The pressure on the government to put cancer warning labels on alcohol containers is growing, as experts say the majority of Canadians don’t know the risks that come with consuming even moderate amounts.
The latest catalyst is Canada’s new Guidance on Alcohol and Health, which updates the 2011 Low Risk Drinking Guidelines. The Canadian Centre on Substance Use and Addiction (CCSA), which released its final report today, points out that no amount of alcohol is safe and that consuming any more than two drinks a week is risky.
It’s a drastic shift from previous guidance, which recommended no more than 15 drinks for men and 10 drinks for women per week to reduce long-term health risks. The CCSA says the new advice reflects thousands of studies in the last decade that link even small amounts of alcohol to several types of cancer.
The new recommendations lay out a continuum of risk. Three-to-six drinks a week increases the risk of developing certain cancers, including colorectal and breast cancer, and more than seven drinks a week also increases your risk of heart disease and stroke. The danger goes up with every additional drink.
“The last time we did the guidelines, it was in 2011,” said Catherine Paradis, the interim associate director, research, for the CCSA, who co-chaired the scientific expert panel that came up with the new guidance. “In 10 years there’s definitely been significant improvements in our understanding of mortality and morbidity associated with alcohol use. We have a much better understanding of the link between alcohol and cancer.”
According to the report, many Canadians are already in risky drinking territory, with 17 per cent of Canadians consuming three-to-six drinks a week, while 40 per cent drink more than six drinks a week.
Paradis says the panel spent the last two years combing through nearly 6,000 peer-reviewed studies, including research that now confirms alcohol use as a risk factor for an increasing number of diseases including at least seven types of cancers.
But despite the evidence, most Canadians are unaware or overlook the risk, says Paradis, and many still believe there are health benefits to drinking, though she says the most recent studies show that’s not true.
Catherine Paradis, the interim associate director, research, for the CCSA, who co-chaired the scientific expert panel that came up with the new guidance on alcohol, in pictured in Ottawa in October 2022. (Ousama Farag/CBC)
‘People need to be able to count their drinks’
Based on its findings, the CCSA is now calling for health warning labels that include the cancer risk on alcohol containers, and labels that inform people of how many standard drinks are in every container.
“Standard drink labels are necessary because people need to be able to count their drinks,” said Paradis.
“Labels about the health risk will provide people with that rationale as to why they should follow the guidance.”
The CCSA’s call for health warning labels, recently echoed by the World Health Organization, is based on research led by Canada. Erin Hobin, a senior scientist with Public Health Ontario, ran one of the only real-world experiments of cancer warning labels on alcohol in Yukon in 2017. The labels were placed on alcohol containers in two government-owned liquor stores for a month.
“What we learned from that study was that the cancer warning grabbed consumer attention,” said Hobin. “They read the cancer warning very closely. They thought about that message. They talked to their neighbours and their friends about that message, so there was real deep processing of that message.”
People not only talked about the warnings, Hobin said — they drank less, too.
Erin Hobin, a senior scientist with Public Health Ontario, ran one of the only real-world experiments of cancer warning labels on alcohol in Yukon in 2017. She’s pictured in Ottawa in October 2022. (Ousama Farag/CBC)
“Exposing people to cancer warnings on alcohol containers actually is associated with a reduction, a seven per cent reduction in per capita alcohol use compared to sites that were not exposed to the alcohol warning labels,” Hobin said, adding the study found increased awareness led to more consumer support for other alcohol policies like higher pricing.
The scientists behind the Yukon cancer label study say it was cut short because the alcohol industry intervened and the Yukon government couldn’t afford a potential legal battle. CBC’s, The National reached out to the industry to ask where they stand on cancer warning labels now.
Spirits Canada, Wine Growers Canada and Beer Canada responded with statements focusing on drinking responsibly and in moderation.
Wine Growers Canada added it doesn’t believe health warning labels are “the best way to effectively educate consumers on the responsible consumption of alcohol.” But Beer Canada says it remains “open to labelling suggestions that would be demonstrably helpful to consumers… to reduce harmful drinking.”
A legal duty to inform consumers
But experts say health warning labels should already be on alcohol containers, because the industry actually has a legal duty to clearly inform consumers of any risks — especially when those risks are not well known.
“They are not just critical, they are required under the law,” said Jacob Shelley, the director of the health ethics, law and policy lab at Western University. Shelley, who has worked on alcohol policy, says the obligation for manufacturers to inform consumers of any risks associated with their products is higher when a product is ingested.
Jacob Shelley, the director of the health ethics, law and policy lab at Western University, says the alcohol industry has a legal duty to clearly inform consumers of any risks. (Jacob Shelley)
“It’s very frustrating, because there is a legal responsibility that’s not very difficult, and that the courts have actually identified, that when the product is ingested or consumed, that the duty to warn is actually increased because it poses an increased risk.”
Shelley says there’s a conflict on the alcohol industry’s side, which makes billions in profits every year, to provide cancer-warning labels.
“There’s money to be made by increasing consumption,” said Shelley.
