- Member of Parliament
- Member of the National Security and Intelligence Committee of Parliamentarians
- NDP
- Vancouver Kingsway
- British Columbia
- Voting Attendance: 58%
- Expenses Last Quarter: $153,893.57
- Government Page
Madam Speaker, I am pleased to rise today and support this bill at second reading, Bill C-252, which would amend the Food and Drugs Act to prohibit marketing foods and beverages that contribute to excess sugar, saturated fats or sodium in children's diets in a manner that is directed primarily at persons who are under 13 years of age.
Poor nutrition and unhealthy food and beverages are key contributors to poor health in children. Good eating habits and avoiding unhealthy food are key preventative elements of health policy, not only for our children but for generations to come. New Democrats have been calling for a ban on junk food advertising targeted at children for many years. We believe that it is wrong to let wealthy corporations manipulate our children's eating habits, particularly to the detriment of their health.
New Democrats want every child in Canada to develop a healthy relationship to nutrition and the foods they consume. We are calling for the establishment of a national school nutrition program to give every student access to healthy, nutritious food and to make healthy eating a daily lesson for our kids.
The data is clear. Numerous studies have found strong associations between increases in advertising of non-nutritious foods and rates of childhood obesity. One study by Yale University found that children exposed to junk food advertising ate 45% more junk food than children not exposed to such advertisements. In Canada, as much as 90% of the food marketed to children and youth on TV and online is unhealthy.
By way of background, there is strong agreement among leading Canadian pediatric and allied health organizations that the impact of food and beverage marketing is real, significant and harmful to children's development. Marketing to children has changed dramatically in the last 10 to 15 years as well. Today, it is a seamless, sophisticated and often interactive process. The line between ads and children's entertainment has blurred with marketing messages being inserted into the places that children play and learn. Three-quarters of children in Canada are exposed to food marketing while using their favourite social media applications.
Canadians are the second-largest buyers of ultraprocessed foods and drinks in the world, second only to, of course, the Americans. To give members an idea of how epidemic this problem is, nearly one in three Canadian children is overweight or obese. The rise in childhood obesity in recent decades is linked to changes in our eating habits. Overweight children are more likely to develop health problems later in life, including heart disease, type 2 diabetes and high blood pressure.
Canada's New Democrats, as I have said, have advocated for a ban on unhealthy food and beverage marketing to children for a long time. In 2012, my colleague from New Westminster—Burnaby introduced legislation to expressly prohibit advertising and promotion for commercial purposes of products, food, drugs, cosmetics or devices directed to children under 13 years of age. As members can see, this is a much broader prohibition that would protect our children not only from unhealthy food but from being preyed upon by multinational corporations who would take advantage of their youth.
Quebec has prohibited commercial advertising that targets children under the age of 13 since 1980. Other jurisdictions have since adopted similar legislation, including Norway, United Kingdom, Ireland and Sweden. Quebec's restrictions on advertising to children have been shown to have a positive impact on nutrition by reducing fast food consumption by 13%. This translates to 16.8 million fewer fast food meals sold in that province and an estimated 13.4 million fewer fast food calories consumed per year. Quebec also has the lowest rates of obesity among five- to 17-year-olds as well as the highest rates of vegetable and fruit consumption in Canada.
In 2016, Senator Nancy Greene Raine introduced the child health protection act that was S-228. That legislation would have banned the marketing of unhealthy food and beverages in a manner that is primarily directed at children under 17 years of age, a higher age than this bill would set. At the House Standing Committee on Health, the Liberals amended Bill S-228 to reduce the age limit from under 17 years old to under 13 years old and they added a five-year legislative review.
Although Bill S-228 passed third reading in both the House and the Senate, unfortunately that bill died on the Order Paper when Parliament was dissolved for the 2019 federal election. Again, Bill C-252 is similar to that Senate bill, with the following key differences. Again, the current bill would set the age that would prohibit advertising at under 13 years of age, where the Senate bill was under 17 years of age. There is also a change in definition. The current bill says, “no person shall advertise foods and beverages that contribute to excess sugar, saturated fats or sodium in children’s diets in a manner that is directed primarily at persons who are under 13 years of age.” The Senate bill just said, “no person shall advertise unhealthy food in a manner that is directed primarily at children.”
