The conventional wisdom is that "Canadians don't know Andrew Scheer" or his policies. It's a phrase that pops up regularly in the press and given that he is relatively new and what policies he has put forward are extremely light on details, that is probably true.
However, the more he opens his mouth, the worse things look, and I think we have now heard enough from him to know him quite well enough. Conservatives always have a tendency to want to turn back the clock to what they think of as the good old days, and what most people realize were actually the bad old days (c.f. Donald Trump, Doug Ford, Jason Kenney, to name just a few currently in power), and Scheer is no exception. It is for this reason that most of their policies tend to involve undoing what progress has already been made, rather than introducing anything new or positive.
Scheer's latest target for negativity is Canada's recently updated Food Guide, which has garnered much praise from scientists and policy-makers at home and abroad. Specifically, he objects to the lack of emphasis on old-style food groups in the new Food Guide, and even more specifically the downplaying of the meat and dairy groups (well, he was talking to the Dairy Farmers of Canada lobby group at the time). Quoth he: "Canadians know that meat and dairy products are an important part of a balanced diet". We-ell, yes and no. "Canadians" now know that the saturated fat in meat and dairy is pretty unhealthy, and that there are many other sources of protein that are just as good or better. Of course, that's not what the Dairy Farmers of Canada and the Canadian Meat Council want to hear, but that's what the science tells us, and that's what the Food Guide tells us.
Scheer seems to find it impossible to believe that the new Food Guide can be accurate because it did not take into account the points of view and wishes of lobby groups like the Dairy Farmers of Canada and the Canadian Meat Council. "The process was flawed - complete lack of consultation". Not actually true, but anyway, that kind of axe-grinding is exactly what the Food Guide people tried to avoid, for the first time EVER, and quite rightly too. As the director of the World Health Organization's Collaborating Centre for Nutrition policy for Chronic Disease Prevention (also a practising professor of nutrition sciences) commented in response to Scheer's allegations of partisanship, "It's irresponsible of him ...What does he want it based on? Not evidence? Lobbying?"
Scheer went on to make the shocking assertion that, "I truly believe that chocolate milk saved my son's life" (that's chocolate milk which has 50g of sugar in a 500ml carton, of which 28g are added sugars). He says that the Guide is "ideologically drive by people who have a philosophical perspective and a bias against certian types of healthy food products". Er, no.
Scheer has vowed to "review" (read, "scrap") the Canada Food Guide at his earliest convenience, as well as to scrap the Liberals' plan to make front-of-package labels mandatory for foods high in sugar, salt and saturated fat, arguing, "The idea that these types of products we've been drinking an eating as human beings for millennia, that now, all of a sudden, they're unhealthy? It's ridiculous!" How scientific is that?
So, whoever Andrew Scheer is, he is clearly in the pockets of industry and lobby groups, to an extent that even Justin Trudeau can't be accused of, and science and common sense obviously have no place in his world view. Do we really want to know him better?
No comments:
Post a Comment