I appreciate that.
I will resume where I was in the interest of more time for questions and answers.
Our recommendations involve both taxation and tax relief depending on the nutrient profiles of food. The federal government currently collects about $2 billion in tax revenue from GST on food. At present, the Excise Tax Act appears to partly acknowledge the importance of nutrition by imposing taxes on soft drinks, candy, and snack food, but promotes unhealthy diets by taxing low-fat milk and vegetable dishes when sold in restaurants, as well as club soda, salads, vegetable and fruit trays, and small bottles of water when sold in retail stores. Meanwhile, many unhealthy foods sold in retail stores are tax free, like sugary breakfast cereals, trans-fat-laden shortening, high saturated fat cheese, chicken wings, coffee cream, and even unhealthy luxury foods like salty caviar.
The federal government should consider whether economic disincentives to choose healthy foods and tax relief on health-eroding foods comport with this or any government's commitment to reduce the burden of chronic disease. Quite frankly, tax incentives should be smart, not dumb. They should prevent disease and promote efficiency, not prevent efficiency and promote disease.
A British epidemiologist estimated that applying his country's 17.5% value-added tax to foods high in saturated fat would help prevent between 1,800 and 2,500 heart attack deaths per year in the United Kingdom. Researchers examining conditions in the United States, Denmark, Tanzania, China, and Norway have lent credence to the potential of tax/price incentives as a means to help achieve population-level dietary change. In short, sensibly designed food tax incentives could help internalize the costs of food choices and promote nutritious eating.
I want to speak for a moment about the potential regressive effects. The average Canadian individual now spends about $56 per year paying GST on food purchases. In 2006-07, the GST credit reimburses $354 to the average single individual earning $20,000 per year and $708 to a family of four with the same income. These rebates could be increased by a few dollars per person to offset further regressive effects, if any, of GST reform or increased even more ambitiously to help reduce food insecurity.
This committee should also be concerned about federal corporate tax incentives that undermine Health Canada's national nutrition promotion goals such as permissible deductions from taxable revenue for advertising expenses to promote junk food, or film production credits that support, for example, children's television programs that teach children how to count using lollipops or ice cream cones.
In conclusion, policy-makers must consider the causes of the causes of diet-related diseases, including, but not limited to, rising rates of obesity, and then focus on solutions that the best available evidence indicates will produce population health benefits.
Thank you, Mr. Chair.