THE STANDING SENATE COMMITTEE ON SOCIAL AFFAIRS, SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY
EVIDENCE
OTTAWA, Wednesday, November 20, 2024
The Standing Senate Committee on Social Affairs, Science and Technology met with videoconference this day at 4:15 p.m. [ET] to elect the Deputy Chair; and to examine Bill C-252, An Act to amend the Food and Drugs Act (prohibition of food and beverage marketing directed at children).
Senator Rosemary Moodie (Chair) in the chair.
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The Chair: Honourable senators, my name is Rosemary Moodie. I’m a senator from Ontario, and this is my first meeting as chair of the Standing Senate Committee on Social Affairs, Science and Technology.
I’d like to do a roundtable and have all senators introduce themselves.
Senator Bernard: I am Wanda Thomas Bernard, senator for Nova Scotia, which is Mi’kmaq territory.
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Senator Boudreau: Good afternoon. Victor Boudreau from New Brunswick.
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Senator Osler: Flordeliz Gigi Osler, senator from Manitoba.
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Senator Cormier: René Cormier from New Brunswick.
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Senator Burey: Welcome. Sharon Burey, senator for Ontario.
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Senator Petitclerc: Welcome. Chantal Petitclerc from Quebec.
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Senator Seidman: Welcome. Judith Seidman from Montreal, Quebec.
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Senator Mégie: Marie-Françoise Mégie from Quebec.
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Senator Dasko: Donna Dasko, senator from Ontario.
The Chair: Senators, the first item of business today is to elect our new deputy chair. As you’re aware, our former deputy chair, Senator Cordy, retired on Monday. This leaves a vacancy we must fill today. I’m ready to receive a motion to that effect.
Senator Seidman: Congratulations, chair, on your first day in the chair. I move that the Honourable Senator Bernard be deputy chair of the committee.
The Chair: Are there any other nominations? Seeing none, it is moved by the Honourable Senator Seidman that the Honourable Senator Bernard be deputy chair of this committee.
Honourable senators, is the motion carried?
Hon. Senators: Agreed.
The Chair: Thank you very much. I declare the motion carried.
Congratulations, Senator Bernard.
Senator Bernard: Thank you.
The Chair: Today, we are continuing our study of Bill C-252, An Act to amend the Food and Drugs Act (prohibition of food and beverage marketing directed at children).
For the first panel, we welcome the following witnesses: Joining in person is Monique Potvin Kent, Professor, School of Epidemiology and Public Health, Faculty of Medicine, University of Ottawa. Joining us by video conference are Charlene Elliott, Professor, Department of Communication, Media and Film, University of Calgary; and Lindsey Smith Taillie, Associate Professor and Chair, Department of Nutrition, Gillings School of Global Public Health, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.
Thank you all for joining us today. We’ll begin with opening remarks from Professor Potvin Kent, followed by Professor Elliott and, finally, we’ll offer the floor to Professor Smith Taillie. You will each have five minutes for your opening statements.
Professor Potvin Kent, the floor is yours. I will adopt a policy of reminding you that your time is up.
Monique Potvin Kent, Professor, School of Epidemiology and Public Health, Faculty of Medicine, University of Ottawa, as an individual: Thank you so much for the opportunity to speak to the committee. I’ve been conducting research in the field of food marketing to children since 2006. I’ve published over 80 papers and reports since that time.
I started research in this field when my three-year-old asked me to go to a specific fast-food restaurant every single day. When I started doing research on television advertising, I realized that this fast-food restaurant in particular advertised its meals for children once every 30 minutes during children’s programming. Since then, I’ve done a huge amount of research on children’s exposure to food and beverage advertising.
With regard to television advertising, one of my biggest studies was one in which I licensed data from a company called Numerator. We were able to calculate children’s exposure to television advertising over a full-year period. We were able to estimate that kids in Toronto are seeing over 2,000 food and beverage ads over the course of a one-year period. Almost 50% of that advertising was for restaurants, most of it for fast-food advertising. Over 90% of the products advertised to kids were classified as either high in fat, sugar or salt.
I’ve also done a huge amount of work on digital marketing. I did a recent study funded by the World Health Organization, the WHO, where I video- and audio-recorded 100 children between the ages of 6 and 17, using their smart phones or tablets, for a 30-minute period. Children were also given a survey about their media use.
From these data, we are able to estimate that children are being exposed to over 4,000 food and beverage ads when using their smart phones or tablets; Eighty-seven percent of these products were classified as less healthy, according to Health Canada criteria.
Just to summarize, children are being exposed to over 2,000 food and beverage ads per year on television, and then they’re seeing another 4,000 food and beverage ads when they’re online. That’s over 6,000 food and beverage ads alone.
When you add up advertising on other media such as radio, outdoor advertising and exposure via settings such as retail environments and recreation centres, we’re talking about very high child exposure to unhealthy food advertising. Even the most conscientious parents who give daily reminders to their children about healthy eating can’t compete with over 6,000 food and beverage messages from the food and beverage industry. Bill C-252 will support parents in their quests to raise healthy kids.
Since 2005, I’ve also conducted a huge volume of research that has evaluated the Canadian Children’s Food and Beverage Advertising Initiative, which is the self-regulatory code that was recently disbanded. In every study, I concluded that this code is insufficiently protecting children from unhealthy food marketing. Research around the world — in the U.S., the U.K., Australia and New Zealand — has come to similar conclusions. Self-regulation is not effective for reducing children’s exposure to unhealthy food marketing.
Just over a year ago, as you’re probably aware, industry implemented a new self-regulatory code. I’ve conducted a thorough analysis of the code and feel it has many gaps. First of all, its definition of advertising is not sufficiently comprehensive. There are some glaring gaps, particularly with regard to digital media. For instance, advertising on social media, on digital sites that are not primarily directed to children and by non-child social media influencers are not included in their regulations.
The new self-regulatory code also models itself after Quebec’s Consumer Protection Act, but it is a poor imitation. I’ll give you an example. When defining time and place, the new industry self-regulatory code states that when child audiences fall below 15%, you can target children with unhealthy food products. This is very different from what is seen in Quebec where child targeting is never allowed, regardless of audience composition.
The healthfulness criteria in the new self-regulatory code is also lacking. In particular, its criteria for sugary cereals are very poor and also for fast food. It classifies foods as healthier, foods that would not be classified as such by dieticians. Remember that 50% of advertising that kids are seeing is for fast-food products.
Other limitations of the new self-regulatory code include that there are no compliance checks to make sure that companies are following the rules, and there’s no enforcement mechanism for when companies are not following the rules. Ad Standards does not have jurisdiction over those companies.
The Chair: Thank you. We hope to get the rest of your presentations in the questions that follow.
Professor Elliott, you have the floor for five minutes.
Charlene Elliott, Professor, Department of Communication, Media and Film, University of Calgary, as an individual: Thank you for the invitation to speak. I have spent nearly two decades studying the promotion of foods to children, previously holding a Canada Research Chair on Food Marketing, Policy and Children’s Health and currently holding a University of Calgary Excellence Research Chair on the topic. I also have a child and thus experience the reach and influence of food marketing through the lens of a parent as well.
Today, I would like to make three points that I hope you might consider in your evaluation of the bill.
The first has to do with framing. The preamble of Bill C-252 pivots on the problem of childhood obesity and its negative health-related outcomes. In my experience, this framing generally leads to a series of questions generated around effects; that is, how much will this legislation work to reduce childhood obesity rates, or to what extent do obesity rates in Canada differ from those in Quebec since commercial advertising to children is prohibited there? These are reasonable questions which seek to get to the heart of the value of the bill. Yet I think such discussions distract from a fundamental point, which is that foods high in saturated fats, sugar and salt unequivocally work to undermine children’s health, irrespective of what those children weigh. This bill, at its heart, is about promoting children’s health and about creating an environment that enables health for all children. If we place this goal to promote health as the starting point, it does not make the question of obesity less important, but it does work to shift the focus in a positive way to all Canadian children.
Second, I would like to speak to the necessity of the bill. I have been documenting the persuasive power and nutritional quality of child-targeted packaged foods since 2006, a project that was originally inspired by the proliferation of child-targeted packaging throughout the supermarket and the ways in which marketing techniques targeting children found within the cereal aisle were emerging within other categories of food.
There were 367 products in the first dataset; Eighty-nine percent of them could be classified as of poor nutritional quality due to high levels of sugar, fat and/or salt. We then conducted follow-up studies in 2009, 2017 and 2023 in order to track the trends and transformations of child-targeted foods over time. Since the first study, targeted appeals to children have only increased. Our most recent dataset had 458 products. We then applied Health Canada’s proposed criteria for assessing the nutritional composition of foods advertised to children to this dataset, and 97.5% of the products exceed at least one threshold for sodium, sugar or saturated fat. Stated differently, under 3% of the products that are explicitly packaged to appeal to children in supermarkets would actually be permitted to be advertised to children, should the proposed criteria be applied to packaged food. There’s much work to be done there.
Finally, I would like to underscore the value of the bill’s provision to monitor food marketing to teenagers. For the past three years, I’ve been leading a study where we have recruited teens from across the country to use a specially designed mobile app to capture the teen-targeted food advertisements they encounter over the span of one week and to input, for each ad, the product, brand, platform and specific appeals that they feel make the ad teen-targeted.
