Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s government has no intention of introducing a tax on sugary beverages to fight obesity, despite calls from within the party to make the initiative part of the Liberal platform.<\/p>\n
“We’ve made it clear during the course of the past few years that adding a tax to sugary beverages was not a part of our healthy eating strategy,” Health Minister\u00a0Ginette Petitpas Taylor told reporters in Ottawa Tuesday.<\/p>\n
Petitpas Taylor said her government will confine itself to the three initiatives it already has announced: updating the Canada Food Guide (which was done earlier this year), banning artificial trans fats and restricting marketing of junk food to kids.<\/p>\n
Her comments came after a group of Ontario Liberal MPs made it clear they want to pitch voters on a \u00a0“sugar sweetened beverages levy” \u2014 more commonly known as a soda tax \u2014 in the coming federal election campaign.<\/p>\n
While the proposal is ranked 18th out of 19 items on a list of Liberal caucus platform priorities obtained by CBC News, several MPs are pushing hard to include it in the platform for the October election.<\/p>\n
They say they want to link it to funding for a program to provide healthy lunches to grade school students nationwide.<\/p>\n
The draft proposal advocates a 20 per cent tax based on an average price for sugary drinks of $2.50 per litre. It also predicts a soda tax could, by reducing obesity, save Canada’s health care system a lot of money.<\/p>\n
The document says the tax itself would raise “almost $1.2 billion,” while the “25-year total tax revenue is an estimated $29.6 billion.<\/p>\n
“The combined health care savings and revenue from a 20 per cent SSB tax over this period would be $36,998,242,299.”<\/p>\n