was in the line that has been covered a lot — if it is better to ban everything, all food, or just "non-nutritious'' food. You have answered that quite well.
I have two questions, really. One of them is just a follow up on what has just been discussed. You talked about the Quebec approach. I was interested, Ms. Potvin Kent, in your comparison of advertising that is not targeted to kids but is also in the morning. But then, from my recollection, they do have results in Quebec in terms of less obesity. That is just one thing to quickly cover, but my real question is: When we think about the Quebec approach, if I am correct, they have exceptions for sports teams and the sponsoring of teams like a baseball team for kids. Am I correct with that?
Ms. Potvin Kent: I don't remember that exception. I know there is one for magazines that are published so many times a year, but I don't remember a sponsorship exception. Certainly, packaging is an exception because that is a provincial responsibility. Sorry, I said that backwards. I said it right in my head.
Senator Petitclerc: Okay. I might be wrong, so I will try to look into that.
Ms. Potvin Kent: I don't remember anything about sponsorship.
Senator Petitclerc: Then, my question would be: A lot of teams are sponsored by food or brands, and they depend on it. It is a bit of a paradox because they depend on that sponsorship to exercise, which we want them to do, but we don't want them to be exposed.
Ms. Potvin Kent: Whenever I hear people talk about sponsorship — and I know parents get upset about sponsorship because sports teams are sponsored, and they get equipment from food and beverage companies — I always wonder, kind of in the back of my head, why is it that just food and beverage companies are sponsoring? Why is that exactly? Why can't we look to other sponsors, which is definitely a possibility. Thirty years ago, everyone was used to having tobacco funding for every type of artistic and sporting event, and we have adapted to that. That is not the case any more, and I think an adaptation can be made with food and beverage marketing.
I just wanted to touch on your other points about Quebec. In Quebec, we do know that obesity rates are lower and that their fruit and vegetable consumption is higher, but it is very difficult to make a direct link between a policy and food intake. There was research done by Cathy Baylis and colleagues, about seven or eight years ago, that looked at families and fast food consumption. She showed that fast food consumption was lower in Quebec, and they were able to attribute it to the Consumer Protection Act.
I do agree with Bill that the Quebec approach, because it has withstood a constitutional challenge, is very strong in that respect. The weaknesses in the Quebec model can be changed if it was adapted to the federal level. That would definitely be possible. The big loophole that exists in Quebec is because of the way they have defined child targeting, but child targeting can be defined in another way. Child targeting could be defined as any food and beverage is considered child targeted because kids eat food so that's child targeted. However, in Quebec they have a whole list. If it uses princesses and heros and primary colours and animation, that is how they define child targeted, but child targeted could be defined differently and the law would then have a very different impact.
Ms. L'Abbe: One of the other suggestions I have heard offered about, as Dr. Kent said, defining child targeted is that other jurisdictions have looked at defining child targeted by the time of day. They said if it's occurring before 9 a.m. and after 3 p.m. until 9 or 10 p.m., there was a restriction around the timing. Rather than defining all types of advertising, they would say no advertising during those times, which are the times when most children watch programming. However, that doesn't deal with the other types of marketing that are outside of the broadcast. In terms of broadcast advertising, instead of defining a certain proportion of children, they have defined it by times of the day when most children are exposed. There are a number of ways of reaching the goal and how you define that. The biggest thing is what objective do you want to achieve. I would recommend that you look for a stringent, comprehensive type of approach.
Mr. Jeffery: In respect to your question about team sponsorships, I agree with what Monique said. To draw your attention to the slide that I circulated, I thought this was interesting. There was a public opinion survey conducted in 1981 that showed 59 per cent of people agreed that there should be greater control over advertising directed at children, and 49 per cent said there should be greater control over tobacco marketing. This is at a time before there were controls on tobacco marketing, and there was more interest in doing it over advertising to children. This is a national survey, which I find astounding. It is a sign of the times. Maybe 10 years from now, senator, if this bill proceeds and if it is very robust, people will no longer be looking back wistfully to the days where there were Pizza Pizza sponsorships of hockey teams, and they will be thinking of it the same way that people thought of DuMaurier sponsoring race car events in Montreal and all kind of sporting event sand how ironic that was.