To date, the study has revealed the overwhelming importance of digital platforms to teenagers. Over 75% of the ads they submitted were from digital platforms. What is striking, however, is that in our last round of data collection, 468 teenagers submitted nearly 3,500 food and beverage ads that they encountered over one week just from the four most popular platforms, being Instagram, Snapchat, TikTok and YouTube. From these four platforms, they captured a remarkable 557 unique food or beverage brands, which just underscores how aggressively teens are targeted in their digital lives.
Because we asked teenagers to capture both the food ad and what specifically made it teen-targeted, we also have rare insight into the salience of particular persuasive techniques to this audience, techniques related to the visual style of the ad or its special offers and to the celebrities, influencers and content creators, among other things, that now form part of the lingua franca of teenagers’ lives.
This matters because it reveals that the ads captured by the teens, which are overwhelmingly for unhealthy foods, also resonate with them personally. It is not just digital noise.
This bill offers the opportunity to prioritize the health of children and to understand more about the marketing pressures on teenagers from the food and beverage industry. It is also the opportunity to make an ethical choice over a commercial one. We should protect our children from food marketing that undermines their long-term health.
I thank you for your time.
The Chair: Thank you, Professor Elliott.
Now we pass the floor over to Professor Taillie.
Lindsey Smith Taillie, Associate Professor and Chair, Department of Nutrition, Gillings School of Global, Public Health, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, as an individual: Senators, thank you for the opportunity to speak with you. My area of expertise is food policies to promote healthier diets, including policies on food marketing. For the last 15 years, I have worked in many countries around the world on these issues. I commend you all for considering this bill and setting a good example for your neighbour to the south.
I would like to start with a story. Last weekend, I was in the grocery store with my four-year-old, who had just watched the movie The Lion King for the very first time. We were passing through the drinks aisle when she saw a sugar-filled, fruit-flavoured drink that had a big lid in the shape of a lion, exactly like the one in the movie. It was right at her eye level. She immediately started asking for it and did not stop, even after we left the store, resulting in an epic tantrum. That’s because marketing to kids works. It makes kids want, ask for and consume the foods they see marketed.
The problem is that the vast majority of food marketing in Canada, like in the U.S., is for unhealthy, ultra-processed foods, and this unhealthy food marketing surrounds kids on TV, on their devices and in stores. There’s a strong body of evidence that these types of foods not only cause weight gain, but there’s increasing evidence that these foods are actually addictive in similar ways to tobacco and other drugs.
So how do we fix this? Healthy diets have to start with healthy preferences, and to give kids a fighting chance to develop healthy food preferences, we have to restrict the amount of food marketing that they’re exposed to, just like with tobacco.
I am very pleased to see Bill C-252. If this bill is passed, Canada will take much-needed action to limit unhealthy food marketing to children and protect them against chronic disease. This bill is in line with the World Health Organization’s recommendations. It will cut kids’ exposure to harmful food marketing, and if it is implemented, it would establish Canada as a global leader in promoting pediatric public health. Not only that, but creating healthier diets for kids is much more cost-effective than medication and long-term treatment once they develop chronic disease.
We also have global evidence that strong food marketing restrictions work. Chile, where I’ve been working for the last decade, is the best example. In 2016, Chile implemented a similar food marketing restriction to what you have in front of you along with front-of-package nutrient labels similar to what Canada is currently implementing. They also ban the sales and promotion of these foods in schools.
Together, these labelling and marketing policies cut pre-schoolchildren’s exposure to unhealthy foods by 44% and adolescent exposure by almost 60%. On top of this, we saw a behavioural change. It reduced household purchases of unhealthy foods, with 37% less sugar, 24% fewer calories and 37% less sodium than if these policies had not been enacted. These are dramatic effects we’re seeing on healthy diets in the wake of this type of bill.
I want to underscore a key component of the Chilean regulation — it was mandated by the government. I am aware that in Canada, as in many other countries, there have been initiatives proposed by the food industry to self-regulate marketing food to children. The scientific evidence on these types of initiatives is clear; they’re insufficient and fail to make a dent at limiting children’s exposure to unhealthy food marketing.
I’ve reviewed Canada’s voluntary advertising code, and like other voluntary initiatives across the globe, I find that the definitions in the code are so limited that this will have limited or no impact. These initiatives are merely an attempt to circumvent tighter regulation that would meaningfully reduce kids’ exposure.
To make a difference, the Canadian government needs to implement mandatory regulation. Bill C-252 is a great start. I’m pleased to see that the bill recommends a review to include children aged 13 to 17. I strongly recommend the inclusion of this population, as the research shows that this age group is not only still vulnerable to food marketing, they’re actually even more exposed than younger children.
Secondly, I recommend broad inclusion of channels where children may be exposed and marketing techniques that appeal to them. It’s not enough to only regulate children-specific programs or to only include advertising strategies that are uniquely appealing to children, as this only includes a fraction of the total food marketing that they’re exposed to. An effective law needs to include all channels and strategies that catch children’s attention and make them want a food item.
Lastly, I recommend paying special attention to implementing the law in online spaces, since children today consume the most media online.
In sum, passing this bill is critical for reducing kids’ exposure to harmful food marketing and for protecting their health. Thank you.
The Chair: We will now proceed to questions from committee members.
For this panel, senators will have four minutes for your question, including the answer. Please indicate if your question is directed to a particular witness or witnesses and whom you would like to answer first. The first question will be from Senator Bernard, deputy chair.
Senator Bernard: Thank you, chair. I think I’ll start with Dr. Kent. I know there were some things you wanted to share with us that you didn’t have an opportunity to finish, so I’d want to hear that, first of all.
Ms. Potvin Kent: I was in the last two sentences. My timing was slightly off.
Essentially, I wanted to finish off by saying that I feel the new self-regulations that have been created are a leaky sieve that won’t be impactful. That’s why I really support Bill C-252 and feel that we should move forward with it because it will protect children’s health. Thank you so much.
Senator Bernard: Thank you. First, let me say thank you to the three of you for the research you’re doing. It’s outstanding and very helpful.
A question that sort of comes to mind as I’ve listened to the three of you is: Does this bill go far enough? Will it address the issues that you’ve so clearly identified in your respective research?
Ms. Potvin Kent: There are some limitations certainly, but we’ve been working on this topic area. Ms. Elliott and I have been working on it since 2005, as she mentioned as well. It’s just really important to move forward with something that is mandatory, I feel, right now.
Ideally, it would cover teenagers, absolutely, because teenagers are vulnerable as well. Maybe that’s a stepwise approach that could be taken. I think the parliamentary review in the bill is very positive because it pushes the government to continue monitoring food and beverage marketing to kids, and then we can look to see if marketing to teenagers actually increases once the piece of legislation is implemented.
Senator Bernard: Thank you.
The Chair: Would you like an answer from any of the other witnesses?
Senator Bernard: Yes, please, if there’s time.
Ms. Elliott: If I may, I would also say that what I think is wonderful is that it does an excellent job of moving forward to protect the most vulnerable, which are children under the age of 13. Oftentimes, there’s sort of this light switch that goes on by saying, “Oh my gosh, industry is going to be so impacted.” But, in fact, they can still advertise; they just can’t target vulnerable children with their advertising. They can advertise to adults.
I think what is wonderful is that it moves things forward in terms of protecting the most vulnerable, and then it also provides that provision, which I think is also wonderful, about monitoring food advertising to teenagers just to see whether, in fact, marketing pressures increase on them post-legislation, should this come to pass, so yes.
The Chair: Professor Taillie?
Ms. Smith Taillie: Absolutely. I agree with all of these comments.
Just to piggyback on Ms. Elliott’s point about economics, because that is a concern that I hear, when we’ve evaluated this in countries that have implemented similar policies, we find no economic impact on wages or employment in the food industry sector. They typically shift their advertising to other formats. This doesn’t represent some kind of major potential economic risk.
Senator Seidman: Thank you to all of our witnesses for starting off a conversation that, as my colleague said, we’re not sure the bill really goes far enough.
I’d like to take a couple of steps back, if I can, and start with you, Professor Potvin Kent, and then perhaps go to the other witnesses, to ask you about the terminology used in the bill. The term “marketing” is used in the title and the preamble, but the word “advertising” is used in the clauses of the bill. I sort of think that could be problematic because we can all understand there’s a difference between marketing and advertising, and I’m not sure what this bill really refers to.
For example, product placement in stores, which I think someone referred to, is marketing; it’s not advertising. You’re at a cash counter with your child, you’re waiting to be checked out, there are various things right there for the child to see at the right eye level, and all of a sudden, your child wants that product. That’s marketing; that’s not advertising. I’ve been told that a chocolate bar company paid to be featured on a game that’s on all of our phones. That’s not advertising; that’s marketing. So how do you see that?
Ms. Potvin Kent: Marketing comprises the four Ps: The price, the place, the product and how it’s promoted. The promotion piece is advertising. Advertising is just a component of marketing. In my research, if I am just looking at television advertising, I refer to television advertising because I’m speaking about a specific ad.
