Honourable senators, I rise today to speak to the message on Bill S-5, An Act to amend the Tobacco Act and the Non-smokers’ Health Act and to make consequential amendments to other Acts.

While Bill S-5 contains important provisions to require plain packaging of tobacco products and to regulate vaping, I am concerned that new changes made to the Tobacco Act by the other place may undermine the fundamental purpose of this bill to better regulate tobacco and vaping products.

I am also concerned by additional amendments which highlight the importance of ensuring a consistent approach to regulating tobacco, vaping and cannabis products, a concern which was expressed clearly by our colleague Senator Joyal a few days ago in this chamber.

Let me be clear: Bill S-5 is a critical tool to protect Canadians from tobacco products and to help them quit smoking. I supported Bill S-5 when it was first passed by the Senate in June 2017, nearly one year ago. I am proud of our cooperative, non-partisan work to improve the bill. I want to recognize the dedication of the bill’s sponsor, Senator Petitclerc. As parliamentarians, together, we worked very hard to get it right.

Now, at this juncture, we must carefully consider the message received from the House of Commons and assure ourselves that the amendments it contains are consistent with the intent of the legislation.

I want to begin by calling honourable senators’ attention to an amendment made by the House of Commons Health Committee to clause 52 of Bill S-5, which was curiously not addressed by the Leader of the Government in the Senate in his remarks earlier this week.

The amendment to clause 52 would repeal section 42.1 of the current Tobacco Act, which requires that the proposed tobacco regulations be reviewed by the House of Commons and referred to committee before they can be made and published. This amendment is a direct clawback of parliamentary scrutiny and is deserving of our close attention.

Parliamentary review of regulations under the Tobacco Act — before they are made — is a critical tool to ensure transparency for an industry which has a long history of lobbying behind closed doors.

Indeed, when the review provision was first added to the Tobacco Act by the House of Commons, it was said that committee review of proposed regulations:

. . . would go a long way toward legitimizing any proposed regulations precisely because it would allow stakeholders the opportunity to propose in public improvements to the regulations.

Honourable senators, despite our past success in reducing tobacco smoking rates, we must not be lulled into thinking that we are immune to the pressures of the industry. By including vaping products in the Tobacco Act, as Bill S-5 does, we are opening the door to even more corporate pressure from an industry increasingly dominated by big tobacco.

I am hard-pressed to understand the logic in doing away with this regulatory oversight for an industry whose products have such enormous consequences for public health. The existing provision requires the House of Commons to review the regulations within 30 sitting days, which does not constitute an undue delay in the regulatory process by any reasonable measure.

Given the importance of transparency in regulating these highly interconnected industries that are tobacco and vaping, it is critical that future regulations continue to be debated in public and not behind closed doors. As we have not heard anything from the Leader of the Government in the Senate on this amendment, much less a convincing rationale for revoking the House of Commons’ authority, answers to this question should be sought by the Standing Senate Committee on Social Affairs, Science and Technology to which Bill S-5 was referred at second reading.

In addition to concerns about limiting parliamentary oversight of regulations for tobacco and vaping products, I wish to speak briefly to the concerns raised yesterday by Senator Joyal with regard to the emerging double — or should I say triple — standard for packaging and promotion of tobacco, vaping and cannabis products.

We must remember that when Bill S-5 was first before this chamber, the environment was very different. While the government had announced its intention to legalize marijuana, nothing was known about its plans to standardize the packaging and promotion of dried cannabis.

However, it seemed as though the government would pursue a comparable approach. Even the government’s own Task Force on Cannabis Legalization and Regulation advised that plain packaging for cannabis products should be required. And for good reason. A comparable approach for cannabis is critical to protect our kids from the harms of smoking.

As I noted in this chamber several months ago, we cannot forget that when we talk about cannabis use, we are talking about smoking. Recent data from the Canadian Cannabis Survey tell us that smoking marijuana is the most prevalent form of recreational consumption at 94 per cent compared to other methods.

At the time, I quoted Professor David Sweanor, a noted public health expert at the University of Ottawa, which bears repeating again today:

Smoking involves combustion. Combustion results in unwanted and harmful chemicals being inhaled into the lungs. Although the way people smoke tobacco and marijuana differs in ways such as the amount they smoke and how deeply they inhale, the fact remains that inhaling smoke is a particularly harmful practice.

Since Bill S-5 was last before this chamber, we now know that Health Canada plans to subject dried marijuana to much less stringent packaging and labelling requirements than tobacco. Given what we know about the harms of smoking any product, combined with the government’s stated commitment to reducing the harms associated with cannabis use, the government’s incoherent approach to regulating these two substances is baffling and cause for serious concern.

In considering the “message” received from the other place, we must ask ourselves why the government believes a different set of rules should apply for marijuana. This is also an important question for the Committee on Social Affairs, Science and Technology, which is presently seized with these very issues in relation to Bill C-45.

Finally, honourable senators, I wish to highlight one additional point on which the Social Affairs Committee might consider and report to this chamber. As the Leader of the Government in the Senate noted earlier this week, we now know considerably more about the public health effects of e-cigarettes, more than we did when Bill S-5 was first drafted, particularly when it comes to their effectiveness in helping people quit smoking.

Indeed, the government has acknowledged this fact through its new-found support for the House of Commons’ amendment banning lifestyle advertising for vaping products. Of course, we had tried to do this ourselves when the bill was first before the Senate, and we were told that the Charter would not permit it. But it seems that the government has come to its senses and recognizes a growing body of evidence which calls into question the value of e-cigarettes as a tool for quitting smoking.

Better late than never, but the move raises additional questions that would best be examined by the Social Affairs Committee. This is particularly true given the fact that if Bill S-5 is adopted in its current form, certain types of advertising for vaping products will be allowed until the time that regulations are made under the act. This situation would be directly at odds with the new evidence that e-cigarettes may be a danger to public health. And as we know all too well with tobacco, once the genie is out of the bottle, it is nearly impossible to put it back in.

Honourable senators, a review of all of these issues by the Social Affairs Committee is the logical and responsible thing to do now.

We must see this legislation through to the end, seek to understand the true intention of the amendments from the other place, before giving them a rubber stamp, and ensure we are doing all we can to protect Canadians from the harms of smoking, whether those harms come from inhaling tobacco or marijuana.