Senator Stewart Olsen: Thank you for your presentations. I have listened carefully and may have missed this, but I didn't see a correlation between the countries that have banned the advertising and a reduction in childhood obesity. If you have any figures on that, I would welcome those.
Mr. Jeffery: The only two countries that have had restrictions on advertising directed at children long enough to observe changes are Sweden and Norway. It's difficult to get information from two countries where English and French aren't official languages. As Monique said earlier, it is also extremely difficult to make inferences about one little aspect of public health from what is essentially a natural experiment from one policy intervention. My understanding is that in Sweden and Norway, the obesity rates are much lower than many other countries around the world, certainly lower than Canada's.
Senator Stewart Olsen: They always have been, though.
The Chair: But the issue would be was there a change in those rates following the introduction of the legislation.
Mr. Jeffery: To illustrate how difficult it is, we really have very little compelling evidence of a change in Canada because we have conducted basically three national dietary surveys in the past 40 years. It would be impossible to draw inferences about that, even in Canada where we know where all the data are.
Ms. Potvin Kent: It is important to look at marketing restrictions as part of a multipronged strategy in terms of having an impact on obesity and chronic disease in Canada. If you were looking at, say, one of the tobacco policies and saying, "Because we have stopped people from smoking in restaurants, has that had an impact on lung cancer rates?'' It wasn't just the one policy; a whole bunch of policies have had an impact on smoking rates, lung cancer and that type of thing.
Senator Stewart Olsen: Sorry, I know what you are saying, but is there any data that you have?
Ms. Potvin Kent: No. Research-wise, it would be impossible to tie those two things together. There are too many intervening variables to be able to craft that type of study. From a researcher's perspective, that study is impossible. To tie a health outcome that is over here to a policy that is so far away from the person, there are too many other variables that could also have an impact. It's not to say that the policy might not have an impact; it's just that it's impossible to measure.
Senator Stewart Olsen: I understand that.
Mr. Jeffery: A nutrition survey was conducted six years before this policy intervention came into place and then a follow up.
Senator Stewart Olsen: Where was that?
Mr. Jeffery: There was a national nutrition survey conducted in Canada that had data from Quebec six years before the policy came into effect and another one 14 years after it came into effect. You can imagine all the things that would happen in that intervening period. It would be foolhardy to make any confident assumptions about what led to what.
Ms. Potvin Kent: In terms of measuring impact, if you had this ban where there was no food marketing at all, it would be easier to ask children what their food preferences are, what they are actually eating and what products they are asking their parents to buy, looking at other variables. Obesity is a further out type thing. There is a way to look at impact, but it's difficult.
Senator Stewart Olsen: Yes, the data is not available right now. I understand you. Thank you very much.
Senator Raine: When I first envisioned this bill, I thought the easy way would be to prohibit all food and marketing, saying to myself that nobody spends money marketing broccoli and carrots and so it won't really matter, but I understand well now that that would be open to a Supreme Court challenge and wouldn't succeed, so I appreciate that.
My decision to use the Food and Drug Act came because most Canadians at the federal level know it is a powerful act that protects Canadians through the Canadian Food Inspection Agency and other things, so it is a natural federal framework or legislation to use. I was aware of all the different kinds of advertising, so trying to think up every different kind and putting it into the bill was where I went.
Subsequent to that and really understanding the work that's been done through the World Health Organization and PAHO, I came to realize a much better way of defining "unhealthy'' would be in regulation as opposed to legislation. That is why I am introducing an amendment at clause by clause. Changing regulations is more nimble and quick than to amend a law, which I have found is not easy.
If we are going to define "unhealthy'' in regulations, can we count on the Public Health Agency of Canada to define it in a way that would meet the best practice standards in the world? The comfort level that I find myself having is the organization of many people to "watchdog'' this.
