44th Parl. 1st Sess.
September 27, 2022 10:00AM
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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Madam Speaker, I am pleased to rise in the House today in support of my private member's bill, Bill C-252, known as the child health protection act, which aims to help the youngest and most impressionable Canadians maintain and improve their health by restricting the advertisement of certain foods to them. I am confident that hon. members in this chamber can agree on the harms that diets with excessive amounts of sugar, sodium and saturated fats can have on the health of Canadians.
Research has shown time and again that unhealthy diets with excessive consumption of these nutrients of concern are linked to a higher lifetime risk of obesity, high blood pressure, diabetes and other chronic diseases. We also know that developing healthy eating habits early in life is important to help protect children from developing these health problems in adulthood.
Each year, hundreds of millions of dollars are spent on food advertising in Canada by the food and beverage industry. Evidence shows that food advertising strongly influences children's food preferences and consumption patterns. Children in Canada are exposed to thousands of food advertisements every year across their daily settings and, unfortunately, most of these ads are for foods that contain excess sodium, sugar or saturated fats.
Opportunities to advertise to children have expanded with television and digital media. Children today are more digitally connected than ever before. Their screen time has increased and advertising directly to them has become easier. Tackling chronic diseases and maintaining public health is a whole-of-society issue and everyone has a role to play.
Since 2007, some of the largest food and beverage companies in Canada have been self-regulating certain types of food advertising to children. Recognizing that the current self-regulatory initiative did not go far enough, some industry associations have recently introduced a code. The code outlines criteria that the food and beverage industry will use to determine which advertisements are considered primarily directed at children, and it is the same industry that will determine the nutrient criteria in order to assess which foods are subject to the self-regulatory restrictions.
Although the proposed code is a step forward, it clearly demonstrates that the industry acknowledges the health consequences that food advertising can have on children. However, let us be clear. We know that voluntary codes are not enough to tackle and solve the issue. The first challenge of solely relying on industry self-regulation is simply that they are voluntary in nature. This allows restaurants, food companies and advertisers to abstain from signing on or simply to withdraw their adhesion at their convenience.
Also, criteria used for these codes often omit to stipulate important advertising techniques, tactics and sources of exposure that are known to appeal to and/or influence children. There is also a lack of transparency in the enforcement of these codes with no enforceable sanctions for non-compliance and, more importantly, it does not provide an independent monitoring.
It is clear from experience that self-regulatory initiatives do not go far enough to safeguard the health of our children. Canada's experience with industry-led self-regulatory initiatives have been similar to those of the United States, Australia, the United Kingdom and Spain. Research in each of these jurisdictions has clearly shown that self-regulatory marketing codes have limited impacts in curtailing children's exposure to the marketing of food and beverage products. Consequently, the U.K. and Spain are pursuing new mandatory restrictions following the observed limited impact of self-regulatory initiatives. This government agrees and believes industry self-regulation is not enough to protect children from being exposed to the harmful and incessant advertising of certain foods.
The Minister of Health's mandate includes a commitment to protect vulnerable populations, including our children, from a range of harms, such as the stream of commercial messaging and endorsements that trigger the most basic eating instincts, especially for foods containing excess levels of sodium, sugars and saturated fats. Supporting Bill C-252 is well aligned with this commitment and will help address many of the shortcomings of the current landscape of the industry-led self-regulating codes.
Our children, just like the one that is in the gallery with us today, are our priority and concrete action is needed now in order to ensure that they are not subject to and do not succumb to the aggressive advertising of foods that contain excess levels of nutrients of concern and that pose unnecessary risks to their health and the health of future generations.
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