Shelley says the normalization of alcohol in society may be contributing to a lack of political will to mandate health risk labeling, but he says government action is needed.
“We have governments regulating all sorts of products to ensure they’re safe, from baby cribs to cars, right? And so the government really ought to be more involved in requiring these types of labels, and can justify that requirement by saying that this is an obligation that manufacturers already have.”
CBC’s The National reached out to Health Canada, which partly funded the CCSA’s new drinking guidance. In an email, the agency said it recognizes “alcohol use presents a significant public health and safety issue that affects individuals and communities across Canada,” adding, “we look forward to receiving the updated guidance developed by the Canadian Centre on Substance Use and Addiction and reviewing any recommendations.”
Public support may be growing. According to the Canadian Cancer Society, a survey they led in February 2022 found that eight out of 10 Canadians support adding warning labels or health messaging on alcohol containers.
Is your drinking risky? Why there’s a big push for warning labels
There’s overwhelming evidence that alcohol causes cancer, and yet most people are unaware of the risks that come with drinking even a small amount. CBC’s Ioanna Roumeliotis breaks down the latest information and the growing push for mandatory warning labels.
‘I just didn’t know’
As efforts to educate Canadians about the risk grow, the political pressure is heating up, too.
“The thing that stands out most to me is the amount of people who have said, you know, I just didn’t know, I didn’t know that alcohol was a Class 1 carcinogen,” said Lisa Marie Barron, a New Democrat MP from Nanaimo, B.C.
“If they don’t have that information, how can they best make the decisions that fit them? I had somebody tell me, you know what, I might second guess that second drink.”
Barron forwarded a motion in the House of Commons last June calling for a national warning label strategy. Drinking has been glamorized, she says, but her past work in addictions exposed her to how harmful the effects can be. Ottawa, not the industry, should dictate what Canadians know, Barron said.
“Right now it’s left to the industry to decide what Canadians should or shouldn’t know on the bottles,” Barron said, adding her bill could help move the labelling conversation forward. “I’m trying to turn that around and say it’s federal responsibility to ensure that Canadians have this information, and here’s one tool for us to be able to get that moving forward.”
And the pressure is heating up on another political front too. Senator Patrick Brazeau, a non-affiliated senator from Quebec, introduced a bill in the senate last fall proposing an amendment to the Food and Drug Act to require what he calls “honest labelling.”
Brazeau says his own experience with addiction was a devastating lesson.
“I know that alcohol causes a lot of hurt,” he said, “and this is just my way of trying to give back.”
Sen. Patrick Brazeau is pictured in Ottawa in October 2022. He introduced a bill in the senate last fall proposing an amendment to the Food and Drug Act to require what he calls ‘honest labelling.’ (Ousama Farag/CBC)
It’s up to Ottawa to lead the charge for all Canadians, Brazeau said.
“If they’re serious about following science, well here’s the science. Alcohol causes at least seven types of cancer and now it’s up to the federal government to be bold. To take a strong stance and have the moral courage to say exactly that.”
Brazeau says no matter how much opposition he faces, he’s in it for the long-haul — whether it takes months, years or even a new government.
“I know that the industry is very powerful and they have a lot of resources,” he said.
“But you know this is not a fight against the industry, it’s a fight against cancer and this is a fight that I’m willing to take on.”
Nova Scotia RCMP say their investigation into two suspicious deaths earlier this month has concluded that one man died by homicide and the other by suicide.
The bodies of two men, aged 40 and 73, were found in a home in Windsor, N.S., on Sept. 3.
Police say the province’s medical examiner determined the 40-year-old man was killed and the 73-year-old man killed himself.
They say the two men were members of the same family.
No arrests or charges are anticipated, and the names of the deceased will not be released.
RCMP say they will not be releasing any further details out of respect for the family.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Sept. 16, 2024.
For the first time in their history, members of the Cree community of Nemaska received a visit from a sitting Quebec premier on Sunday and were able to share first-hand the story of how they were displaced by a hydroelectric project in the 1970s.
François Legault was greeted in Nemaska by men and women who arrived by canoe to re-enact the founding of their new village in the Eeyou Istchee James Bay region, in northern Quebec, 47 years ago. The community was forced in the early 1970s to move from its original location because members were told it would be flooded as part of the Nottaway-Broadback-Rupert hydro project.
The reservoir was ultimately constructed elsewhere, but by then the members of the village had already left for other places, abandoning their homes and many of their belongings in the process.
George Wapachee, co-author of the book “Going Home,” said community members were “relocated for nothing.”
“We didn’t know what the rights were, or who to turn to,” he said in an interview. “That turned us into refugees and we were forced to abandon the life we knew.”
Nemaska’s story illustrates the challenges Legault’s government faces as it looks to build new dams to meet the province’s power needs, which are anticipated to double by 2050. Legault has promised that any new projects will be developed in partnership with Indigenous people and have “social acceptability,” but experts say that’s easier said than done.