I would like you to comment on that and the flexibility that would be required, especially when you look at digital marketing, which is relatively new. We need to control that, but right now you couldn't possibly write that in because it is not really defined. I would like your comments on whether the regulatory process can be made strong enough to capture 95 per cent of the bill's term "junk food'' marketed to kids, and in those regulations would we need to also include artificially sweetened beverages? Are there any other categories that should be included in that definition?
Ms. L'Abbe: I will start with some of your questions. I will not be able to address them all.
I have confidence that we can define an unhealthy food. I would be careful about using the words "junk food'' because many people say only the absolute worst offenders would meet that junk food criteria. To look at it from the other point of view, you really only want to restrict such marketing to only the most healthy foods, which is the other end of the spectrum. In other words, it is that small group of foods, which is the most healthy, as opposed to if you wanted to say "junk food,'' they could be the worst offenders. People could say that to you and that might undermine your desire to have, in the regulations, a definition of "unhealthy.'' I would make sure you define it as such, instead of inferring that it would be only the worst of the junk foods that would be captured by the definition.
Yes, I think you have. I mentioned the labelling regulations that Health Canada put out in December, and on the bottom of the nutrition fact table they now say less than 5 per cent is the target for limiting those nutrients you want to limit. They have already given us guidance. It is not used in the regulation, but they at least started giving us some guidance.
I think it can be done. I worry, though, that when a regulatory process comes that is open to consultation, there will be lots of activity to weaken the standards over time, and I think that is a real risk. That definition would have to be rigorous. There are some examples to use and not let it slide into something that would be more and more lenient, because obviously there are many that would call for that.
Ms. Potvin Kent: I think the Public Health Agency, working with public health experts, can come up with a solid definition of "unhealthy.'' There are so many nutrient profiles; Mary has examined many of them. We don't have to reinvent the wheel. We can adapt a model that has been used somewhere else and adapt it to our Canadian foods. That is definitely feasible.
I do worry about the unintended consequences if we ban unhealthy foods. What I see happening is food and beverage companies reformulating lots of products and then advertising all sorts of products that are just right on the line. So they just have slightly less sugar, and if they had slightly more, they would be banned, that type of thing. I think the monitoring of that type of system will be much more burdensome than if we had an all foods approach.
If the all foods approach is not feasible — if that is at risk because of constitutional challenges — then we need to consider the all products approach, because I think the unintended consequences for the unhealthy foods only are too high.
Monitoring is absolutely essential. That is one of the big problems they have in Quebec with the Consumer Protection Act. No one is monitoring it. They sent a guidebook out to parents a couple of years ago to explain the law to them, but I don't know how many parents have time to be calling the consumer protection office up to lodge their complaints about ads. There are a couple of NGOs that make complaints to the government, but the Quebec government office is staffed very poorly. It is just one lawyer and she has an assistant, and that is the team that is working on the consumer protection and any violations regarding advertising to children in Quebec. Obviously, we need much more staffing for a proper monitoring program.
Mr. Jeffery: I want to come back to something that Senator Stewart Olsen said about the evidence. There were two systematic reviews of the literature conducted about 10 years ago in Canada and the United States, the Hastings report and the U.S. Institute of Medicine report that looked at marketing of junk food to children. The conclusions of those reports were that the advertising did lead to behavioural changes in children. There was weak evidence of an actual leading to obesity, partly because they were rigorous about their analysis, so we are not fumbling around in the darkness. A lot of research was done.
I want to follow up on something that Senator Raine said. I am not suggesting that banning all food advertising or banning junk food advertising would absolutely be struck down in court. I am just saying it is vulnerable if food companies come after it. That is my worry, and that we would be back here in two years or whatever.
I think nutrient profiling is important and it is something the Minister of Health has committed to doing for the purpose of labelling. A paper will come out shortly in the Canadian Journal of Public Health and Mary is a coauthor, that will urge the Minister of Health to not look just at the levels of sodium, sugar and saturated fat but also the ingredients that are in these products. I don't think we should be thinking about a definition of "junk food.'' We should be thinking of a definition of truly healthful food, subject to the provisos I made before about taking this food-based approach.
