Looking for a Healthy Change
Like many Canadians, I was expecting some change to come with the election last week but was quite surprised to watch the red wave that started in Atlantic Canada wash across the rest of Canada.
Looking ahead, the Liberal platform offers many opportunities to advance healthy living and chronic disease prevention over the coming years.
Below are a few excerpts from the Liberal platform that relate to healthy living. BCAHL together with our national counterparts at the Chronic Disease Prevention Alliance of Canada (CDPAC) are looking to see how we can support this new government in making these policies more than promises.
Healthier Kids
We will do our part to help Canadian children live healthier lives, with less exposure to known health risks. To help families make better food choices, we will:
- introduce new restrictions on the commercial marketing of unhealthy food and beverages to children, similar to those now in place in Quebec;
- bring in tougher regulations to eliminate trans fats, similar to those in the U.S., and to reduce salt in processed foods; and
- improve food labels to give more information on added sugars and artificial dyes in processed foods.
- We will introduce plain packaging requirements for tobacco products, similar to those in Australia and the United Kingdom.
Health Accord, Home Care & Innovation
Commitment to negotiate a new Health Accord with provinces and territories, including a long-term agreement on funding. As an immediate commitment, we will invest $3 billion, over the next four years.
Stronger Communities:
- We will improve quality of life for millions of Canadians by prioritizing investment in affordable housing, seniors’ facilities, early learning and child care, and cultural and recreational infrastructure (with nearly $20 billion in social infrastructure over ten years)
- We will also work with provinces, territories, and First Nations to create a new National Early Learning and Child Care Framework, to ensure that affordable, high-quality, fully inclusive child care is available to all families who need it.
- We will quadruple federal investment in public transit over the next decade by investing almost $20 billion more.
- We will also provide more help to lower-income Canadians and lift 315,000 Canadian children out of poverty.
- An initial, immediate new investment of $515 million per year in core annual funding for kindergarten through grade 12 education for First Nations (rising to $750 million per year)
- We will invest $50 million in additional annual support to the Post-Secondary Student Support Program, providing additional financial assistance to Indigenous students attending post-secondary education.
What healthy changes are you looking for? Stay tuned…and if you’re really interested you can track the policies on the Trudeau Metre!
Rita Koutsodimos
Manager, Advocacy and Communications
October 29, 2015