When I’m talking about marketing in general, unhealthy marketing to kids, I usually use the term “marketing” because it does encompass more than just advertising. For instance, in digital media, many of the techniques that we’re seeing, it’s much broader than just advertising. So that’s why I use a more global term.
When you use “marketing,” you are capturing the full scope of what kids are seeing and experiencing.
Senator Seidman: If I can continue from that, now that you have put it forward very nicely and neatly, the bill itself says, “Subject to the regulations, no person shall advertise prescribed foods that contain more than . . . .” What is the problem there? The bill itself is addressing advertising whereas the preamble is addressing marketing?
Ms. Potvin Kent: I think you could leave the language as is, but it’s just very important then to define exactly what you mean by advertising and all the different types of median settings included, and the types of marketing techniques do not have to be done in the legislation; that can be done in the regulations that accompany the bill. It can be done in an application guide for the legislation, but certainly, it’s very important to define terms.
Senator Seidman: Okay. How about if I ask one of the other two witnesses to jump in? Let’s see who jumps in first.
Ms. Smith Taillie: I would agree with that. You really do want this to be much more expansive, as I said in my statement, and include all of the places where children would be exposed, so that’s not just limited to television advertisements. That’s thinking about places like schools, on packages, in stores, on billboards, even how the foods are shaped. Sometimes companies will actually make their food look like a toy or a cartoon or whatever. It will be really important in the regulation itself, or the implementation guidelines, to make sure that you’re including these broad definitions to really target all of these different channels.
Senator Osler: Thank you to all the witnesses for being here today. I’ll direct my first question to Professor Elliott.
In your statement, you spoke about food advertising to teens on digital platforms, yet Bill C-252 currently excludes children age 13 to 17, as you said, a group also vulnerable to advertising. The bill’s sponsor mentioned that the original scope was broader but was narrowed to focus on children under 13.
How applicable would the bill’s measures be to persons aged 13 to 17?
Ms. Elliott: From the monitoring perspective, it’s highly applicable because they are monitoring what is coming out. Here is one of the challenges, the age threshold is the under-13 cut off, which was also because we have extensive evidence on the impact of food marketing on children’s preferences aged 13 and under. The nature of food marketing to teenagers, we were still learning more and more about the impact of it on the older age threshold.
If you look at the Consumer Protection Act in Quebec, it was premised on the basis that very young children could not recognize advertising intent. It is, per se, manipulative to market to them.
Obviously, older individuals, teenagers, might be able to recognize that advertising intent. So they are bringing more complexity to what is going on. But it doesn’t mean that they are necessarily less vulnerable to it.
In some cases, it’s really important to put in the protection where you can because what ends up happening, when you go all the way up to 18, is it turned into a lot of debate in terms of what a 17-year-old could recognize or not recognize in terms of advertising intent.
So the monitoring part allows us to get a sense of where they are being targeted, how they are being targeted, what is persuasive to them so you can build a strong case on what the regulations should do or should there be amendments to what is going on?
Senator Osler: Thank you. I’m going to follow up on a comment you made about some of the focus and questions on childhood obesity distract from the fundamental point and shifts the focus.
I would argue that ultimately, one impact of a bill like this should be to promote health. Professor Potvin Kent, you had mentioned that the bill would support parents in their quest to raise healthy kids. I agree with my colleague that other measures would be needed. What else would parents need, beyond this bill, to help their children make healthier choices and to promote health for their kids? Broad question.
Ms. Potvin Kent: One of the courses I teach at the University of Ottawa is health policy. As your colleague mentioned, one of the things that we always discuss is that if you picture a wall of sandbags trying to keep water back essentially that you have to kind of layer policies to have an impact on something like obesity, on something like chronic disease. It’s not going to be one policy that will have an impact. Certainly, we have seen that in tobacco control where they have layered all the policies up and it’s had a huge impact in Canada.
In terms of what else parents need to be supported. When I describe the healthy eating strategy to my students, I say we have had such a shift in health and food nutrition-related policy in Canada since 2015, it has been absolutely incredible with front-of-pack labelling, with the new Canada’s Food Guide. We have been providing all sorts of tools to parents and to the population in general.
I think the food marketing restrictions are going to have a big impact on children and on parents helping them to have a bigger influence on their children’s lives. As I said, if you’re trying to compete with more than 6,000 messages, you just can’t compete as a parent.
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Senator Cormier: It seems the regulations will clarify a tremendous number of legislative provisions that are rather vague. I’m concerned about the regulations and their content. If the bill passes, evaluation, monitoring and enforcement will be essential to ensure that advertising restrictions are implemented. In fact, when they appeared before the committee, Health Canada officials indicated that compliance and enforcement will be crucial aspects of the regulatory framework to support this bill, if passed.
My question is for you, Ms. Potvin Kent. In your opinion, what measures should be put in place to support the evaluation, monitoring and enforcement of Bill C-252’s provisions? In other words, what specifically should the regulations contain for the bill to be fully effective?
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Ms. Potvin Kent: The legislation is very broad. That’s typical in legislation. When you look at the Consumer Protection Act in Quebec, it’s also very broad. So what all of the réglementation — regulations that will support that. We need very clear-cut definitions of what marketing is, what is included in that definition, what is not included.
We need a clear definition of what is healthy or unhealthy, so what are the products that you consider to be high in fat, sugar and salt? What are those thresholds? Health Canada has developed thresholds like that.
We need a clear system in terms of monitoring, in terms of what is being monitored in what media. We need a system of compliance that establishes exactly who, what organization, what agency is going to be actually following up to make sure that industry is actually following the rules that have been set up.
There has to be some sort of penalty system for companies that are not following the — I just want to say réglementation again.
Senator Cormier: Thanks for that. My second question would be for Professor Taillie. In a recent article, you noted that more research was needed to identify which policy components are most critical for regulation to effectively reduce children’s exposure to unhealthy food marketing, improve children’s diet and prevent obesity, or promote health, I would say. Which policy components are now considered most critical to you? What are they?
Ms. Smith Taillie: That’s a great question. In the Chilean case, they implemented these as a package. That is really an effective strategy because they are reinforcing.
In Canada, you already have the front-of-package labelling which is what most people see and think of. You don’t get people talking in the streets about changes in food marketing regulations. It’s not as visible to the everyday consumer. But we know it’s working behind the scenes because it’s changing kids’ preferences.
I would say in addition to those two, school food policies are really critical, making sure these foods are not being promoted or ideally sold at all in schools, because that’s where kids are getting a lot of their food.
The other important piece of this is price. When we went into Chile and we talked to parents and they said, “We understand the labels. We are appreciative they are not getting Tony the Tiger in our faces anymore, but we can’t always afford healthy foods.” That is something really critical because these cheap, ultra-processed foods, they tend to be not only aggressively marketed, but priced lower than healthy foods. So making sure that we’re thinking about using policies like sugary drinks taxes, as well as healthy food assistance or incentive programs, those are critical for parents to not only develop the healthy preferences — that’s what the marketing regulation does and what the labelling regulation does — but they also need to be able to afford healthy foods. That would be the other piece that I would really recommend.
The Chair: Thank you.
[Translation]
Senator Boudreau: Thank you to all three witnesses. It’s clear that you have a wealth of experience. We’re privileged to benefit from all that experience here today.
My question is for Ms. Potvin Kent and it’s based on her last answer about enforcement. That’s the aspect I’m wondering about. All three of you mentioned that young people are bombarded with hundreds if not thousands of ads per week for one product or another. We’re talking about companies with global brands. We won’t just be dealing with Canadian companies, but also with international companies with global reach. I’d like to talk a little more about implementation. I get the impression that it will take a small army of civil servants to enforce such a law. I’m all in favour of the bill. However, a law is only as strong as its enforcement. How are we going to monitor all these ads coming from everywhere, on TV, radio and social media? How will the government go about it?
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Ms. Potvin Kent: That’s what I’ve been doing for the last 20 years, essentially, is monitoring. The monitoring is really not that complicated because you’re just taking samples. You’re not monitoring absolutely everything; just the same as if you were doing compliance checks, you would not be doing a compliance check on every single minute of television advertising and every single minute of what is going on online. You take samples.
A few years ago, I developed a monitoring framework for Health Canada where I made recommendations in terms of what the government needs to be tracking over time to see what children’s exposure is across a variety of media and settings. That is absolutely manageable.
We have a huge number of researchers, because Health Canada has dedicated funds to monitoring food and beverage marketing in the last five years; we have developed kind of a small army of researchers who have these capabilities in Canada. Canada is a powerhouse when it comes to food and beverage marketing research.
At the university, I had teams as large as 8 to 12 people at a time. Then there are five or six other researchers across the country, each with their own teams also with expertise in this field now. So, that type of monitoring is very simple.
In terms of the implementation, once the regulations are written, industry has to implement. They are the ones who are placing their ads on various sites. It’s not a big burden for the government in terms of implementation.
Senator Boudreau: But the monitoring you talk about is for research purposes, right? You’re not civil servants in the sense of the application of the law.
Ms. Potvin Kent: I understand. Exactly.
Senator Boudreau: Does it then work on a complaint-base-only system?
