Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I, too, will be supporting the motion, and I would like to thank Mr. Bromley for bringing it forward. I think this is a no-brainer. When you go into a community and you see $16 for two litres of milk and you expect people on low income or income support clients to make a choice between spending $16 for two litres of milk, or in some cases $3.50 for a can of pop…. We have to realize that with the high cost of living in our communities, it is a very expensive commodity in a lot of our communities. In the larger centres it may not be that way. In order to stretch our dollars as far as we can, by implementing this motion, it will improve the quality of life for children in our communities.
Yes, we do have a problem when we start seeing our children walking around the communities who are just starting to walk, and they’ve got a can of pop in one hand and candy or chips in the other. It makes you wonder what the condition of that child is going to be in the next ten or 15 years and the high rates of sugar diabetes that we are seeing in regard to our population. A lot of that stems from exactly the food that’s being provided and choices people are making. If this can help by offsetting the high costs in our communities, I am fully in support of it.
Mr. Speaker, as a government we also have to look at other jurisdictions throughout the North, such as Iceland and Greenland. They have implemented a sugar tax on products that come into their jurisdiction which have high traces of sugar. We tax fuel products; we tax tobacco. I think there’s no reason why we shouldn’t consider that as an option — taxing items that carry high traces of sugar. Everybody knows there are nine teaspoons of sugar in one can of pop, and again, that’s something we should be made aware. So I will be fully supporting this motion, and I think it is a good motion going forward.