François Bouffard, an associate professor of electrical engineering at McGill University, said the earlier era of hydro projects were developed without any consideration for the Indigenous inhabitants living nearby.
“We live in a much different world now,” he said. “Any kind of hydro development, no matter where in Quebec, will require true consent and partnership from Indigenous communities.” Those groups likely want to be treated as stakeholders, he added.
Securing wider social acceptability for projects that significantly change the landscape — as hydro dams often do — is also “a big ask,” he said. The government, Bouchard added, will likely focus on boosting capacity in its existing dams, or building installations that run off river flow and don’t require flooding large swaths of land to create reservoirs.
Louis Beaumier, executive director of the Trottier Energy Institute at Polytechnique Montreal, said Legault’s visit to Nemaska represents a desire for reconciliation with Indigenous people who were traumatized by the way earlier projects were carried about.
Any new projects will need the consent of local First Nations, Beaumier said, adding that its easier to get their blessing for wind power projects compared to dams, because they’re less destructive to the environment and easier around which to structure a partnership agreement.
Beaumier added that he believes it will be nearly impossible to get the public — Indigenous or not — to agree to “the destruction of a river” for a new dam, noting that in recent decades people have come to recognize rivers as the “unique, irreplaceable riches” that they are.
Legault’s visit to northern Quebec came on Sept. 15, when the community gathers every year to remember the founding of the “New Nemaska,” on the shores of Lake Champion in the heart of the boreal forest, some 1,500 kilometres from Montreal. Nemaska Chief Clarence Jolly said the community invited Legault to a traditional feast on Sunday, and planned to present him with Wapachee’s book and tell him their stories.
The book, published in 2022 along with Susan Marshall, is filled with stories of Nemaska community members. Leaving behind sewing machines and hunting dogs, they were initially sent to two different villages, Wapachee said.
In their new homes, several of them were forced to live in “deplorable conditions,” and some were physically and verbally abused, he said. The new village of Nemaska was only built a few years later, in 1977.
“At this time, families were losing their children to prison-schools,” he said, in reference to the residential school system. “Imagine the burden of losing your community as well.”
Thomas Jolly, a former chief, said he was 15 years old when he was forced to leave his village with all his belongings in a single bag.
Meeting Legault was important “because have to recognize what happened and we have to talk about the repercussions that the relocation had on people,” he said, adding that those effects are still felt today.
Earlier Sunday, Legault was in the Cree community of Eastmain, where he participated in the official renaming of a hydro complex in honour of former premier Bernard Landry. At the event, Legault said he would follow the example of his late predecessor, who oversaw the signing of the historic “Paix des Braves” agreement between the Quebec government and the Cree in 2002.
He said there is “significant potential” in Eeyou Istchee James Bay, both in increasing the capacity of its large dams and in developing wind power projects.
“Obviously, we will do that with the Cree,” he said.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Sept. 16, 2024.
NEMASKA – For the first time in their history, members of the Cree community of Nemaska received a visit from a sitting Quebec premier on Sunday and were able to share first-hand the story of how they were displaced by a hydroelectric project in the 1970s.
François Legault was greeted in Nemaska by men and women who arrived by canoe to re-enact the founding of their new village in the Eeyou Istchee James Bay region, in northern Quebec, 47 years ago. The community was forced in the early 1970s to move from their original location because they were told it would be flooded as part of the Nottaway-Broadback-Rupert hydro project.
The reservoir was ultimately constructed elsewhere, but by then the members of the village had already left for other places, abandoning their homes and many of their belongings in the process.
George Wapachee, co-author of the book “Going Home,” said community members were “relocated for nothing.”
“We didn’t know what the rights were, or who to turn to,” he said in an interview. “That turned us into refugees and we were forced to abandon the life we knew.”
The book, published in 2022 by Wapachee and Susan Marshall, is filled with stories of Cree community members. Leaving behind sewing machines and hunting dogs, they were initially sent to two different villages, 100 and 300 kilometres away, Wapachee said.
In their new homes, several of them were forced to live in “deplorable conditions,” and some were physically and verbally abused, he said. The new village of Nemaska was only built a few years later, in 1977.
“At this time, families were losing their children to prison-schools,” he said, in reference to the residential school system. “Imagine the burden of losing your community as well.”
Legault’s visit came on Sept. 15, when the community gathers every year to remember the founding of the “New Nemaska,” on the shores of Lake Champion in the heart of the boreal forest, some 1,500 kilometres from Montreal. Nemaska Chief Clarence Jolly said the community invited Legault to a traditional feast on Sunday, and planned to present him with Wapachee’s book and tell him their stories.
Thomas Jolly, a former chief, said he was 15 years old when he was forced to leave his village with all his belongings in a single bag.
Meeting Legault was important “because have to recognize what happened and we have to talk about the repercussions that the relocation had on people,” he said, adding that those effects are still felt today.
Earlier Sunday, Legault had been in the Cree community of Eastmain, where he participated in the official renaming of a hydro dam in honour of former premier Bernard Landry.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Sept. 16, 2024.
