Senator McPhedran: Senator Gold, thank you for the answer, which I experience as being partial. Could you provide a commitment to seek more information about what Canada is actually going to do at the upcoming G7 summit to address this escalation of nuclear threats?

Senator Klyne: I did, but I’m glad to hear that the activities of the committee have been confirmed and that there is a clear path forward. Thank you.

[Translation]

Senator Gold: Well, if that was an invitation to agree to disagree, then I accept.

I understand the frustration when we have complicated matters that have to be addressed in circumscribed periods of time because of the budget cycles. I understand that well. But I stand by my answer, senator, and with respect, will disagree.

Senator Gold: Thank you for your question. I’m sure that there will be a report of those meetings made public by the government. I’ll certainly bring your concerns to the attention of the minister and the Prime Minister.

Hon. Raymonde Gagnéhaving taken the chair at the foot of the throne, rose and informed the Senate that a Commission had been issued under the Great Seal of Canada, appointing her Speaker of the Senate.

(The said Commission was then read by the Clerk.)

Prayers.

Senator Galvez: Yes. I think our work at any committee, including ENEV, with respect to this bill is impacted because we don’t have the planning on when your bill will arrive. Thank you.

Senator Mégie: Like all scientific studies, in medicine in particular — we’re talking here about alcohol, but it’s the same thing for other very important topics, such as cancer and other diseases: There are studies that often contradict each other. There would need to be a meta-analysis that takes the articles that are in favour and those that are against. Maybe that will land somewhere in the middle or prove someone or other right, but let’s wait before coming to any conclusions. For now, it’s a broader discussion.

(On motion of Senator Martin, debate adjourned.)

The Senate proceeded to consideration of the twelfth report of the Standing Senate Committee on Social Affairs, Science and Technology (Bill C-22, An Act to reduce poverty and to support the financial security of persons with disabilities by establishing the Canada disability benefit and making a consequential amendment to the Income Tax Act, with amendments and observations), presented in the Senate on May 11, 2023.

Three questions spring to mind upon reading the preamble. What is the link between alcohol and various cancers? Is labelling an effective way to inform the public? How could this bill be improved for the benefit of public health and consumers?

Before establishing the scientifically-proven link between alcohol and cancer, I’d like to share some data on the leading causes of mortality, in order to better understand the relevance of the bill and why urgent action is needed.

You’ll hear the names of many diseases and many types of cancer. I don’t mean to be alarmist, but I’ll be sharing the information that’s being reported in the current medical literature.

In Canada, roughly 300,000 people die each year of all causes. In 2020, malignant tumours were the cause of more than 80,000 of those 300,000 deaths. The numbers compiled by Statistics Canada indicate that cancer is still among the primary causes of death and that alcohol is indirectly responsible for more than one in four deaths — hence the urgency to take action in Canada.

What’s more, we saw notable increases in the rate of deaths associated with alcohol consumption in 2020. Specifically in people under 45, the number of deaths directly caused by alcohol increased by 50%. Many illnesses are caused by the chronic use of alcohol, including alcoholic gastritis, cirrhosis of the liver, pancreatitis, etc.

Note that the illnesses I just cited are responsible for death in the long term. There are other immediate deaths, such as highway accidents, in which alcohol is a determining factor.

What’s more, there’s a proven link between alcohol consumption and acts of aggression and violence.

What concrete action has been taken? The Canadian government tasked the Canadian Centre on Substance Use and Addiction, the CCSA, with conducting studies and submitting reports with science-based recommendations. The CCSA produced a report entitled What We Heard: Refreshing the National Framework for Action to Reduce the Harms Associated with Alcohol and Other Drugs and Substances in Canada. It’s a long title, but that’s what it’s called. It’s a synthesis of consultations involving over 170 stakeholders in the context of a process to refresh the national framework.

Our National Framework for Action to Reduce the Harms Associated with Alcohol and Other Drugs and Substances in Canada is almost 20 years old. Its vision is for all people in Canada to live in a society free of the harms associated with these substances.

One of the principles articulated in the framework is that action should be knowledge-based, evidence-informed and evaluated for results. The January 2023 final report on Canada’s guidance on alcohol and health came as a shock to many. It upends conventional thinking. Whereas the approach used to be prescriptive, now it is becoming restrictive.

Rather than suggest a number of drinks per day or per week, the experts are now telling us that the less alcohol one consumes, the better. Contrary to messaging from Éduc’alcool, moderation is no longer in good taste.