A lot of countries are looking at this now. The Codex Alimentarius Commission, which sets international standards for trade and food, is considering in November whether to begin to negotiate a global standard for what is called "front of package nutrition labelling,'' which would take a lot of these considerations into account.
The problem in going from the use of nutrition profiling in labelling, where the information goes right on the product that contains the food, to advertising is that the nexus is looser. You put a logo on food and people think, "That is referring to Diet Coke or Coke,'' or whatever, but those could fall into two different categories. The McDonald's logo could be the Happy Meal with the carrots and 1 per cent milk and whatever protein product they have that is nutritious. That's good and you can advertise that, but it draws people to McDonald's and that's what makes it problematic.
Ms. L'Abbe: There are systems out there in many countries, Norway, the Czech Republic and a couple others in the region of the World Health Organization, that have prohibition of any foods with added sweeteners. That's not unheard of. Those are incorporated in many of the profiling systems. Also, the Czech system doesn't allow caffeine to be added, too. People have built on nutrient limits but they have added into the legislation that you may not add some of these other ingredients. For example, it is quite common that they have a prohibition on any sweeteners being added to the products that would be marketed to children.
Senator Eggleton: We talk a lot about television programming. Of course, there are other means of advertising to children. The Internet and social media are all part of that. You might want to comment on that.
I want to stay on television for a moment because the bill does not provide a prohibition against broadcasters on the other side of the border. The vast majority of the Canadian population lives close enough to the border that a lot of them can get the TV signal from across the border. In Quebec, the same thing could exist except they have the language protection for broadcasting in the French language. But if you live in Montreal, you can get a broadcast from stations in the United States, as you can in Toronto and Vancouver. You have covered the three biggest cities right there.
What do we do about that? Is there nothing we can do about that?
Ms. Potvin Kent: Cross-border media is a problem.In fact, in one of the studies I completed a few years ago, I actually found that anglophone Quebecers were not as protected by the Consumer Protection Act as francophone Quebecers because they're watching TV from across the border, and it's that same English TV all the way across.
We can't regulate outside of our borders, but we certainly can regulate what food and beverage companies are doing within our borders. I think that would still have a significant impact on children's environments. If you think of all the different environments, from signage that's outside to sponsorship to all the various forms of media, sure, they're going to have small exposure to media from other countries. We're lucky we have just one country to deal with — in Europe, they have multiple countries around them — but I still think it would have a significant impact just to focus.
Particularly also with young kids, I want to mention that their preferred programming tends to be on Canadian stations, so they're not surfing all over the place. Their parents are usually putting them on a particular station, and a lot of those kids are watching Canadian television stations.
TV is not a dying media. The average Canadian is still watching two hours of TV a day, and that's where food and beverage companies are spending most of their advertising dollars targeting kids, still on TV.
A lot of focus is being placed on digital food and beverage marketing now, and that includes a whole host of different forms of marketing. I don't know if you want me to go through that with you and explain the different types of marketing that exists digitally.
Senator Eggleton: We've heard that.
Ms. Potvin Kent: You've already heard that? Okay. There are so many different ways that you can market to children digitally. Certainly, again, cross-border is going to have an impact, but we have to start somewhere. We can try to work with the Americans, obviously, to have an impact, but kids will have a small amount of exposure from outside of our borders, that's clear.
Mr. Jeffery: It's important to recognize that a lot of American television programming that Canadians watch in Canada actually comes through Canadian cable TV networks and telephone company television systems. A relatively small amount is actually directly piped in from American channels like NBC, CBS, Fox and that sort of thing.
