In November 2025 I spoke to a committee of the Canadian Senate that was contemplating Bill S-202, which would mandate warning labels on alcohol containers.
I was on a panel that was supposed to be industry people, but I spoke as an independent citizen.
I’m not going to revisit that fun experience here, but wanted to refer to it because…. it’s BA-ACK
It’s currently going through its third reading . If it passes, it goes to the House of Commons
Given the current debatable state of research on cancer “causation” and alcohol, it is most definitely an excessive measure. I’d say go head put nutrition labels on booze (spirits are more harmful but lower calories so there is that issue), and if you need to, sure put standard drink amounts (although I think that can be productive of a certain discourse of control so misleading in itself).
But if you’re going to do cancer warnings, the information should be balanced against health benefits.
And I’m not talking about cardiovascular protective effects or the crazy protective effects vs diabetes. Believe it or not, some good research shows alcohol has protective effects vs. kidney, bladder, and lymphatic cancers. I’m not sure why that doesn’t come up in the [anti-]alcohol research, but I have my suspicions that it’s something to do with their perception of “the rigour” of the research.
If that is the case, here is something else to think about: the Yukon alcohol labelling study that so many people refer to as showing real impact of labels was terrible. It was cancelled early, it did not gather useful information, and it was designed to cover not even an entire year of purchasing data. That means you don’t track the ebbs and flows of purchasing patterns across a year. Since the study was cancelled in December or January, its data covers a specific purchasing pattern basically the binges up to New Years and the drying out pattern in January.
However, they published over a dozen research papers (mostly repetitive) which means when you do a search to research the effects of alcohol labels, their results show up. This eclipses better research on the limited effect of labelling in general and the problems with overly-restrictive labelling language.
Ironically, when Tim Stockwell was talking to Felicity Carter about his research, he kept referring to every study that contradicted or complicated his results as poorly done or bad studies. I guess he would know, because he was involved in the v Yukon labelling study.
(At this point someone would point out that the study was interrupted by the drinks industry, but that is a red herring that helps to demonstrate my point. The very fact that it was interrupted means that the study was weakened. The industry action made the study more visible, so you don’t get clean data when asking people if they noticed the labels. With the amount of exposure the study and controversy had in the media, people would be more likely to remember the labels–and one of the questions people were asked was whether they had noticed the labels. In other words, the integrity of a study that was already of questionable design was corrupted. But they still published a lot.)
Anyway, all this to say that the bill is heading to third reading.
I’ll be frank and note that I don’t really care how this affects the industry. The industry can look after itself.
I am most certainly concerned about how a limited and incomplete picture of health effects of drinking will affect everyday people who just want a drink unharassed by histrionic and narrowly focused information.
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