LEONA AGLUKKAQ has the wrong portfolio in Stephen Harper’s cabinet.
The Conservative MP for Nunavut has certainly been acting more as industry — rather than health — minister in ignoring medical research and the recommendations of her own department in refusing to set mandatory limits on trans fat levels in foods eaten by Canadians.
Trans fats have been linked to increased coronary heart disease. The New England Journal of Medicine in 2006 estimated trans fats, which carry "considerable potential harm but no apparent benefit," were behind 30,000 to 100,000 fatal hearts attacks a year in the United States.
Health Canada, in a memo to Ms. Aglukkaq in 2009, said strict limits on trans fat content in foods would save the health care system as much as $9 billion, while also preventing 12,000 heart attack deaths, over 20 years.
No matter, Ms. Aglukkaq apparently decided. The comparative cost to the food industry — an estimated $200 million in added expenses — was a deal breaker since it would increase the "regulatory burden."
The health minister, faced with a food additive with no beneficial health effects — but lots of positive ones for food producers, like lower production costs, longer shelf lives and better tasting products — seems to have chosen to sacrifice Canadian lives, and huge savings for a health system she supposedly represents, to instead cater to industry’s bottom line.
We’re as adverse to nanny-statism as anyone, but this is a clear case of the health minister refusing to limit a health threat within the food supply of Canadians, purely for reasons of profit for industry. Trans fats have no nutritional value, but plenty of impact as a wrecker of lives.
Ms. Aglukkaq’s outrageous retreat from her own government’s previous position — the food industry was given two years, back in 2007, to voluntarily reduce trans fats to lower levels or face regulations — could also mean at least some progress achieved will now be lost.
After all, the health minister has indicated Ottawa will not wield a big stick on this issue, despite the cost to Canadians’ health.
For shame.