Also, sometimes we forget that Canadian and American food supplies aren't identical. In fact, while a lot of the big chain restaurants are similar, groceries are quite different. Having worked for an organization that operated both in Canada and in the United States for so many years and we did tons of product comparisons, fewer than 5 per cent of actually identical products were available in both countries. Often, if you see an advertisement for a product on a U.S. television channel, chances are you can't purchase it in Canada. It may remind you that you want to get a candy bar or something like that, but you often can't get that particular one.
The Chair: Is your point, Mr. Jeffery, that U.S. programs that come in through Canadian distribution systems are governed by Canadian advertising?
Mr. Jeffery: That's right. They are subject to Canadian laws. In fact —
The Chair: Like the Super Bowl, for example.
Mr. Jeffery: — you could subject other channels to Canadian laws.
The Chair: I get your point. You mentioned that's probably 5 per cent in the category of —
Mr. Jeffery: I'm not sure about the exact percentage.
Senator Eggleton: Could I insert one part of the bill that addresses that? Maybe I'm reading it wrong.
Exception: Subsection (1) does not apply to the distribution for sale of an imported publication or the retransmission of a broadcast that originates outside Canada.
Mr. Jeffery: What are you reading from?
Senator Eggleton: I'm reading from the draft bill, Bill S-228.
Mr. Jeffery: Are you asking for an opinion about whether that's a good idea or not?
Senator Eggleton: Yes. You have a legal background.
Mr. Jeffery: Senator Raine and I have had some discussions about this, and I guess it's a practical decision.
I think it would be interesting to have a stricter regulation that actually covers signals coming in from other countries to see what would happen, to see if some of these private parties would insist on not having to follow Canadian laws. In some ways, it's kind of self-censorship, but I understand Senator Raine's desire to have something sail through without a lot of people jumping all over it.
Ms. L'Abbe: I'd like to make three points. I think following up with what Bill just said, and you mentioned about the Super Bowl, that's an example where you realize that many of the TV programming is rebroadcast and carried by — so they often substitute and resell those spots to Canadian advertisers. That's quite common with the broadcasters. Keep that in mind. I think the Super Bowl was an example of not paying the fees to advertise in Canada and vice versa.
The other thing, I am absolutely familiar that if you're using the Food and Drug Regulations — when I used to work at Health Canada, one of the things we had, for example, was labelling of foods; the food that was sold in Canada had to meet Canadian regulations. If it was an American-produced food, it was labelled to Canadian standards, not to American standards.
Obviously, the power is in the regulations to say that what is sold in Canada must meet Canadian regulations. Whether that could be applied more broadly to other commodities — and I'm talking about marketing in this context — I'm not sure, but that power is very custom around the world that foods have to meet the labelling and regulatory standards of the country that they're being sold in.
Senator Dean: This is about regulation. We know a couple of things about regulation. One is that the regulated community always prefers a voluntary model, and we generally find that those don't work as well as they were promised and then governments find they have to regulate.
We usually find beyond regulation patterns of sometimes unanticipated or unpredicted wilful avoidance. Some of the things in terms of wilful avoidance have been touched on. The regulatory authority is more flexible in responding to that. There are things that we might not have thought about, and there are things that others have thought about and they're ready to move to another strategy.
Is there anything, as we look around the world, that would suggest where those efforts of avoidance might be? This is about getting upstream. How do we get ahead of them? Do you have any comment on that?
Mr. Jeffery: First of all, in a bid for optimism, I would say that not all unanticipated consequences are negative. The Quebec example is an interesting one. The study that was conducted several years ago that looked into fast food consumption found that it seemed the restrictions on advertising directed at children for fast food led to a reduction of fast food consumption by children but also by their parents, which is something that wasn't really anticipated, but obviously it's the parents that are taking the children to the restaurants. That's an unanticipated positive consequence.
With regard to the question about things we can learn from international experience, UNICEF published a report — which I haven't scrutinized yet but I can pass along to the committee — that basically did a synopsis of all the advertising rules from around the world. I think it was published in December 2016.