Ms. Potvin Kent: No, I would probably recommend random checks in a variety of media. That would be more compliance checks that would need to be done. Again, you’re just taking samples across a variety of media and settings. We have all the methodologies to examine marketing in all the different media settings, because as I said, in the last 5 to 10 years, we really developed that expertise across Canada. In fact, other countries come to us for the expertise because we’re so far ahead in that capacity.
Senator Dasko: Thank you to our witnesses today. We obviously have some incredible experts with us with a great deal of experience and knowledge in this area.
I want to start with Professor Potvin Kent. You have done some research, which you didn’t report on here now.
Ms. Potvin Kent: Just a few studies.
Senator Dasko: I know all of you have lists an arm’s length of the research you have done. But some research I found very disturbing. I want you to put it in your words. You found in your research some companies who had signed on to the industry code were actually worse perpetrators than those who had not signed on to the code.
Ms. Potvin Kent: Yes, absolutely.
Senator Dasko: This is really disturbing to find this. You have documented it many times. Can you describe what that research found?
Ms. Potvin Kent: Sure. That was research we did a few years ago when the Children’s Food and Beverage Advertising Initiative was in place, which was the old self-regulatory code. At the time, about 16 food and beverage companies were participating in that initiative, a lot of the big companies, just one fast food company, though.
It was a study where we were looking at television advertising. We collected a huge amount of television video footage, and my research assistants comb through it and pull out all the different television ads. Then we made comparisons between companies who were participating in the Children’s Food & Beverage Advertising Initiative and those that were not participating. You would assume those participating would be doing a better job, but in fact we found the complete opposite. Those who were participating were actually advertising more, using more marketing techniques that are really appealing to kids like spokes characters and licensed characters and things like this. We were surprised by those findings.
Senator Dasko: It’s like the code provided cover for them to go out and —
Ms. Potvin Kent: Yes, sometimes I do feel it’s a bit —
Senator Dasko: I find it astonishing this is what you found.
Ms. Potvin Kent: Sorry to interrupt you. Sometimes I do find it’s a bit of smoke and mirrors. I don’t really think it’s a coincidence that the new self-regulatory code was unveiled a year and a few months ago when industry obviously is fully aware that the Health Canada is developing regulations. There was a bill going through the House of Commons at the time, so the timing is so that they can say, “Well, look what we’re doing, we’re self-regulating. There is no need to regulate us.”
Our evidence in Canada — and as I said, the preponderance of evidence worldwide — shows that self-regulation does not work in this area because industry has a conflict of interest. It’s as simple as that.
Senator Dasko: In fact, it’s companies who aren’t covered, then companies that are covered. They are all —
Ms. Potvin Kent: They are all advertising to kids.
Senator Dasko: They are all advertising. Those covered are doing advertising, the least healthy foods more.
Ms. Potvin Kent: Absolutely. That’s it exactly. That’s why I said, once again, industry has created a leaky sieve. It’s full of so many holes it’s inconceivable that it will be successful and actually protect children’s health.
Senator Dasko: Madam Chair, might I provide a clarification from Health Canada about something? The topic came up as to the definition of advertising versus marketing. Health Canada has said that the Food and Drugs Act broadly defines the term “advertising” but not “marketing.” So marketing activities are included in the word “advertising” rather than the other way around. That’s in the bill.
Ms. Potvin Kent: Exactly.
Senator Dasko: That comes straight from the documentation.
Ms. Potvin Kent: That’s why I was saying, so long as you define what advertising is clearly and include marketing within it, then I think the language in the bill is fine.
Senator Dasko: According to Health Canada, marketing is included in advertising. Thank you.
Senator Petitclerc: I want to go back to the “why” of this piece of legislation. Thank you, Senator Dasko, because I also wanted to talk about the self-regulatory challenges or weaknesses. I feel that was very helpful.
In your opening remarks, I believe, Ms. Potvin Kent, you said parents can’t compete. I think Ms. Elliott, you said something about the persuasive power of marketing. Some will say it’s the job of the parents to deal with this. We’ve heard that. Then some will say we already have a self-regulatory code.
In the end, what is the solution? Is making a law the best option? Parents, like you said, can’t compete, and the power of marketing and advertising is so strong. Does it make sense, then, that the one solution is to tackle this with a piece of legislation? Ms. Potvin Kent, would you want to answer first.
Ms. Potvin Kent: Sure. The WHO recommends mandatory legislation and regulations but something that is mandatory, and I think that is absolutely essential because all companies have to follow it for it to be effective, essentially. I think legislation is a great way to go about this, absolutely.
Senator Petitclerc: Thank you. Maybe Ms. Elliott on this question, can you help us by illustrating how sophisticated advertising and marketing really are? I’m trying to understand the fairness of the playing field.
Ms. Elliott: If I can go to your first question — is regulation the solution — there are a host of solutions that you can implement in order to help parents feed their children and create the best environment for them. That’s like front-of-package labelling and things like that. I think this becomes one of the solutions that helps to support parents.
I remember reading an industry statistic that said children can influence up to 80% of a family’s food budget. That’s why “pester power” is a term. As a parent, you go into the supermarket, and there are 473 packaged foods that are expressly targeted at kids to try and capture their attention. The thing is, there is a lot of literature, and we’ve done interviews with parents as well, and they have talked about the challenges of navigating that environment with young kids. It’s like, okay, I just don’t want to be nagged, so they end up purchasing it.
The other part is that food isn’t just about nutrients; there’s a social currency around it. If your children feel it’s very cool to have the Minions’ packaged cereals or packaged cookies, they want it because their friends have it at school. That is all about the ways that they are expressly trying to capture kids’ attention.
I think that’s one thing the regulation here would help to lessen the pressures on parents and help children choose foods that aren’t necessarily decorated. We know how much the impact of cartoon characters, fun shapes and licensed media characters have in terms of what kids would like to purchase, and it isn’t necessarily about the food; it’s about the licensed media characters.
The Chair: Thank you. Great contributions. I’m going to pass the floor over to our final two questioners, Senator Mégie and then Senator Burey. Then I’m going to suggest that we give Senators Bernard, Osler, Cormier and Seidman an opportunity to ask questions that will receive answers in writing.
[Translation]
Senator Mégie: My question can be for anyone, but I could start with Ms. Potvin Kent. It has often been noted in advertising that, to reach their intended audience, they make parent-child links. First, they promote a good relationship with parents. Then, they promote the product that is integrated into this relationship. Quebec’s Consumer Protection Act has been in force for a long time. I don’t know if you have any thoughts on how something managed to get done, because in Quebec, I’m still seeing that advertising. How can we say that it targets parents and not children? You can’t blindfold children so they don’t see it. How can we assess whether or not the bill has truly achieved its aim?
[English]
Ms. Potvin Kent: Ideally, we would restrict all unhealthy food and beverage advertising to kids. In Quebec, they restrict all commercial advertising that is targeted at children.
All of the research that I’ve done in Quebec has shown that kids in Quebec are actually seeing a high level of advertising, but it’s different advertising than kids in the rest of the country are seeing. They’re seeing, say, a man in his office eating a breakfast wrap, but it’s not targeted specifically at kids. The targeting is not there. You’re not seeing a child eating a child’s meal, or it’s not a child’s situation.
When we assess advertisements, we have a whole list of marketing techniques with very good definitions that we’ve been using over the last decades. Then we actually look at the ad and determine, okay, is this marketing technique present, yes or no? We train our coders and retrain them and make sure they’re coding the ads the same way. There is a mechanism to determine if the ad is targeted at kids. We do this type of thing all the time.
[Translation]
Senator Mégie: I’ve never looked at which company did that, because it’s not —
[English]
Ms. Potvin Kent: There are a lot of ads in Quebec that are getting through. In Quebec, there’s no systematic monitoring of the Consumer Protection Act; they rely on consumer complaints. I don’t know many parents who have time to be complaining to the Office de la protection du consommateur or know that that’s what they’re supposed to be doing. They typically rely on non-governmental organizations to make complaints to that office.
Senator Burey: Thank you so much to our very expert witnesses and all the research you have done.
I wanted to take a look at the equity aspect of it, when you talked about the thousands of ads per year. In your rich data, were you able to disaggregate it and look at specific demographic and socio-economic status? I’m thinking about, for example, tobacco advertising particularly targeting Black, Indigenous and LGBTQ communities. Did you see any of that in the data that you looked at?
Ms. Potvin Kent: In the United States, there’s quite a bit of research that looks at the Black and Latino communities and shows that they are being exposed more to food and beverage advertising and being targeted more heavily by food and beverage companies.
In Canada, I would say that research is in its infancy right now. My research lab has done a lot of work looking at gender and whether it’s girls or boys seeing more. We haven’t had a chance yet to recruit a big enough group of subjects who are of mixed genders, but there is one study in Canada that was done that I participated in. It was self-reported data. It was using data from the International Food Policy Study, and it showed that when kids self-report their exposure to food and beverage marketing, it’s lower-income children, children who are not part of the majority ethnicity, so not White. Often when we’re doing statistics, we don’t have a big enough group of people from groups who are non-White. Definitely they had greater exposure, and also Indigenous children had greater exposure to food and beverage marketing.
