Mr. Speaker, I believe that Canadians deserve to know what is in the food they eat. While I agree that a healthy diet is more a matter of education and individual choice than it is the heavy hand of state regulation and control, the government does have a role to play in ensuring that the food we eat is safe.
For instance, we now know that trans fats, hydrogenated vegetable oils, are really bad for us, yet they are nearly everywhere in the processed foods that we eat. The New England Journal of Medicine states that just one gram a day of trans fats increases the risk of heart disease by 20%. The average Canadian eats over ten grams per day. The recommended daily intake, by the way, is zero.
But when I asked this Minister of Health and the previous minister what steps were being taken to eliminate trans fats from our diet, their replies suggested that the government is not willing to do anything to eliminate this toxic garbage from our food, and “toxic” is the terminology used by the food scientists with regard to trans fats. The government is not willing to do anything to remove these toxins from our food as long as the food is properly labelled.
In other words, our Minister of Health is leaving it up to Canadians as to whether or not to feed poison to their children. Furthermore, our Minister of Health is giving the food companies up to five years to rewrite their labels and, amazingly--get this--baby food is exempt. I am sure the House will be shocked to learn that baby food will not in fact be labelled at all even though there are high contents of trans fats in baby food.
My problem with labelling as it pertains to the context of this particular private member's bill is that most people do not read the labels on the processed food that they eat. In fact, studies have shown that 70% of people pay no attention to the labels on the processed food they buy. Of the remaining 30%, many would not or could not comprehend the technical data that they read in the fine print. In other words, labels have no editorial content. Labels simply say that this product contains x amount of trans fats. They do not say, “And that's too much, so don't eat it”.
It is ludicrous, by the way, to think that we should mandate labelling on food to advise people not to eat it because it is poisonous, or in other words, allow the manufacturers to put toxins in our food and then mandate labelling to educate Canadians to not eat this food. It is simply ludicrous, really, when we think about it.
I raise this issue partly because I believe there is a class issue here. I believe that low income people are more vulnerable to this trans fats hazard to our health than anyone else. Frankly, in my opinion, and I represent a low income riding, it takes a fair amount of economic stability and economic security to eat properly and to eat well. Many of the people in my riding do not have a car to use to drive out to a supermarket where they can buy large amounts of whole foods and unprocessed foods. They end up spending their low incomes in corner stores and 7-Elevens and buying more pre-packaged and processed foods because their economic instability leads to an unstable household where a balanced diet and regular meals are not the norm.
I believe for all these reasons that high-flown arguments about informed choice are irrelevant in the context of labelling foods. Yes, people should be aware of the nutritional value of the foods they eat, but not everyone is able to make an informed choice no matter what kind of labelling is on the side of packages.
Other countries have effectively banned trans fats from their food supply. There are healthy alternate choices that do not compromise either quality or taste. I believe it is the role of government to tell the industry to stop using trans fats. In fact, I will go further. It is the role of government to help the industry stop using trans fats. I would fully support the government using research and development grants to assist the food processing industry to find other healthy choices. I would welcome that. There would be no criticism from this sector of the House if some of the technology partnership loans money were used, or research and development grants were used, or if the National Research Council were asked to assist industry in a special project to develop alternative sources of fats and oils for food manufacturers to use.
In fact, that would have been a sensible answer to the question I asked in question period today. I was stonewalled by the current Minister of Health. He simply said that mandatory labelling would be enough and that we should not be concerned. I do not accept that. I think that we now know enough about trans fatty acids: they should not be labelled, they should be eliminated.
Denmark has taken steps to do just that. We cannot ban trans fats outright. I will be the first to admit that. There is some naturally occurring trans fat, especially in dairy products. What Denmark did, and what I recommend Canada do, is regulate the amount of allowable trans fats in foods to no more than 2% of the total amount of fat in that food product. The scientists agree that this would represent a trace level of trans fats that would likely simply pass through the body and would not represent a real health risk.
We know that these trans fatty acids are extremely bad for us, especially for our children. They are forcing up Canada's rate of obesity, which is virtually epidemic in the current generation. We have record levels of diabetes, traced directly to trans fats, and as I said, heart disease is up exponentially. The New England Journal of Medicine says it believes that trans fats are even a contributing factor in Alzheimer's disease as well.
So get rid of them, right? That is the logical thing to do, but again, the frustrating thing in my mind is that when I have approached the government, two successive ministers of health have refused to even contemplate regulating and getting rid of them. The only thing that my staff and I can think of as a reason why the government would be reluctant to ban them is that it is worried about a NAFTA challenge. It is worried about chapter 11 of NAFTA. The Government of Canada could be sued by a corporation for lost opportunity if we pass regulations that may affect doing business. I would hate to think that would be the determining factor.
The other factor, of course, is our Constitution. Not many people realize that margarine is a constitutional issue, but if they look at the British North America Act, they will see that Canada must be the only country in the world that has two paragraphs dedicated to oleo margarine in our Constitution, due to John Crosbie and his family and the terms of union for Newfoundland joining Confederation, but that is another story.
Walter Willett, the chairman of the Department of Nutrition of Harvard University and the author of some of the most damning studies about trans fats, has said that hydrogenated vegetable oil, the process by which trans fats are created, is the biggest food processing disaster in history. Harvard University estimates that 33,000 deaths per year can be directly attributed to trans fats.
Trans fats are the biggest single public health issue since the war on tobacco, yet we are not taking it seriously and it can be solved with the snap of a finger at no cost. At no cost, the government could protect the well-being of a whole future generation of Canadians by eliminating trans fats.
We do have Voortman cookies. I want to take a minute to compliment the industry on the efforts it is making too, because no one argues the fact these trans fats are silent killers. Not a single food scientist in North America or in the world, in fact, argues that. Even the industry is not denying that these are silent killers.
Voortman Cookies produces 120 product lines. As of March 2004 every one of the Voortman Cookies product lines will be trans fat free. Mr. Voortman's daughter is a food scientist and, to her great credit and his great credit, she lobbied him and he agreed that he would eliminate trans fats. It took him three years to find an alternative that does not affect quality or taste, but he found it and he is implementing it in his product line.
We want all products manufactured in Canada to be trans fat free. We also want all products imported to Canada for sale to consumers to be trans fat free. We also want restaurant foods to be trans fat free. The only way to do that is to regulate it so that no one can sell any product to any consumer that contains more than 2% of total volume of fats as trans fats. That is the subject here.
While I acknowledge that the original intent here is that Canadians deserve to know what is in the food they eat, my view is that labelling is inadequate when we are dealing with a known toxin. It is not okay to put poison in our food as long it is properly labelled. That is crazy, frankly.