An important point is that with most of the countries that now have restrictions on advertising directed at children, they are very new rules. I think Sweden was 1990 and Norway was 2000, so Quebec is by far the oldest one. All of the others are very recent. Some of them — I can't remember. I think it might be Thailand, but it was the one that used the prime time. They have a restriction on advertising directed at children for two hours a day. I would say that I'm not a fan of that because the other 22 hours are open. I think it's an indication of the power of the countervailing industry, so I would just say to be mindful of that.
The Chair: Mr. Jeffery, on the point you just made, I don't get it. The year 2000 was 17 years ago. We're talking about kids in that range. Childhood obesity could easily be measured by changes in the overall population distribution. Seventeen to 25 years is a long time in that age demographic, is it not?
Mr. Jeffery: For greater clarity, I was talking about experience from regulators in response to this question. But yes, certainly it's plenty of time to assess these. Whether they have been assessed is a completely different matter.
The Chair: That's a good point. I just wanted to be clear on that.
Mr. Jeffery: I can't generate my own data from Sweden and Norway.
The Chair: Maybe you could make it up and send it to us afterwards.
Mr. Jeffery: Well, I'm not going to do that.
The Chair: Was there another comment on this point?
Ms. Potvin Kent: I was going to say something. Were you asking about where you thought the loopholes could possibly be if we took the unhealthy food approach?
Senator Dean: I was asking, given the number of countries that have experimented with this, are there patterns or discernible things that we know? These are giant, well-funded organizations, to say the least, that don't seem to have a problem about spending 90 per cent of their advertising budget promoting foods that are distinctly unhealthy. We're talking about risk of harms.
We know that wherever we try to wrap our arms around harms, there are some sophisticated operators and companies who will try to avoid those strategies. Do we know anything about that? You mentioned one example that I picked up, which was to move to something just on the other side of the line and you promote that, but that still attracts the target audience.
Ms. Potvin Kent: I have a good example for you. In Quebec, one of the things we've seen is a very high rate of teen targeting during programming. Because the age has been set at under 13, including children up to age 12, they are targeting those 13-, 14- and 15-year-olds. That's one of the reasons it's so important to have a higher age threshold. What interests a child who is 11 or 12? Well, anything that 14- and 15-year-olds are interested in. Certainly, that's one of the consequences we've seen of the Quebec legislation with that 13 age cap.
Ms. L'Abbe: I would like to briefly mention the U.K. system, where they took what would I call a modest approach to the legislation that they came out with for marketing to kids. It was originally targeted towards TV advertising.I guess there might have been a sense of governments wanting to be fair and to not offend too many people when they first started. They are now, almost 10 years later, saying those standards we set were too weak and they were so easy to meet. Some of the worst-case examples had to make very little changes, and all of a sudden those foods are back, again, being marketed to children. The issue is that if you make your cuts fairly modest, it's very easy to make minimal changes and then be back marketing again.
Mr. Jeffery: If I could follow up, I think one very useful example, the Quebec example, is much closer to home. For many years, the office of consumer protection was under-resourced for this particular thing and did very little enforcement, but a non-governmental organization coalition, Coalition Poids, came along and started filing official complaints with the office of consumer protection. They felt duty-bound to carefully scrutinize these, and it led to quite a number of fines and some good regulatory action. It kind of opened the eyes of the government.
I suppose if there is a lesson to take away from this, one might consider having some kind of intervener funding, like the CRTC has for funding independent parties to make countervailing submissions to Bell, Rogers and all these other big companies, to hold their feet to the fire of the new regulations.
Senator Stewart Olsen: I'm curious, as well, as to whether you've given some thought to adults. It's not the kids who buy the food; it's the adults. Have you given any thought to the fact that we're almost into our third generation of fast- food lovers? Is it actually advertising to children that is attracting the children, or is it the second and third generations — the adults — bringing the kids to the unhealthy foods? Have you done any work on that at all?
Ms. L'Abbe: I want to make an observation. One of the things we're talking here is that this is one piece of that. Protection dealing with obesity has to be multi-faceted. I think of things like menu labelling. We only have it in Ontario now. It's a very small first step, and that's targeted to anyone. It's not just specifically targeted to children and adolescents, although they are the ones who most often eat in those types of establishments. Adolescents are the highest consumers of fast food.It's just the one part.
