Thursday, February 18 1999
Thank you Gar for accepting our " rendez-vous ". May I ask you to introduce yourself ?
I am the Executive Director of the Non-Smokers' Rights Association (NSRA) and the related Smoking and Health Action Foundation (SHAF).
For over two decades, the NSRA has been at the forefront of tobacco control in Canada.
The Association led the campaign from 1983 to 1991 to bring Canadian tobacco taxation to world levels.
Working closely with the Canadian Cancer Society (CCS), the NSRA also led the fight to ban tobacco advertising.
This culminated in passage of the Tobacco Products Control Act (TPCA) in 1988.
The NSRA was also out front in the campaign for Canada's landmark tobacco package warning system.
In fact, the warnings were designed in our offices.
This system was world precedent-setting at the time and, in several respects, still is.
More recently, working with the CCS and other health interests, the NSRA was a leader in the effort to pass the Tobacco Act, our federal legislation that replaced the TPCA.
The earlier law was struck down by our courts in a 5 to 4 vote in 1995.
1. After Canada's Health Minister Allan Rock announced his new tobacco control initiatives you were quoted as saying he "had turned a corner" in fighting smoking. Would you explain what you meant?
For more than a year, Mr. Rock worked to put out fires as the new minister of health.
In the process, he took tremendous criticism over several problems for which he was not responsible.
He took the heat over the tainted blood affair, then over problems related to Hepatitis C.
He was in the spotlight over a scandal in the Health Protection Branch.
He was also in charge when the government granted a major exemption under the Tobacco Act related to the tobacco industry's sponsorship of arts and sports.
Again, all of these problems either pre-dated his arrival as health minister or were dictated to him by the Prime Minister's Office.
Perhaps because he was occupied on other files, for over a year he had not done a single significant positive thing on the tobacco file.
When he made his announcement in January, we gave him some positive feedback, including credit for "turning the corner."
We made a strategic decision to give him some praise, the first significant praise he had received in several months.
We did so to show him that the tobacco file could be a winner, both in health policy and in political terms.
We wanted to encourage him and his departmental staff to continue to work hard on the tobacco file.
In fact, the package he announced was relatively shallow. In particular, because the proposed package reforms had been put together in only a few days, some of the reforms were not very impressive.
And it was a soft "options paper" rather than firm regulations being proposed by the government.
Fortunately, nothing in the minister's package was as bad as the British white paper on tobacco.
2. How do you feel about the proposals concerning the packaging?
Canadian cigarette packages differ from packages in most other countries.
They consist of two cardboard parts:
an exterior sleeve and an interior slide which wraps around the tobacco and which moves up and down inside the sleeve.
The packaging reforms proposed include taking 60 percent of both major exterior package surfaces
- one face or surface for each of our two
- official languages, English and French -
for a strengthened system of warnings, perhaps as many as 16 on the exterior of the package alone.
All of these warnings would be in white lettering on a black background or black lettering on white,
each combination appearing one half of the time.
By using 60 percent of these two major surfaces for warnings and by using at least two more side or end panels, the minister's proposals take Canada one step closer to plain packaging.
But there is more.
The proposals call for the Health Minister to take over a major portion of both sides of the interior slide and turn it over to a health education campaign.
This reform would put 2 billion, perfectly targeted, detailed warnings into the tobacco marketplace every year.
If the warning system reaches its potential, this reform could produce the most significant public health education campaign in Canadian history.
Other reforms are under review including potentially severe restrictions on tobacco promotions at the point of purchase.
However, the minister's option paper does not take any position on many of these policy options.
The absence of specific policy targets to attack may work in favour of the side that mounts the biggest and most persuasive lobby, be it industry or health community.
3. I have heard that the government hosted a discussion on tobacco industry denormalization.
What was that about?
I think that the willingness on the part of Health Canada to consider de-normalization is significant.
De-normalization is the process of separating the tobacco industry from legitimate business and showing why tobacco products are outside the norm for legal products in the marketplace.
Through de-normalization, we would be able to show that the tobacco industry is a rogue industry that gives legitimate business a bad name.
To get the major public policy reforms on tobacco that we need to address Canada's 45,000 tobacco deaths annually, reforms like plain packaging and a ban on sponsorship, the pubic has to realize that this industry is outside the norms of civilized behaviour.
For decades, the Smoke Folk have been peddling legitimacy as well as nicotine.
De-normalization would go a long way toward reversing this process. The states of California, Massachusetts and Florida are doing it by telling the truth about the industry in mass media campaigns.
And this process has been greatly accelerated by (1) the leak of the Brown & Williamson documents, (2) the release of industry documents in litigation and by (3) the media coverage of tobacco news like the tobacco executives swearing in Congress that tobacco is not addictive.
In Canada, a change in government policy, as opposed to referenda like the California and Massachusetts propositions, may expose the industry in a mass media campaign.
The health community is also pressing for a Royal Commission, i.e. a public inquiry at the national level.
A Royal Commission could force documents into the public domain, just like a criminal investigation or civil litigation.
And it could force tobacco executives to testify under oath.
This, too, would accelerate de-normalization.
4. What do you think are the chances for a tax increase?
In the short and medium terms, there is not a great chance of a significant tax increase, one that would take Canada back toward world levels.
There is a so-called "gentleman's agreement" between the federal government and some of the provinces that taxes will only be increased if the national and provincial governments act together.
Such an agreement has not yet been reached.
However, we may get a modest increase sometime in the near future.
5. All of Allan Rock's initiatives will first be subject to a
consultation before being taken to the federal cabinet and the
legislature.
Do you think the proposals will resist this process as well as the industry's counter attack?
After the consultation deadline passes on March 12th it is not entirely clear at this point to what process will these reforms be subjected. At a minimum, the Health Minister would have to take any proposed reforms in the form of regulations under the Tobacco Act for review by the all-party standing committee on health of the House of Commons.
This, by the way, is an added hurdle built into the legislative process by tobacco industry lobbying.
These regulations would next be published as Part I of the Canada Gazette.
The industry would then be given an expected additional 60 days to comment.
Then, the Health Minister would prepare the final amended version of the regulations and obtain cabinet approval.
At that point, the government would publish the regulations as Part II and they would be law. What are the chances?
It think chances are good that we will see major improvements in the warning system, including a slide warning system.
What you feel like adding :
Senator Colin Kenny's private member's Bill S-13, the Tobacco Industry Responsibility Act - try to stop laughing at the name - proposed the creation of a foundation.
His bill was killed by the government late last fall.
And it was severely criticized for that.
There is now strong pressure for the government to replace this with a government sponsored bill.
If this happens, the new bill would create a largely independent health foundation or trust perhaps funded by a special tax or levy on the industry.
Activities, including the management of a health education campaign similar to California, Massachusetts or Florida, would be at arm's length from the government.
Senator Kenny's bill called for a fund of CDN$120 million, comparable to California's campaign, on a per capita basis.
Senator Kenny orchestrated a brilliant, tough and sometimes masterful campaign to force this issue to the top of the health agenda.
If we do not finish this campaign off at this point, given his leadership, we will only highlight the incompetence of the health community, something that we see all too often in many countries.
Thank you Gar for taking the time to be with us today.
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