Government shakes off NDP salt bill

Legislation based on its own study group’s advice

Health Minister Leona Aglukkaq said Friday the government will oppose legislation that would require her to implement recommendations of her own expert panel aimed at getting Canadians to use less salt.

A private member’s bill from NDP health critic Libby Davies, debated at second reading in the House of Commons on Friday, calls on Aglukkaq to act on the advice of members of the Sodium Working Group, convened by her predecessor, Tony Clement, to devise a strategy to reduce the sodium intake of Canadians.

Most of the recommendations, developed by industry representatives, public-health experts and Health Canada bureaucrats, have been collecting dust since the group presented Aglukkaq with its recommendations in 2010.

“It’s not a strategy I came up with, it’s a strategy that already exists. It was developed by the expert Sodium Working Group in 2010,” Davies told MPs Friday.

“The federal government must demonstrate its leadership and follow through on the incredible body of work and the plan that’s been produced. That, to me, is a duty … it is a public responsibility and anything less than that is a cop-out.”

Recommendations to reduce the average sodium intake from about 3,400 milligrams per person per day to 2,300 mg by 2016 included: ❚ a consumer education campaign; ❚ a monitoring plan and public database to track if food products meet specific reduction targets; ❚ new regulations to force companies to use uniform serving sizes in the nutritional fact boxes on food packages and require industry calculations of a product’s percentage of recommended daily sodium consumption be based on a benchmark of 1,500 mg rather than the current 2,400 mg. Health Canada’s recommended daily intake level is 1,500 mg.

Aglukkaq has maintained she supports the goal of meeting the reduction target. She said Friday, however, that she doesn’t accept the proposed way to achieve that goal.

Without the backing of the federal cabinet, the NDP will need the support of Tory backbenchers to secure the bill’s passage. The Liberal caucus is expected to vote in favour of the bill, but the two opposition parties don’t have enough votes to get legislation passed in the House of Commons.

Aglukkaq said in a statement Friday that the bill calls for the creation of “a massive new bureaucracy called the Sodium Registry,” requiring a variety of companies — from family bakeries to restaurants — “to register with the government how much salt they put in their food.”

The private member’s bill, supported by the Canadian Medical Association and 40 other health groups and experts, is the latest move to press the government on the sodium file after Aglukkaq disbanded the expert panel at the end of 2010, preventing it from setting up a monitoring system to track industry progress through 2016.

The Sodium Working Group pressed for action by citing research estimating that a decrease in the average sodium intake to about 1,800 mg per day would prevent 23,500 cardiovascular disease events every year, resulting in direct health-care savings of $1.38 billion per year.