Regulations Amending the Tobacco Products Information Regulations

The  Regulations Amending the Tobacco Products Information Regulations serve three main purposes:

• to remove the application of the Tobacco Products Information Regulations (TPIR) to cigarettes and little cigars;
• to respond to issues identified by Parliament's Standing Joint Committee on Scrutiny of Regulations (SJCSR); and,
• to remove the obligation to list numerical values for toxic emissions.

The TPIR, in place since 2000, established the requirements for information that must be displayed on tobacco product packages that are for retail sale in Canada.

The Tobacco Products Labelling Regulations (Cigarettes and Little Cigars) (TPLR-CLC), which came into force in September 2011, specify new labelling requirements for health warnings, health information messages and toxic emissions statements on cigarette and little cigar packages. Therefore, the regulations amending the TPIR remove the applicability of the TPIR to those tobacco products.

The amendments to the TPIR also address issues that have been identified by the SJCSR with respect to redundant language, clarity and consistency and to errors in terminology. Furthermore, the numerical values for toxic emissions will be removed in response to research conducted for Health Canada that indicates that they are not clearly understood by some smokers.