Posted on 04/09/2002 6:14:47 AM PDT by Lorenb420
It's tough to be the Minister of Health. It's not like being Minister of Justice, where you actually get to make laws. The provinces run health care, and also pay for it, and consequently the Minister of Health has nothing much to do.
So Anne McLellan needed a crusade. And she has found one. It is fat. And the enemy is us.
"One of the the things that shocked me when I saw the statistics was that we are a nation, or becoming a nation, of obese people," she declared.
Actually, you don't need to see the statistics. All you need to do is look around. Check the growth curve for McDonald's. Soon, we will be as fat as the Americans, and another cherished national myth will bite the dust.
There's worse. If fat and lazy people don't start exercising, they'll wreck medicare. According to our health officials, "physical inactivity has become a serious health issue, which costs the health-care system at least $2.1-billion annually." Ms. McLellan's goal is to make you get your kids to turn off the computer and exercise an additional 90 minutes a day. By 2003, they estimate this will have reduced the total inactivity of the population by 10 per cent, saving the system $5-billion.
How do they do the math? Beats me. But you get the drift. Being fat is unpatriotic. "If we're all healthy, we won't have to worry about the sustainability of our health-care system," says Ms. McLellan.
Well, if you're not part of the solution then you're part of the problem. And I suspect that I'm among the two-thirds of Canadians who, according to the health police, are not sufficiently active to ensure the sustainability of medicare. God knows, I've tried. But the flesh is weak. Our expensive treadmill (my millennial commitment to the nation) is now a dusty whatnot in a corner of our dining room. "Is that really a treadmill?" people snicker when they come over.
We have a basement full of rusty bikes and in-line skates. Although I belong to Haagen-Dazs Anonymous, where people from all walks of life trade confessions about eating ice cream straight from the carton, I have frequent relapses.
On the other hand, what about our Health Minister? She doesn't exactly fit into her wedding dress, either.
This comment is not gratuitously ad feminam. In Canada, our health ministers have a fine tradition of leading by example. Allan Rock was a notorious jogger, belligerent non-smoker and advocate for prostate tests. Ms. McLellan, not to tell tales out of school, is a closet smoker who looks no more fit than the average overworked middle-aged woman. If she promises to join Weight Watchers with me, I'll sign up tomorrow.
Ms. McLellan may have swiped the idea for her onslaught against fat from the United States, where public health officials have declared that obesity is a national epidemic. They say one in five teenagers is seriously obese, 27 per cent of adults are obese, and another 34 per cent are merely overweight. Fatties now outnumber skinnies by a sizeable majority. In Canada, 35 per cent of boys and 30 per cent of girls are said to be overweight. The trouble is, what, if anything, can be done about it?
Any health minister can stamp out smoking. All you have to do is make it shameful. Even I gave up smoking, once it became lower-class. But no one yet has figured out how to demonize a Quarter Pounder. No one dares to slap a giant surtax on Big Macs, or restrict burger sales to minors, or make junk-food advertising illegal or make you read a warning about Type 2 diabetes and contemplate a skull and crossbones before you scarf down the supersize special. No one makes Big Mac addicts stand outside in the freezing cold to eat.
That day may come. But so far, nagging people to eat their vegetables has proved completely futile.
So the social engineers are trying other incentives. In the United States, you can get a tax break for losing weight. Seriously. Last week the Internal Revenue Service ruled that overweight people can deduct the cost of diet programs and (one hopes) trips to Canyon Ranch. Ms. McLellan should look into this.
Elsewhere, fitness legislation (as opposed to fitness) is breaking out all over. Texas has voted to bring back mandatory gym class. In Denver, the schools are giving kids pedometers, and in New York they're sending notes home telling parents their kids are too fat. In California, they're debating a two-cent tax on soft drinks "to diminish the human and economic costs of obesity in this state."
Meantime, up here in Canada, we've closed swimming pools because we can't afford them and torn down playgrounds because they're unsafe. We're so anxious about bullies and predators that we won't let our kids walk two blocks alone to school. But it probably doesn't matter. If adults don't shape up, the kids won't either.
Would anyone out there like to buy a lightly used treadmill, really cheap?
On the other hand, maybe they are aiming at us having heart attacks and therefore early departure from collecting social security?
Wake up America!
I love it!! Jabba opitomizes in thought, word, and deed the Demorats in Congress.
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