The issue, often, is that some groups in some subpopulations of children are maybe consuming more media, but there’s also the possibility that industry is targeting those groups more. That’s certainly what they’ve seen in the United States. Dr. Smith Taillie might be able to comment more on that.
Ms. Smith Taillie: That’s exactly right. We know the food industry is targeting these groups and looking at what advertising strategies work best among specific subpopulations and using those strategies, particularly among adolescents. I think that’s where the research is strongest, using celebrities, musicians and athletes to target specific groups of people.
Senator Burey: Is there anything that this bill will do to mitigate those equity concerns?
Ms. Potvin Kent: Yes, I think it will have a broad impact given that, if different groups are spending more time on media, it will have a more profound impact on Black, Canadian children, for instance, or Indigenous children because they are, potentially, spending more time on media. Their resulting exposure should be lower.
Senator Burey: So the time and the targeting are separate, right?
Ms. Potvin Kent: Yes, absolutely. Both would be reduced in this case. It should have an even greater impact on those populations. From an equity perspective, it certainly won’t worsen things. I think it should improve things.
Senator Burey: I’m hoping you will do more research on this.
Ms. Potvin Kent: It’s on our list.
The Chair: I’ll walk through the process of inviting Senators Bernard, Osler, Cormier and Seidman to deliver your questions and for whom you have a preference for an answer, please. We will ask for written responses.
Senator Bernard: Thank you. To each of the witnesses, we didn’t hear much in our discussion today about the online advertising. If you have more that you would like to share with us about how this bill will help to address the online marketing and advertising concerns, I’d appreciate that.
Senator Osler: My question builds on Senator Burey’s question. This is to any and all of the witnesses. Can you please provide this committee with any data on the impact of regulations and legislation on specific groups or populations of children and youth? You had mentioned gender. I’m also thinking about geographic location, racialization, Indigeneity, family income and immigration status.
[Translation]
Senator Cormier: We heard at committee that the Food and Drugs Act provides penalties for non-compliance. My question is for all the witnesses. What is your current understanding of the potential penalties, monetary or otherwise, that could be imposed on bad actors once Bill C-252’s provisions and regulations come into force? Will these sanctions be sufficient and will they be a deterrent for the industry?
[English]
Senator Seidman: We have heard about Quebec and what Quebec has done. We haven’t really asked how effective the Quebec ban has been in eliminating exposure to certain foods and improving health outcomes, which is what we’re trying to achieve.
Do you have any data? There was some old data that we’ve heard about a long time ago, because this isn’t our first run on this issue. I’m wondering if you have data on the impact of what Quebec’s doing.
Also, are there advantages and disadvantages to that approach, just an all-out ban as opposed to singling out foods and beverages? Thanks.
The Chair: Senators, that brings us to the end of our first panel. I’d like to thank the witnesses for your testimony today.
For our next panel, we welcome the following witnesses: Joining us in person, from UNICEF Canada, Lisa Wolff, Director, Policy and Research. From Stop Marketing to Kids Coalition, Elise Pauzé, Policy Analyst, Nutrition, Heart and Stroke. On video conference, we have Tom Warshawski, Consultant pediatrician and Chair, Childhood Healthy Living Foundation, and Corinne Voyer, Director, Collectif Vital.
Thank you for joining us today. We will begin with opening remarks from Ms. Pauzé, Dr. Warshawski and Ms. Wolff. You have five minutes total for your opening statements.
Ms. Pauzé, the floor is yours.
Elise Pauzé, Policy Analyst, Nutrition, Heart and Stroke, Stop Marketing to Kids Coalition: Good afternoon. As mentioned, I am Elise Pauzé, a policy analyst at Heart and Stroke. I am also a PhD student at the University of Ottawa and have been doing policy research on food marketing to kids since 2016.
I am here on behalf of the Stop Marketing to Kids Coalition along with Corinne Voyer, Director of Collectif Vital, and Dr. Tom Warshawski a pediatrician from the Childhood Healthy Living Foundation, and co-chair of the Coalition along with Heart and Stroke.
The coalition is composed of 10 major health organizations and our work is supported by 92 additional organizations and 22 renowned health experts.
Over to Mr. Warshawski.
Tom Warshawski, Consultant pediatrician and Chair, Childhood Healthy Living Foundation, Stop Marketing to Kids Coalition: I’m here today as co-chair of the Stop Marketing to Kids Coalition which has been working to protect children from the marketing of unhealthy foods and beverages since 2014.
The Stop Marketing to Kids Coalition strongly recommends that the Senate pass Bill C-252, without amendments before the end of this parliamentary session. Here are the reasons why.
The food and beverage products marketed to children are overwhelmingly composed of unhealthy, ultra-processed foods. These foods are ready-to-eat formulations composed of ingredients refined from whole foods and typically have added artificial flavours, colours and other industrial additives. Usually there is little, if any, whole food remaining. Examples are soda, packaged snacks, many breakfast cereals, instant noodles and reconstituted meat products. These foods are high in free sugars, saturated fat and/or sodium.
Compared to unprocessed food, they are low in protein, dietary fibre and beneficial micronutrients. They are engineered to be hyper flavourful and energy dense.
Increased consumption of these products is associated with increased risks of obesity, cardiovascular disease, stroke, diabetes, cancer, depression and tooth decay. They are linked with chronic disease and early death.
Unfortunately, marketing ultra-processed food to kids works. Marketing influences children’s food preferences, prompts them to pester parents to purchase these foods and increases their consumption of these products. That is why each year the industry spends $1.1 billion on marketing that may reach children.
Targeting children is unethical as those under the age of 5 years cannot distinguish ads from program content, and most under 12 years do not consistently understand the persuasive intent of advertising. Children are hardwired to believe what they are told, and teaching media literacy is not helpful.
Due to marketing, children age 9 to 13 years are Canada’s largest consumers of ultra-processed food, which makes up nearly 60% of calories in their diets. These products undermine healthy eating. Parents know this, and most want regulations to restrict the food industry from teaching their children to eat food that is bad for them.
The processed food industry claims to want to help parents, but senators must not be fooled. Despite their claims, as Dr. Potvin Kent has outlined, industry self-regulation has failed to protect kids from unhealthy food and beverage marketing.
The worldwide failure of self-regulation has prompted the United Kingdom, Portugal, Chile and Mexico to adopt statutory measures to protect children from unhealthy food marketing. Unfortunately, Canada’s previous attempt to adopt similar Legislation, Bill S-228, was stalled in the Senate and in 2019 died on the Order Paper, despite having majority support in the House and Senate and being supported by 82% of Canadians. We ran out of time. Industry ran the clock out.
Over the past decade, Health Canada has researched the topic extensively, held numerous public consultations and industry stakeholders have had multiple meetings with government officials. The results are in, and the evidence is clear. At great cost, we are allowing the processed food industry to persuade our children to consume products which are damaging their health.
In 2019, chronic disease linked to diet and other factors, cost our health system approximately $28 billion and contributed to the deaths of 36,000 Canadians. It is fiscally irresponsible and unethical to continue to allow industry to persuade our children to consume food and beverages which promote chronic disease and may shorten their lives. It is time to act.
The Senate must not repeat the tragedy of 2019 and instead pass Bill C-252 without amendments as soon as possible. Time is running out. The PM and the PMO needs to support the passage of Bill C-252 and also implement Health Canada’s proposed regulations.
Prime Minister Trudeau must stop stalling and act on his longstanding commitment to restrict the marketing of unhealthy food and beverages to children.
Thank you. I look forward to your questions.
The Chair: Thank you, Ms. Pauzé and Dr. Warshawski. Ms. Wolff, the floor is yours.
Lisa Wolff, Director, Policy and Research, UNICEF Canada: Thank you, Senator Moodie and honourable senators.
My name is Lisa Wolff, Director of Policy and Research at UNICEF Canada and a member of the Stop Marketing to Kids Coalition. I wish to acknowledge my presence on the unceded Anishinaabe Algonquin territory.
Across 190 countries and territories, UNICEF’s mandate is to advance children’s universal human rights, guided by the Convention on the Rights of the Child. Domestically and internationally, we advocate for laws, policies and budgets that secure and protect these rights and the ability for children to live healthy lives to their fullest potential.
In this work, we often create spaces and opportunities for young people, as the rights holders, to have a voice and to participate in decisions affecting them. I would like to recognize Matin Moradkhan and Stephanie Hyun, who are with me today to watch this debate. They are health advocates and have much to say about the issues.
We support Bill C-252 and its goal to protect the rights of children in Canada to nutrition and health, and protection from the marketing of unhealthy food and drink. The bill is called the Child Health Protection Act in short. It could be the child health and protection act because those are two important objectives pursued by this bill.
Passing this legislation will also demonstrate that children’s best interests are Parliament’s priority consideration, which is the duty their government owes to them.
Protecting children’s rights in legislation is an obligation pursuant to the Convention on the Rights of the Child, and Bill C-252 is a laudable effort to do just that. And today is National Child Day, established in legislation in Canada to recognize these rights and the corollary duty to fulfill them. Yet on this thirty-fifth anniversary of the convention, children and their rights are not adequately protected in Canada. It’s the Government of Canada that signed the convention and has the duty to fulfill and protect rights, not parents. They didn’t sign the convention, nor did industry.