Finally, of course, this bill before us today has, once again, a five-year review that would focus on whether, after this bill became law, there was an increase in the advertising of foods and beverages that contribute to excess sugar, saturated fats or sodium in children's diets in a manner that is directed primarily at persons who are 13 to 16 years of age.
I want to pause for a moment there and make a comment on that. There is a healthy debate on this bill about what the proper age should be set at. Again, the Senate bill was more ambitious and said not to let advertisers advertise to children under 17. This is under 13, and one of the concerns, of course, is that advertisers, who are extraordinarily sophisticated as we are talking about large multinational multi-billion dollar conglomerates that make a lot of money peddling chocolate, sugary beverages, etc., to children, will instead shift and focus their advertising on 14- to 17-year olds. I think this is a healthy way to compromise, by having a study that would monitor it carefully to see if, in fact, that does happen, because if it does then this House could then adjust our legislation in five years on an empirical basis to cure that mischief.
The previous health minister's mandate letter did direct her to “introduce new restrictions on the commercial marketing of food and beverages to children”. The current health minister's 2021 mandate letter instructed him as well to support “restrictions on the commercial marketing of food and beverages to children.” The Liberal 2021 platform pledged to “Introduce new restrictions on the commercial marketing of food and beverages to children and establish new front-of-package labelling to promote healthy food choices.”
We are happy, then, to see this legislation before the House. Unfortunately, it is done through private members' legislation and not, as stated repeatedly in the mandate letters and in the Liberal platform, by the government itself. No matter; as long as it passes, that is what is important. However, it is curious that the current LIberal government has not kept its word in its mandate letters and in its platform, and introduced legislation itself.
Industry organizations, including the Association of Canadian Advertisers, the Canadian Beverage Association, Food and Consumer Products of Canada and Restaurants Canada, have called legislation like this a “significant overreach”. They claim that legislation like this would lead to serious consequences for the economy. On the other side of the coin, Canadian pediatric, child advocacy and other health experts are strong supporters of this bill.
New Democrats want to stand unambiguously on the side of child health and welfare, not corporate profits. We want children to develop a healthy relationship to nutrition and the foods they consume, rather than being manipulated by sophisticated marketing campaigns, especially when it would affect their health.
Over 120 organizations and children's health advocates across Canada have called on the current government to restrict food and beverage marketing to kids. The Stop Marketing to Kids Coalition is governed by 12 steering committee member organizations. They range from the Heart and Stroke Foundation to the Childhood Obesity Foundation, the Canadian Dental Association, the Canadian Cancer Society, Diabetes Canada and Dieticians of Canada.
The pervasive marketing of unhealthy foods is a contributing factor to the growth of childhood and adolescent disease. Sex and gender differences come into play in the design of and responses to these marketing strategies, contributing to the perpetuation of stereotyped behaviour and generating disparities in food choices and health. This particularly hurts girls.
Studies have demonstrated that this intervention, as is presented in this bill, would result in both overall cost savings and improved long-term health outcomes, with the greatest benefits of all to the most socio-economically disadvantaged.
Let us do this for our children.
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- Dec/14/21 11:56:19 a.m.
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- Re: Bill C-5
Madam Speaker, it is a privilege to stand in the House to speak to a bill that is not only a long time coming and not only important to many Canadians, but is one that touches upon a very real and profoundly important issue that touches every community in our nation.
The bill deals with the issue of mandatory minimums and the initiative of the government to remove mandatory minimums for a number of prescribed sentences. It would remove mandatory minimum sentences for all drug offences under the Criminal Code and then some others with respect to tobacco and firearms provisions.
I was in the House when many mandatory minimum sentences were put into the Criminal Code by the previous Harper Conservative government, and our party opposed that approach then and we oppose it now. We do so for a number of reasons. The New Democrats have long opposed the imposition of mandatory minimum sentences in our Criminal Code for all but the most serious of crimes. These are some of the reasons for that position.
First, it is a very blunt tool. It removes the discretion of a judge to shape sentences to suit the specifics of every case. I happen to have been trained as a lawyer, and I spent 16 years litigating cases in the labour setting. I would posit before the House that every single case that comes before a judge is unique. It touches upon unique individuals with unique circumstances and it occurs in very specific circumstances and conditions. The essence of justice is to fashion a resolution that suits the particular circumstances that come before a court.
Politicians should not be sentencing people from this chamber. In our system of government, we have separation of powers, the judiciary separated from the legislative branch, separated from the executive branch, separated from the police force. These are core elements of our modern democracy and they are very important ones.
