Leona Aglukkaq should be bloody well ashamed of herself.

Our Minister of Health is in the business, it seems, of promoting ill-health in Canada, to make Big Food rich. Positively Orwellian.

As an Inuk from Nunavut, Aglukkaq once appeared to know better. In 2007, as Minister of Health and Social Services in the government of Nunavut, she released a document entitled Nutrition in Nunavut: a Framework for Action. In a prefatory message, she stated:

“Improving the nutrition and physical activity of Nunavummiut is not easy. It presents us with major challenges personally and socially. Healthy eating is fundamental to fostering healthy people and communities.

A Foreword in that same document by Dr Geraldine Osborne Deputy Chief Medical Officer of Health clearly sets out a pervasive problem in Nuanvut:

Good nutrition is basic to health, not only physical health but also social, cultural and emotional health. The nutritional problems we see today in Nunavut are rooted in the social and cultural changes that took place when Inuit started to move to settlements in the 1940s, resulting in a profound effect in their diet. Prior to this, Inuit relied exclusively on the resources of the sea, land and lakes, which provided food of very high nutritional value compared to the food bought in stores today.

Compounding this change, food is now ‘big business’ and global sophisticated marketing even influences the food choices of remote Arctic communities where foods of low nutritional value, such as pop and chips, are now staples for many.Generations are now experiencing the consequences of a poor diet.

But as a Harper mouthpiece, Aglukkaq has now taken active steps to worsen the health, not only of her own people, but of Canadians in general. And like the rest of her colleagues in Cabinet, she probably sleeps better than I do.

[H/t Tom Flemming, via Oni Joseph]