Children in Canada need protection from the marketing of unhealthy food and drink, as we have heard, because this marketing is pervasive in children’s lives and most of the food and drink marketed is for unhealthy products; because the bulk of children’s diets is unhealthy food and drink; because overweight and obesity are pervasive among Canada’s children and because marketing to children is inappropriate and unfair given their stage of development.
These are not accidental co-occurrences. More than 20 years of evidence we’ve been hearing about makes the link between marketing of unhealthy food and drink, poor diets and poor nutrition and health.
My esteemed colleagues have provided ample evidence from studies and research documenting the prevalence of marketing to children and the alarming nutritional and health status related to that. Numerous studies in the Senate and the other place examined the prevalence of obesity in Canada and even recommended that one strategy is to protect children from the marketing of unhealthy food and drink. Public surveys have shown strong support for this, as have our surveys of young people themselves.
Underpinning all of this evidence and public sentiment are fundamentally children’s rights. These are entitlements, and the evidence demonstrates that they are undermined by the marketing of unhealthy food and drink. Marketing to children violates their rights to nutrition, health, information, protection and freedom from exploitation.
We’ve noted in the bill and also from the other witnesses, marketing has a very powerful and unfair influence on children of all ages under age 18. They are highly vulnerable due to their developmental stage, and the pervasive and persuasive marketing tactics to which they’re heavily exposed. Even adults have difficulty creating defences against marketing. That’s why it works so well. Unfairly targeting and manipulating children at a stage of cognitive development when it’s highly influential is exploitative. It impairs their access to balanced information that supports healthy development and the right to be protected from exploitation. And that’s why, in turn, it undermines their rights to optimal nutrition, health and development.
In ratifying the convention, Canada committed to acting in the best interests of children. Considering all of the different interests at play here, children’s best interests need to be our priority in policy and regulatory decisions.
We have also pledged to achieve the Sustainable Development Goals targets as a country by 2030, which includes ensuring adequate nutrition, and we’re a party to a number of different international resolutions and frameworks that call for protecting children from the marketing of unhealthy food and drink.
The Chair: Thank you very much, Ms. Wolff.
For this panel, senators will have four minutes for your questions and answers. Please indicate if your question is directed to a particular witness or all witnesses. The first question, again, will be for Senator Bernard, deputy chair.
Senator Bernard: Thank you, chair. Thank you all for your evidence today.
I’m going to start with the same question I asked the last panel: Does this bill go far enough? I have heard you say “pass it without amendments,” but I really want to drill down a bit, particularly with the lens of intersectionality in terms of marketing and who is most directly impacted by some of the marketing of unhealthy foods, as well as children’s rights. So many children live in poverty because their parents live in poverty, so the choices around marketing are often totally outside of their control anyway.
Back to the question, does the bill go far enough?
Ms. Pauzé: I can speak to the evidence about disparities in terms of diet and exposure to food marketing. There is evidence. We know that in Canada, children from lower socio-economic status are more likely to have a poor diet than other groups. There is also some evidence to suggest these kids are doing more screen-based activities, so without these groups being singled out in the bill by virtue of watching more screens, they will experience greater impacts from these restrictions without them necessarily being, again, singled out in the bill. So that’s what I would say about that.
The coalition would have liked to see the bill apply to teenagers as well as children. The coalition supports the previous decision to limit the application of the bill to children under 13. I would like to reiterate that we support the bill in its current form and would like to see it move forward without amendments.
Ms. Wolff: May I offer an answer to that as well?
The Chair: Please.
Ms. Wolff: Does the bill go far enough? I would like to reiterate that if we were not at the end of the Forty-fourth Parliament, then we would be encouraging coverage of children up to age 17. They have the same rights as younger children. The convention defines children as under 18, and we’ve heard that adolescents are at least as vulnerable. They are often more exposed to online advertising, which is a tidal wave right now, and they can often independently purchase food — they have the money and opportunity to do that.
We also want to make the point in saying that the bill is not an overreach, as some may posit. It’s a reasonable step. Being where we are in the Forty-fourth Parliament, we would like children left better off at the conclusion of the Forty-fourth Parliament than when it started.
If we were at the start of a parliamentary session, yes, we would again encourage consideration to cover all children who have the same rights. We would like to see recognition that Canada is one of the few high-income countries that have not signed onto the code of marketing to protect children and their parents from marketing of breast milk substitutes. That’s an opportunity that would fall well within the jurisdiction of a bill like this.
Recognizing that other countries have introduced not only objectives in their legislation to protect children’s health, but as I said before, also to protect them from unfair practices and exploitation. The Irish legislation specifically outlines objectives to protect children from exploitation.
Senator Seidman: Thank you once again to our expert witnesses here today. Much appreciated.
I’m going to address myself to you, Ms. Wolff, because we do have a submission from UNICEF Canada. I’m particularly interested in a statement made here that says:
. . . it is noteworthy that kids in Quebec have the highest intake of fruit and vegetables in Canada and the lowest rate of childhood obesity among Canada’s provinces and territories.
This is an issue that has come up in the past, looking at legislation similar to this. I guess I bring it forward again in the sense that we’re very aware that Quebec has a ban on all commercial advertising directed at children. If you asked how effective that ban is as far as food and beverages and health outcomes, your statement here says that you have evidence that it is very effective, at least if you can presume causation. I guess I’m going to ask you about that, if I might, and compare the advantages and disadvantages of having an all-out ban as opposed to trying to deal with monitoring and enforcement of something like this, which is very complex.
Ms. Wolff: Thank you, Senator Seidman. We wouldn’t go so far as to claim causality. That’s why we noted and others have also noted in Quebec a higher rate of children’s consumption of healthy fruits and vegetables as well as a lower poverty rate. We know that when you can afford to buy healthy food with an adequate income, that makes a difference.
So it’s not a single policy, but it is notable that a preponderance of policies like better income supports, even better through parental leave, not just income benefits, but also protection from marketing is an ecosystem of securing children’s rights in policy and legislation that is leading to better outcomes.
Senator Seidman: What would you say about the advantages and disadvantages of legislating an all-out ban, as Quebec has done, as opposed to trying to deal with the very complex situation of enforcement and monitoring when you have to deal with the internet and various other things?
Ms. Wolff: Yes. Quebec is one of a number of other jurisdictions, not many at this point, but Norway is notable as a jurisdiction that has comprehensively banned all forms of marketing. A 2023 European Union report recommends that all EU countries adopt comprehensive bans because, again, when you go beyond the health objectives, it is patently unfair to be marketing to children who do not have the defences and who are developing the cognitive abilities, to ascertain the intent of marketing, but also, to have cognitive defences against it. When you look at that aspect, that objective, a comprehensive ban makes sense.
Senator Osler: Thank you to all of the witnesses for being here today. My question is for all of you, but perhaps we’ll start with the Stop Marketing to Kids Coalition, whoever would want to answer, and then UNICEF if we have time.
Certainly, an output of Bill C-252 would be legislation and regulations. I’m interested in the long-term, clinically significant impact on the health and well-being of children and youth, especially in the current Canadian context of problems with affordability of, access to and availability of fresh, nutritious food. For example, 27 cases of scurvy have recently been detected in northern Saskatchewan.
Now, I believe the intended impact of the bill is to improve the health of children and youth. My first question is to follow up on my colleague, does the bill go far enough? If no, what would be the next practical step?
Second, should a five-year review include some measure of change in health versus just review on increasing and advertising of food? Should the review include a measure of a change of health?
Dr. Warshawski: I’ll tackle that. I’m a consultant pediatrician and I work at diagnosing and treaty overweight and obesity, unhealthy weights in children as it develops. My life’s work has been to help children be healthier. This bill goes a long way in terms of upstream prevention.
As noted by other folks, when we talk about parents, is this the parent’s job? The stats are that 10% of parents have mental health issues; Ten percent live in poverty; Fifteen percent have poor literacy; another 15% are single parents; probably at the 20-25% are recent immigrants trying to embrace Canadian culture; and in 60% of the families both parents work. This bill is not perfect, but sometimes the perfect is the enemy of the good.
This bill will go a long way, it’s going to afford that protection, especially to immigrants who I come to this country; they see ads for Cocoa Puffs. They think that is a breakfast cereal. They think that’s good nutrition for their kid. They have no way to judge this. This is really going to help those disadvantaged folks. That’s why I was so vocal about just passing the darn thing. We need to get something done.
We started working on this in 2013. We formed a coalition in 2014. We thought we had this bill through in 2019. If we don’t get it through this go-round, the next government is not going to have anything to help our children.
In terms of the suite of things, it’s important to have these restrictions. As previously mentioned, a tax on sugary drinks is a really good tool, as countries like Chile are using, especially if it’s combined with subsidies for vegetables. We are seeing a lot of poverty. It’s hard to afford this sort of food. Good policy can go a long way to help this out, good policy to help promote physical activity programs, health programs. There are a lot of things we can do with policy, but this bill goes a long way.
I like the five-year review timeframe. I agree actually monitoring and getting data on what is happening with adiposity, healthy weight trajectories — it was mentioned by a previous witness too — the focus on obesity might be misguided. These ingredients are unhealthy in and of themselves. High sugar intake is linked with diabetes and heart disease, irrespective of BMI. Similarly with salt, hypertension, stroke and fat. These are unhealthy foods, and reducing the consumption benefits everybody.
