Senator Quinn: Senator, I applaud the initiative you are taking here, but we now have a warning on alcohol products regarding potential defects during pregnancies. You have listed many things that you would see on the bottle, but the main message, as I take it, is the correlation between alcohol consumption and the potential to promote cancer within a person.

Is there a way to consolidate it and bring it down, as is indicated on cigarette packaging? As I understand it, it says “Smoking can cause cancer.”

What I hear is a lengthy description to go on a label. Would it not be better to consolidate and get that main message through?

Senator Brazeau: Thank you, senator, for the question. As I said, the crux of the bill is not to suggest, but, because of the science and research, to say that even drinking minimally can cause cancer. It is that simple.

Obviously, this bill needs to get to committee so we can have the real experts debating, discussing and recommending what should be done in terms of the actual labelling, but the message is drinking alcohol causes cancers.

(On motion of Senator Martin, debate adjourned.)

On the Order:

Resuming debate on the motion of the Honourable Senator Dalphond, seconded by the Honourable Senator Harder, P.C., for the second reading of Bill C-233, An Act to amend the Criminal Code and the Judges Act (violence against an intimate partner).