No amount of alcohol is considered good for a person’s health. This report is worth taking a closer look at. The guidance is based on the principle of autonomy in harm reduction and the fundamental idea behind it is that people living in Canada have a right to know. In addition to the chronic diseases that I mentioned earlier, alcohol itself is a carcinogen that can cause at least seven types of cancer. People often do not know that. The most recent data show that the use of alcohol causes nearly 7,000 cancer deaths each year in Canada, with most cases being breast cancer, colorectal cancer, liver cancer and oropharyngeal cancer.

According to the Canadian Cancer Society, drinking less alcohol is one of the top behaviours to reduce cancer risk.

The message of Bill S-254 is reiterated in the CCSA report, which states, and I quote:

As a priority, people living in Canada need consistent, easy-to-use information at the point of pour to track their alcohol use in terms of standard drinks. They also have a right to clear and accessible information about the health and safety of the products they buy.

One of the direct benefits of this bill and a particularly effective policy change could be the mandatory labelling of all alcoholic beverages. We would expect the label to indicate the number of standard drinks per bottle, Canada’s Guidance on Alcohol and Health and the health warnings.

Another study conducted by the CCSA, in collaboration with the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health, reported an association between alcohol use and aggression and violence.

I’m well aware that moving away from our collective addiction to alcohol requires a real paradigm shift. Drinking is deeply rooted in our culture. We call up a friend or colleague to go for a drink. Some even claim it’s their right or duty to drink, as was the case a few years ago with smoking. However, we no longer carry our former convictions about alcohol’s alleged benefits. We must strive to reduce our use of alcohol in all its forms, just as we did with tobacco.

The CCSA produced a separate report entitled Lifetime Risk of Alcohol Attributable Death and Disability. It notes that the lifetime risk of death and disability increases as alcohol consumption increases. This project, titled Canadian Substance Use Costs and Harms, analyzed Canadian data from 2007 to 2020 and lays out the dramatic changes in direct and indirect costs to our society. The CCSA report from March 29, 2023, states that the cost of substance use was estimated to be $49.1 billion in 2020. The cost associated with alcohol is allegedly close to $20 billion, or 40% of that total. The costs associated with the use of alcohol and tobacco have fluctuated over time. The per-person cost for alcohol has increased by 21%, while the cost for tobacco has decreased by 20%.

These estimates highlight the consequences of substance use, not only on the health care and criminal justice systems, but also on Canadians’ ability to work and contribute to the economy.

To improve health and productivity in Canada, initiatives related to prevention, harm reduction and alcohol treatment must be put in place. Bill S-254 on alcohol labelling is just one of many measures the government should implement to ensure a healthier and safer life experience for all Canadians.

I couldn’t help but wonder whether labelling actually works. A study on the effect of alcohol labelling on consumption, published in 2020 in Journal of Studies of Alcohol and Drugs in an article entitled “The Effects of Alcohol Warning Labels on Population Alcohol Consumption,” compared alcohol consumption in Yukon with its neighbour, Northwest Territories. Approximately 300,000 labels were placed on 98% of alcoholic beverages in Whitehorse. Sales dropped significantly in the capital city for products that carried these warnings, so the labelling made a difference.

My last question is the following: How could we improve this bill to benefit public health and consumers? I believe the only way is to study it in committee. It would give us the opportunity to hear from experts, the industries and other stakeholders on the future implementation of labelling and information to be disclosed. I think it is essential that consumers be able to obtain the information they need to freely make informed decisions.

Given that some consider alcohol a food item, should other information, such as the ingredients and nutritional information, be included?

Those are some of the ideas that I wanted to share with you, esteemed colleagues. Thank you for your attention.

Senator Carignan: Will your government, once and for all, address this tragedy? What is the timetable for restoring the environmental heritage of this site, which is currently an open, infected wound and considered by many to be an environmental bomb?

Senator Mégie: Yes.

Senator Batters: Senator Gold, I am curious as to what your decision process is as to when you give a government speech on a bill, because you are making a speech on this private member’s bill from the House of Commons today. Last week, however, you were the government sponsor of Bill C-46, a government bill, and you didn’t give a third reading speech, so I wasn’t able to ask you a question after you concluded your remarks that day. You didn’t really have any remarks, so I couldn’t ask you what the income threshold was, as I had asked you after the second reading speech and you didn’t have an answer.

