Better eating through tax on salt and sugar

Instead of talking about following Ontario, Prince Edward Island and B.C. starting full day school at age four, in Nunavut we’re talking about wage freezing and locking out kids from their school education.

It’s a sad situation that Nunavut is in, when money can be saved down the road with full-day schooling, starting at four years of age. Studies and research, even dating back to the 1960 show better adjusted kids, more graduating students and the kids doing well in life long after graduation.

The saving is a huge reduction in future spending of $11.30 on crime and incarceration for every $1.00 spent per child in full-day school starting at the age of four.

Now let’s take this same thinking, asking what would be the reduction to Nunavut’s millions of dollars health-travel expenses if all produce was subsidized at a southern entry point, such as Montreal, Winnipeg and Calgary?

For example, wherever you live in Baffin, a pound of grapes or broccoli would be the same price as in Montreal and if you lived in the Kivalliq, produce prices would be the same as in Winnipeg.

To help fund the subsidized produce, a good healthy Nunavut tax should be placed on all high sugar and high sodium foods, because 25 years ago, 75 per cent to 80 per cent of grocery store products never existed.

These southern high sugar and high salt foods may be a big factor in Nunavut’s sky high health care costs today.

I hear today from Nunavut nurses of young people in there 30s who are already on a steady diet of heart and blood pressure medication, something that was unheard of years ago.

Jim MacDonald
Rankin Inlet

Email your letters to editor@nunatsiaq.com.

Nunatsiaq News welcomes letters to the editor. But we are under no obligation to publish any given letter at any given time.

In our print edition, we usually print letters on a first-come, first-served, space-available basis. In our online edition, we usually print letters as soon as we are able to prepare them for publication.

We edit all letters for length, grammar, punctuation, spelling, taste and libel. You may withhold your name by request, but we must know who you are before we publish your letter.