Senator Cormier: Thank you. My questions are for Ms. Wolff. I will ask the two questions in a row then you can answer. It’s concerning your brief.
In your brief, you state that reducing the prevalence of childhood overweight should not be the only stated policy objective. Protecting and fulfilling the rights to which children are entitled should be a key objective. Yet this notion of fulfilling and protecting rights are not mentioned at all in the bill before us, even though the term “obesity” appears repeatedly in the preamble.
Should the bill contain wording that explicitly refers to children’s rights, particularly those set out in the Convention on the Rights of the Child?
Second, you say what has been learned from regulating tobacco is that a gradual approach is less effective to protect children than the comprehensive approach, because it allows gaps in the regulatory framework that can be exploited. Could you please expand on what has been learned from regulating tobacco?
Ms. Wolff: Thank you, Senator Cormier. Legislation is a great place to situate objectives as opposed to just regulation which tend to be more technical, because you can always go back to legislation as a framework even for future regulation or interpretation. Ideally, we would see not only health objectives, but a recognition — as Ireland does — that we want to protect children from unfair exploitative practices to which they are susceptible.
Third, a recognition that the best interests of children should be the priority consideration of decisions like this is always welcome. It has been introduced in different pieces of legislation in Canada, and we would like to see that always in place when matters concern children. It’s a wonderful frame of reference because looking at the balance of children’s rights gets you to a good place to make a decision. Their interests are priority consideration.
Policy objectives could cover those three areas in a bill like this.
We have a reference in our submission to a UNICEF policy guide on marketing to children. UNICEF advocates around the world to protect children from marketing of unhealthy food. It’s remarkably consistent, in terms of the evidence, that when you do that, it reduces the power of advertising, the exposure children have and the consumption of healthy food products. It doesn’t have negative effects on industry and some of the other things that you have been hearing about.
A gradual approach? As we have said, time permitting, in the Forty-fourth Parliament, we would love to see older ages covered and even more ambition around comprehensive protection. But a gradual approach — we have seen in evidence that we reported in the UNICEF brief, you know it tends to shift the focus to populations that aren’t covered, which in this case would be adolescents. You know, we can be more inclusive, I think, and less gradual in that particular instance. That would be the most powerful thing we could do if we were to make any amendments.
Senator Cormier: Thank you.
The Chair: Thank you.
Senator Petitclerc: My first question will be to the coalition. If I have time, I have a question for you Ms. Wolff as well.
We’re hearing a positive result for the model in Quebec and from Chile. We also know now — it has been documented and the previous witnesses said it — that the previous self-regulatory code, the one in 2007 to 2020, did not work and in fact, at some level, it was even worse. We know that.
But many of us have been here before, so we’re going to hear that the new code is doing just fine. My simple question is: What is your answer to that and why? Why do you think it’s working or not, the new code that we will hear about?
Dr. Warshawski: I’ll take that to start with. I think you need to look no further than the grocery breakfast aisle. Lucky Charms get a free pass. You look at the nutrition criteria in this code, it allows a breakfast cereal to be 30% sugar. You shouldn’t feed that to your dog. You should definitely not feed it to your child.
The Health Canada recommendations are no more than 10%. When you create a code that is basically meaningless, that doesn’t really put any meaningful restrictions on the industry. It’s not surprising that there will be widespread adherence to this code, because it’s guaranteed to not catch anybody. So this code — Monique Potvin Kent said it — it’s more of a cloak. It’s trying to fool people. There is nothing to this code.
In contrast, the bill is not specific on the criteria that will be applied, but Health Canada did outline the policy in April of 2023, and it’s a pretty good code. It’s not everything we wanted way back in 2014 when we came forward to Health Canada, but it’s pretty good. It will afford significant protection.
Senator Petitclerc: Thank you for this. I do have a bit of time for you, Ms. Wolff. We have heard a lot about the urgency of this bill when it comes to health. You have used a word that I find very interesting. You are linking marketing to kids to exploitation. That’s very strong.
Would you say that the urgency we find in protecting children for health reasons you also find just in terms of protecting the rights of children because they are recognized as vulnerable individuals? That’s my question.
If I may, with this bill, would we become a leader or would we just barely be catching up with the rest of the world? Where would that position us internationally?
Ms. Wolff: Thank you. I want to quote from the Irish legislative objectives. The special “susceptibilities of children” are recognized, and their intent is to ensure that “commercial communications do not exploit these susceptibilities.” The Government of Ireland has recognized the exploitative nature of marketing to kids.
When you look at children’s rights — I carry the Convention on the Rights of the Child with me everywhere — Article 17 is about the right to information. It’s government’s duty to:
Encourage the mass media to disseminate information and material of social and cultural benefit to the child . . . .
And then it goes on:
Encourage the development of appropriate guidelines for the protection of the child from information and material injurious to his or her well-being . . . .
We have heard evidence that marketing to kids is injurious to their health and development. Children have many rights to protection from exploitation, including economic exploitation.
Then in Article 36, they are to be protected from “. . . all other forms of exploitation prejudicial to any aspects of the child’s welfare.” Again, rights and principles combined with evidence of harm to me are quite persuasive. I think that we see examples of legislation in other countries going farther to protect older children, as in Norway, Ireland and the U.K., which bans online marketing to kids absolutely.
I would not say that by passing this bill we have completed our work. I would say it’s a start to what I hope is a greater ambition when we come back in the Forty-fifth Parliament and keep going from there.
Senator Burey: Thanks to all of you for being here. I think I’m going to follow up on the rights perspective again.
I was reading your brief, and you mentioned the Child Rights Impact Assessment. It’s used in Canada, but we’re not using it with all legislation. I’m going to quote Senator Greenwood because she has done so much work on this. She made a statement about the Child Rights Impact Assessment. She said:
Honourable senators, if the Government of Canada can mandate gender equality, privacy and environmental protection in its decision-making processes, then it’s time for us to include a child rights impact assessment.
Do you think that would be a tool that we could at least observe in this bill? We are running out of time is what I hear. Is this a strong statement? We’re using that tool, but should we be using it in this bill?
Ms. Wolff: A child rights impact assessment is essentially a way to look at how a decision may affect children, including diverse, different groups of children across their different rights, and come up with the best assessment of what is in their best interests. I know that’s the very thing you were doing in this conversation, and it’s a systematic approach to do that.
Yes, I think the Department of Justice has developed a robust tool, and this is a perfect bill to apply it to, unless it delays the process again.
Senator Burey: No, we wouldn’t be putting in the form of amendment. Thank you so much for that answer.
I’m going to speak to my fellow pediatrician, Dr. Warshawski, to find out about the effects of these unhealthy diets. I was at a pediatric conference this weekend, and it was alarming to hear the increasing rates of primary hypertension in kids as young as 6. It is alarming, and it’s related to unhealthy diets. This is primary hypertension, meaning there is not a secondary cause. The treatment is lifestyle changes, which would be diet and exercise, which has been impactful. This really does affect the heart in terms of the left ventricular function — sorry, I’m getting too medical.
Could you speak to this? You talked about obesity and all the effects of hypertension. I’m asking the doctor to speak about the impact on hypertension and the alarming rates of hypertension in young kids.
Dr. Warshawski: As you know, senator, it’s an epidemic of overweight and obesity in children and adolescents, and, of course, the lifestyle learned in childhood tracks into adulthood. We are seeing an epidemic of type 2 diabetes, which is largely unheard of in teenagers. It is the result of poor nutrition. We are seeing an epidemic of type 2 diabetes in First Nations, also as a result of poor nutrition. Eighty-five percent of Indigenous women will develop type 2 diabetes in their lifetime, but the antecedents are in the habits learned in childhood.
We are seeing hypertension in childhood. Hypertension not only has cardiac effects but it has cognitive effects. We know that blood pressure has impacts on cognition. We are seeing dyslipidemia, high blood levels of fats. Children are suffering from ill health in childhood, so it’s not just — I wouldn’t say “just” — the heart disease, cancers and depression in adulthood but also in childhood.
One of the other things as a developmental pediatrician — you will have seen this as well — is that these foods tend to have a great deal of food dyes and food additives. There are placebo-control trials demonstrating that food dyes have adverse effects on roughly one third of children’s behaviour. We have an epidemic of ADHD in schools. Partly, I think it is linked to poor nutrition and poor lifestyles.
The more we can do to enhance healthy living for children — nutrition, physical activity and mental health — the better the progress and the flourishing of children will be as they age.
Senator Burey: Thank you.
[Translation]
Senator Boudreau: My question is for the representatives of Stop Marketing to Kids Coalition. All the witnesses we’ve heard from so far are in favour of the bill. So there’s not much debate left on that. Still, I’m a little surprised to hear that, although similar legislation has been in place in Quebec for several decades now, there seems to be little evidence clearly showing that it has a positive effect on young people’s health.
I’d like to turn our attention to the international realm. It was mentioned that other countries have laws similar to what is proposed here. Do we have any conclusive data from research carried out in these countries showing that there is a positive result? Ultimately, we want positive results for our young people. If we can’t yet make that connection in Quebec — even though the law has been around for some decades — are there any examples internationally that have demonstrated concrete, positive results?