I’m just wondering what the decision process is as to when you make a government speech and when you don’t. Also, I note that the fact that you would be making this speech wasn’t on the scroll notes for today, so I’m wondering when you decided to make this particular speech. No one would have expected you to make this speech and have some questions prepared for you.

Senator Wallin: On that point, I guess we’ll disagree because it is our job in committee to give full study. When you put into a budget bill things that should be stand-alone legislation — we’re hearing this from witnesses and from members of the committee — there is no time or a way to actually look at the issues in a substantive way. Therefore, we find ourselves in a situation where we cannot legitimately claim to be providing sober second thought, and I do believe that breaches our rights and privileges as senators. Do you not see the problem?

Senator Gold: Yes, of course.

The Hon. the Speaker: Colleagues, thank you for the warm welcome.

Before I take my seat in this chair, let me take a few minutes to say a few words to you, in the tradition of my predecessors.

I am very humbled by this appointment made by the Governor General, Her Excellency Mary Simon. I thank the Prime Minister, the Right Honourable Justin Trudeau, for his confidence in me. I will do my best to prove myself worthy of his trust and to earn yours in this Senate, which we hope to be ever more open and inclusive.

The Senate has a long and inspiring history. I think it is worth taking a closer look at the list of distinguished Speakers of this august chamber.

[English]

I note, for example, our last female Speaker, the Honourable Renaude Lapointe; our last Speaker from Manitoba, the Honourable Gildas Molgat; and, more recently, the Honourable Noël A. Kinsella, the Honourable Pierre Claude Nolin, our current colleague the Honourable Leo Housakos and, of course, the Honourable George J. Furey, who has left me such large shoes to fill. I am deeply honoured to have been given the chance to join such a distinguished group of individuals and I will do everything I can to measure up to the high standards they have set.

Colleagues, in this new role, I will rely upon your cooperation, your understanding and your support. This is the house of all senators to pursue excellence in our work and to always keep a focus on the needs of the regions and the individuals whom we serve and represent and who together make Canada such a great country.

Meegwetch. Thank you.

Senator Martin: This isn’t a new problem, leader. The Supreme Court rendered its Jordan decision in July 2016, and, as Senator Boisvenu stated, serious criminal charges, including first-degree murder, have been stayed in the wake of this decision. Yet, the Trudeau government has done such a poor job filling federal judicial vacancies that Chief Justice Wagner says justices across Canada are being forced to pick and choose “the criminal matters that ‘deserve’ to be heard.”

Leader, can you make inquiries and let us know how many cases have been stayed across Canada under the 18-month and 30-month time limit set out in Jordan? As well, how many cases are currently in danger of being stayed?

Senator Plett: Leader, I hoped the Trudeau government would have come to —

The Senate proceeded to consideration of the twelfth report of the Standing Senate Committee on Social Affairs, Science and Technology (Bill C-22, An Act to reduce poverty and to support the financial security of persons with disabilities by establishing the Canada disability benefit and making a consequential amendment to the Income Tax Act, with amendments and observations), presented in the Senate on May 11, 2023.

Hon. Marc Gold (Government Representative in the Senate): I rise today to congratulate you on your appointment as the 46th Speaker of the Senate of Canada. I am confident that you will preside over this chamber with the same fairness, integrity and respect for the institution and for your colleagues that have characterized your work since you were appointed to the Senate and in your capacity as Legislative Deputy.

[English]

Speaker Gagné, you began your career teaching in a small school in rural Manitoba. You then became its principal, and before your appointment to the Senate, you capped a long and illustrious career in education as President of the Université de Saint-Boniface between 2003 and 2014.

You have also been an outstanding advocate for minority language rights, and an important representative for Franco-Manitobans and minority-language communities across the country. Your legacy is etched in your many contributions to the Standing Senate Committee on Official Languages and to the important studies it undertook. Indeed, the first message from the other place that you will be reading today will be on Bill C-13, an act for the substantive equality of Canada’s official languages. Madam Speaker, I cannot think of a more fitting message.

[Translation]

Madam Speaker, it has been a great privilege for me to work closely with you. Over the past three and a half years, I have benefited from your wise counsel and your knowledge and respect for the Senate as an institution, including as it relates to the importance of continuing our modernization efforts.

You are a trusted colleague and friend who will be missed by Senator LaBoucane-Benson and the entire team in the Government Representative Office. At the same time, I’m filled with pride and gratitude that you’ve accepted this appointment. I know the Senate is in good hands.