I am always suspicious of attempts by politicians in the House to try to reach into the courtrooms of our nation to tell judges what to do in a particular situation. What is particularly wrong with mandatory minimums is that they purport to tell judges to sentence a person irrespective of the person before them and the circumstances of that case.
Second, mandatory minimum sentences are routinely ruled as unconstitutional in our country. I think we could safely say that in most cases, mandatory minimum sentences do not comport with our Constitution and our Charter of Rights and Freedoms.
Third, the evidence is crystal clear now that mandatory minimums are a major factor that contributes directly to the overrepresentation of the incarceration of the most marginalized Canadians, including indigenous, racialized and poor people.
As an example, indigenous people make up about 4.9% of our population, but if we were to walk into our prisons, we would find that 30% of the people in prisons are indigenous. With respect to indigenous women, it is even more shockingly appalling that 42% of the women in prisons are indigenous. A major factor contributing to that is the use of mandatory minimum sentences.
Finally, mandatory minimum sentences do not work. I need only point to the United States as the best example for that. The United States locks up the highest percentage of its population of any country in the world, and it has done nothing to reduce the crime rates or the rate of violent offences in the United States. If it were true that the use of mandatory minimum sentences reduced crime, then there would be empirical evidence of that in our neighbour to the south, and it has been proven to be quite the opposite.
In fact, the State of Texas, one of the most tough-on-crime jurisdictions we will find on this planet, has publicly stated that mandatory minimum sentences have not worked. All that has happened is that it has locked up an incredibly high percentage of the population in that state, with no impact on crime rates.
Therefore, I support this measure and I support the bill. Discretionary sentences and diversion from prison are distinctly preferable to mandatory minimum sentences that lock up more Canadians, for longer time, with no positive effect.
However, make no mistake that the bill would do nothing, zero, to address the core problem with our drug policy; that is to treat drug addiction and substance use as health issues, not criminal ones. That is the root cause of the problem with our drug policy. Substance use and addiction are health issues, not criminal ones. They are not moral failings. They are not issues of character. They are pure issues of health. Addiction is a complex biopsychosocial illness. It results in compulsive behaviour that is rooted in trauma. Substance use disorder is listed in the “DSM-5”, which is a diagnostic manual that our medical professionals use.
This is one of those issues where I will say that the general population is far ahead of the politicians of our country and, dare I say, many politicians in the House. That is because no family, not one, is untouched by addiction or substance use disorder. Everyone has a mother or father, a sister or brother, an uncle or aunt, a cousin, a grandparent or maybe even himself or herself, who has suffered from substance use, whether that is alcoholism or addiction. These families know something that is important to acknowledge in the House: Those people who are suffering are not criminals; they are sufferers, they are patients, they are people struggling with an illness.
Dr. Gabor Maté, whom I consider to be an authority of global stature in our country, a great Canadian, has found that the basic cause of addiction is trauma. He is on record as saying that after treating people in the Downtown Eastside of Vancouver for many years, he never treated a single person who did not have significant childhood trauma.
Therefore, what does criminalizing those people do to them? Criminal sanctions are society's way of imposing maximum trauma on citizens. They get accosted by the police. They go through the trauma of arrest. They go into the very serious, intimidating context of a court. They go through a trial. They go to jail. This system is designed to impose the most serious pressure society can possibly impose. In other words, what we do when we criminalize drug policy is we re-traumatize people whose main issue is that they suffer from trauma. That is completely counterintuitive. In fact, it is cruel and it does not work.
If criminalizing drug use worked, we would have eliminated it years ago. We have spent billions of dollars, incarcerated millions of people around the world, harmed tens of millions of people, and achieved nothing. Today, Canada is setting, year after year, record deaths in opioid overdose. Every year since the government was elected in 2015, the death rate has gone up. Since 2016 until 2020, over 17,000 Canadians have died. In B.C., six and a half people die every day.
I will conclude by saying that stigma, shame and punishment are the core emotional issues of those suffering from substance use disorder and criminalizing their behaviour exacerbates and deepens that shame and stigma. We do not need to get rid of mandatory minimum sentences; we need to decriminalize drug use, bring in a regulated low-barrier safe supply, focus on education prevention and a treatment on demand through our public health care system. Then we will make progress on drug policy and use in our country.
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