[English]
Dr. Warshawski: I would suggest that Ms. Voyer take this question.
[Translation]
Corinne Voyer, Director, Collectif Vital, Stop Marketing to Kids Coalition: I’ll answer in French, and my colleague Elise, who’s with you today, can continue.
If we’re looking for the measure that will solve complex health problems, we’ll never have the answer. To solve the problem of obesity, we need to tackle several risk factors: diet, sleep and physical activity. There will never be a single magic bullet to reduce all chronic diseases. Some international data is available. This includes projections on the potential economic gains from intervening through a bill banning advertising to children, and the potential benefits from a social point of view. I believe my colleague Elise may have this data at hand.
In general, we need to stop focusing on whether the measure will solve all the problems. It will certainly help solve some problems, but it won’t solve them on its own. Let me remind you that a problem as complex as obesity takes years to develop. Quite often, once you’re obese, there’s no turning back. Unfortunately, today’s obese children may be obese for the rest of their lives. It’s the next generations that we can probably better protect against the onset of obesity or other chronic diseases such as type 2 diabetes and hypertension. I hope I’ve answered your question.
Ms. Pauzé: As far as the Quebec legislation is concerned, it was enacted 40 years ago. There’s no available data to easily assess its impact, but we do know that there have been positive impacts on the advertising that children see, so we know that there is less advertising on children’s channels in Quebec. We also know that children in Quebec see fewer ads targeting them. There’s also a study that showed that the Quebec legislation was linked to a decrease in purchases at fast-food outlets. This speaks to some of the effects of advertising that children see.
I agree with Ms. Voyer that it will take several measures to promote better eating habits and reduce obesity.
Restricting marketing is part of Health Canada’s healthy eating strategy. This will be done in synergy with other policies to improve children’s eating habits and health.
[English]
Senator Dasko: Thank you to our witnesses today. I want to pick up the question that Senator Bernard asked at the end of the last panel and ask this panel, the question about online and digital marketing and advertising to kids.
This bill is kind of a framework legislation. Everything that is going to happen is going to happen under the regulations. Health Canada has been working on the regulations for years and has said that they’re going to focus first on television and digital advertising, focusing on those two types of advertising to kids.
Now, I no longer have young children, and I don’t have any grandchildren either, so I don’t know exactly what the influences are and the platforms and vehicles for advertising to children of this age. I wonder if either Dr. Warshawski or our other witnesses can say whether you think this bill will be able to deal with all of the forms of digital advertising on platforms. What are the children watching? Where are they getting these ads? Can the regulations — I’m just looking at the ecosystem of advertising to kids online. Are you confident that this bill is going to be able to address that? Could you describe that. I’m going to lay that question on the table for the panel.
Dr. Warshawski: I’ll start off. Thank you for the question, senator. Unfortunately, Dr. Monique Potvin Kent has done a lot of research on this, and she’ll be able to send a more detailed answer.
My understanding is that the ecosystem of advertising marketing to children is broad. A lot of it is more powerful and more commonplace than others. Television is still a big one. When you get into the internet, there’s a lot of advergaming that goes on with sponsored sites, for Kellogg’s, Doritos, potato chips, that sort of thing. These types of sites maybe account for 60% to 80%. Health Canada and the regulations can probably get those quite well. The influencers are going to be much harder to get. We know they do influence kids’ preferences.
One of the good provisions of this bill is a monitoring framework. With researchers looking to see — it’s a bit of a whack-a-mole job. You have got to stop this and stop that, and now it’s popping up here. What can we do to do this without infringing on the legitimate rights of advertisers to advertise to adults? There are areas where it’s more clear-cut that has been worked over time with Quebec and the work done through the coalition. I think a lot can be done on the internet. People say the internet can’t be stopped. I can’t watch Super Bowl ads on the internet despite my best efforts. Somehow, with the CRTC, we’re able to stop that. I’m sure we can stop 80% of unhealthy food and beverage ads.
Senator Dasko: Yes, on digital ads. Any other comments on that? It’s growing. Obviously, it’s becoming more and more important. Although television is still a source — children are still watching television apparently, I’m told, but this is becoming more important.
Ms. Pauzé: I would just add that in Health Canada’s latest policy proposal, they did mention that digital would encompass part of it. The last policy proposal that they had related to marketing to kids would address digital, and within that it includes websites, social media apps, messaging, streaming, online gaming and virtual reality. I think they acknowledge that’s also an area that’s evolving. So all that is being captured.
Senator Dasko: It sounds like a contemporary kind of list. Would anybody know whether the advertisers, in their code, are doing any of this, picking up any of this?
Ms. Pauzé: Their code doesn’t apply to social media that’s not intended for kids. We know kids are using platforms that are not meant for them.
Senator Dasko: So it doesn’t cover digital at all?
Ms. Pauzé: Well, they say it covers digital, but the scope of their restrictions are so limited that it won’t have much of an impact. They don’t even commit to not advertise on websites intended for kids. The wording of the code is such that it seems that it would permit the placement of adult-targeted ads in those kinds of media.
Senator Dasko: I see. Thank you.
Senator Seidman: If I look at clause 7.1 in the act, it says:
Subject to the regulations, no person shall advertise prescribed foods that contain more than the prescribed level of sugar, saturated fat or sodium . . . .
And then it goes on:
. . . in a manner that is primarily directed at persons who are under 13 years of age.
There are two issues in clause 7.1. The first one I have to ask is about the thresholds. Maybe Dr. Warshawski could answer this question, or maybe that’s the best approach. Is there evidence around what those thresholds should be? That would be my first question.
Dr. Warshawski: Yes, there is evidence. The thresholds that Health Canada has articulated as the process unfolds are decent thresholds in terms of looking at no more than a total daily intake of 5% to 10% of free sugars, looking at saturated fat oddities and at salt.
When you look at children, the safe levels of salt and sugar are, perhaps, less well documented than for adults because we have a dynamic size. You have a 4-year-old, an 8-year-old, a 12-year-old, an 18-year-old. You can pour more salt and sugar as the body gets bigger. By the time you get to be an adult size, the thresholds are more definitive. It’s a bit of backward extrapolation; if there is such a term. You are looking at what adults do, and then you reason back to a smaller vessel, as it were, and how much that vessel can take. We don’t have the studies looking at particular milligrams of salt and what happens to blood pressure, but I think these are reasonable quantities that they’ve arrived at. They’re good thresholds.
In terms of the other part of clause 7.1, directed primarily at persons under the age of 13, really, the devil is in the details on that. The industry code is extremely weak on what is directed at children. Quebec has detailed descriptions of what child directed is. Health Canada is much closer to the Quebec rigour than is the industry code, which, I would say, has very little rigour. Ms. Voyer, if you want to chime in, that would be great.
Senator Seidman: You’re saying that the regulations — which is what we’re going to count on for teeth in this bill — are close to being written, and they’ve already defined the thresholds in order to distinguish the manner that these ads are being directed primarily at persons under 13. Those two issues, those statements in the bill are already written up for the regulations? They’re already defined?
Dr. Warshawski: I can’t speak for governments, for sure, but I think it’s a reasonable assumption that they would use the same nutrition criteria that they were promoting back in 2017-18, moving forward and in 2023.
Similarly, they do have a description of what constitutes child directed. I suppose you would have to wait for the Canada Gazette one to see what they are.
Again, Ms. Voyer, I welcome your comments.
The Chair: We have time for a very short question if anyone is interested. Any takers? No?
Dr. Warshawski, one of the emerging areas is preventive cardiac research looking at the lipidology for children. We’re about to get new guidelines on this. They’ll be published in the very near future. I think we will have a tsunami of information emerging, because, as kids know, it now becomes a strong requirement or a guideline to test. We will start to see what happens earlier in life.
What’s your best guess about the impact that this bill might have on the concerns about unhealthy levels of unsaturated fats on kids moving forward, if the bill were to be put in place, with emerging ability to test and to monitor? What’s your best prediction?
Dr. Warshawski: I think that we’ll see improved lipid profiles with this bill, if it works as intended. I think with what we see from other countries, there will be less ingestion of saturated fat.
As you’re probably aware, senator, there are a lot of nutrigenomics involved here. Some people can eat as much saturated fat as they want, and their lipid profiles don’t seem to budge. Other people, such as myself, who had a heart attack at 55 — and I never should have — but, lo and behold, I’m very sensitive to saturated fats. You don’t really know that under the current conditions, but because of these new guidelines, we should be testing kids under the age of 11 to see what their lipid profile is so we will be able to detect adverse changes, and we won’t have to battle the pester power of advertising that is trying to convince these kids they should be eating these foods, which are bad for them. And as parents, you’re trying to say, “Look, 20 years down the road, this is going to hurt you,” when we know that kids are not good at deferred gratification and recognizing the risk.
I think this bill could be a boon in helping prevent cardiac disease.
The Chair: Thank you very much.
Senators, this brings us to the end of this panel. I’d like to thank all the witnesses today for your testimony. We will continue with our study of Bill C-252 at tomorrow’s meeting.
(The committee adjourned.)