As the Government Representative in the Senate, I look forward to renewing our working relationship as well as working with the opposition, the various groups and all unaffiliated senators in the service of Canadians. Once again, Madam Speaker, let me offer my sincere congratulations.

[English]

Senator Richards: Thank you.

Although I am the critic on this particular Senate bill, I will be very brief. I tend to support it. It’s Senator Housakos’ bill.

Honourable senators, I suppose a nation must have some kind of moral force in order to remain a nation. That is a force independent enough to stand for its own principles, no matter the consequences, from those who would in some way wish to do us injury or harm. What we must also realize is that there are countries quite willing to take advantage and do us harm, and we must be vigilant in knowing this.

For a nation is beset at times both inside its borders, with discontent, and beyond its borders, with enmity. To ignore this is to open one’s nation to internal displeasure and external attacks. I believe what is being asked with this bill is simply to decide whether we have a country which needs protection from outside forces — nothing more and nothing less. But in Canada today, it seems a very difficult question for some reason.

Would we let a neighbour come into our house and compromise or threaten our family? In the most basic sense, this is the question being asked, and in the most basic sense, this is what has happened to our country in the last few years.

I think a foreign registry is not a harsh thing to request and not an unreasonable position to take. To protect one’s citizens, one must be conscious that those citizens have every right to be protected from predatory influence. Nor is it unreasonable to say that neglecting this obligation on even a small level is to neglect the duty to our citizens that our country has pledged by the very fact that it is a country, with its own constitution, borders and laws.

I suppose it depends on what country we want and what standards we demand of ourselves. So we might ask: If we are floundering in an abyss of modified standards, if our ships are behind schedule today, if our planes are years out of date, if our men and women in uniform — as brave and competent as they are and always were — do not amount to one division, and if our obligation to NATO is at its lowest ebb, do we answer that this is true? And if we do, then what does that say about us as a nation or a people?

Perhaps it says that we have little notion of what obligates a citizenry to their nation or to the greater world, to the allies who continually rely upon us. And are those at the gates willing to do us ill? We might ask this.

A foreign registry for those who work on behalf of a foreign government is both sane and practical and is practised in countries where those who do work on behalf of other nations are held accountable for what they do. I don’t think this is a terrible thing, nor is it a racist policy. It is a sane practice to keep one’s nation and its people safe from foreign bellicosity.

If national protection of our own citizenry is horrid against China or other nations, then why do China and other nations have it against so many others?

Canadian officialdom is filled with the impractical idea that the best way to fix any given crisis is by never responding to it in a timely fashion. I believe over the last number of years, more than a few nations have relied upon this aberration. It is evident in the North, within sight of our own borders, and, at times, off the Atlantic coast with other fishing fleets.

But I will come back to the first point: We have to decide if we are a country and not a post-nation nation. It is as simple and as profound and as existential as that. If we are a nation, then we must be vigilant in honouring our commitment to it and to our people, no matter who they are or where they are from — from First Nations to French to English to Chinese to Japanese.

Please let me offer a hockey analogy. “We become a nation when we drop the puck,” I told Ron MacLean once about our hockey. That is because no one ever had to tell Canadians why they are on the ice. I wish we observed the same traits of tenacity, boldness and honour in assuming our democratic state and democratic values.

A foreign registry would simply keep in check those who work on behalf of a foreign entity. I am not saying that we treat any of them dishonourably. I’m saying if it became unjust, it would be called, and a penalty would ensue.

I will end here with a note about a battle that took place long ago. I will use it as a reminder of whom we once were. At Ypres in 1915, the first time the Germans used gas, the Canadians held their position when all around them fled. They were the only forces who would not give up the trench. They held the line. They did so because they felt they had to, and they refused to break and run. They were Canadians of all different races: Chinese, First Nations, English and French. They held their ground, as they did on Juno Beach and in Korea.

In honour of them, we should have vigilance and never give up our position or our love of country. In that regard, and in light of what has happened because of foreign meddling in the last five years, I am asking that this bill go to committee as soon as possible.

Thank you.

(Debate adjourned.)

[Translation]

On the Order:

Resuming debate on the motion of the Honourable Senator Brazeau, seconded by the Honourable Senator Housakos, for the second reading of Bill S-254, An Act to amend the Food and Drugs Act (warning label on alcoholic beverages).