One of the things on which there's quite a bit of evidence out there is that "pester power'' is the factor of children pestering their parents to buy what they want, or the other way around. Parents see products that are actually one of the things we see, as companies market whole lines of products and call them "kids'' or "juniors,'' with the idea of marketing it to parents to be healthier to children. That's another loophole that never says that can be marketed to a parent, like the lunch-type products, which aren't specifically marketed to the child, but is instead marketed to a parent to be convenient for your child to take to school. That's another way of looking at more broadly targeting the parents, because it's marketed to the parents to sell to the children.
Ms. Potvin Kent: I want to follow up on that. Two of the reports that Bill mentioned, one by the Institute of Medicine that came out in 2006 and another done by the University of Strathclyde in Scotland, did a whole systematic analysis of all the research literature that was out there, looking at the links between food and beverage marketing. They were looking at the links with obesity, food preferences, food requests and food intake. They found associations with all of those. They knew that. Both groups, working completely separately and using different methodologies, came to the same conclusions, basically.
The important point is that food and beverage requests are linked to food and beverage marketing. One of the reasons I got into this type of research is because I had a three-year-old who asked me to go to McDonald's every single day. Then, when he gave up on McDonald's, he was into Fruit by the Foot and asking for that. When kids see ads, they ask for that product.
Parents are very busy. When they take care their kids anywhere, another aspect of marketing is food availability. There's junk food everywhere they go, and unhealthy foods. The kids have seen and are aware of all the unhealthy products being sold. They get into any environment you go into and they're just pestering and pestering, and I don't think we're doing parents any favours. I think restricting marketing to kids is a way to support parents.
Mr. Jeffery: We've often said that parents are always the last line of defence, but they shouldn't be the only one. Plainly, companies that want to sell more junk food are advertising for a purpose: to sell more junk food. When they target children, it's just worse.
I look at a lot of numbers in my work, and I remember many years ago McDonald's reported that they had 3 million customers a day in Canada, which was astounding to me to think of almost 10 per cent of the population going to McDonald's. It may be that some who work outside are going in for a coffee two or three times a day. I don't know. Those numbers are down a little bit, now. Maybe it's because Tim Hortons' fortunes have risen considerably in the last couple of decades.
I think there's definitely a real role for restricting marketing to children because it's really about tricking kids, and that's what makes it objectionable. It's not just me; it's the Supreme Court that says that.
The Chair: Senator Raine, do you have a final question? We gave you the first question. Do you want to have the last question? Is there something left you want to explore or have we pretty much covered this panel's input to us?
Senator Raine: I think we've covered it very well. I truly appreciate the work that you've done in your fields. Frankly, it is a little bit of an overwhelming situation when you go in and you try to prove cause and effect. However, I think all of us, and certainly the parents and the people in the public who have approached me on this, say, "Help, please.'' Coming out of the report we did on the rising rate of obesity in Canada, this is low-hanging fruit. We know we can do this. I thank you for the work you've been doing to help make it possible.
The Chair: On behalf of the committee, thank you for being here. You have certainly clarified it completely for us. You are universally agreed on a simplistic model that will carry all of the weight of law and have this impact.
In all seriousness, you've brought the dimension of this issue fully to us and given us a very good perspective on the range of issues around even a constructive approach to helping children eat healthfully during the critical years of formation. As we know from our study, obesity is almost impossible to turn around once it reaches a certain stage. We saw that once the tendency develops in children, they tend to go on throughout life to an increasing weight level. Therefore, it's really critical to find ways to help families and their children to eat healthy and to avoid getting on that escalator of weight gain that occurs. We know that the issue is not just attitude; it is in the biochemistry of the body that wants to tell it to maintain a weight that it achieves.
This is a very serious issue and we thank you very much for bringing your knowledge and experience to us today.
(The committee adjourned.)