Province urged to tax junk food instead of health premium fee

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This article was published 15/09/2017 (2961 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

The Green party has an alternative to Premier Brian Pallister’s proposal to add a health care premium to people’s income tax payments: tax gummy bears instead.

The party proposes the province impose a 20 per cent tax on sweets and junk food to promote healthier eating, lower health care costs, and avoid an egregious new health care tax.

“It’s not to say many of us, myself included, haven’t enjoyed them: your unhealthy fats, your soft drinks, your chocolate bars,” said James Beddome, leader of the Green Party of Manitoba.

“But (a tax on junk foods) does create a little more reason to pause, and when people do make those decisions to buy junk food we take that revenue and invest in health care.”

The Green party estimates such a tax could raise about $30 million annually.

Pallister announced this week his government is eyeing a new tax to pay for health care services. The tax would be income-based possibly reaching a maximum premium of $900 per year on income taxes.

The premier’s office said the government is not considering a junk food tax.

Todd MacKay, director of the Canadian Taxpayers Federation, said a junk food tax is a bad idea: “It’s a another tax. We can dress it up and put it on different things, but at the end of the day it’s still a tax.”

Asked if he had to choose between a hike in income taxes and a soft drink-junk food tax, MacKay said, “I reject the premise. It’s like picking between two flavours of ice cream when I don’t like ice cream.”

A family earning $75,000 in Manitoba already pays $3,000 more in tax than a family earning the same amount in Saskatchewan, he said. Manitoba has the second highest-funded health care system in the country, said MacKay.

The Green Party tax would add 25-to-30 cents to a 55-gram bag of potato chips selling for $1.39, Beddome said.

“All of us would be wise to say ‘maybe rather than of a bag of chips I’ll pick up a banana or apple instead.'”

Manitoba has among the highest rates of diabetes in the country, and the cost eats up nearly $600 million per year alone out of the health care budget. Diabetes also leads to other ailments like kidney and heart disease.

“There is a clear connection between sugary foods and diabetes. That’s one example we can see where investing in preventative health can save us a lot of money. The cost of dialysis and some of these kidney treatments really add up,” Beddome said.

Ireland, Mexico, Hungary, and France have implemented a 20 per cent tax on sugar-sweetened drinks. American cities Philadelphia, San Francisco and Seattle have added a one-cent-per-ounce tax on soft drinks.

The Green Party would go beyond sugar drinks and add other junk foods like “potato chips, chocolate bars, licorice, gummy bears, that don’t have a lot of nutritional value. So we thought let’s broaden it.”

Beddome said junk foods are already categorized and taxed differently for the purposes of the GST and PST. Adding 20 per cent for the health care tax would be an easy implementation.

He said studies show a 20 per cent tax hike is a tipping point at which you start to influence consumer decisions. “It’s not going to stop people eating junk food but that’s the number where you start to see an impact.”

bill.redekop@freepress.mb.ca