My Speeches

Bill 206: Alberta Personal Income Tax (Physical Activity Credit) Amendment Act, 2008

Posted on Oct 27, 2008

The Deputy Speaker: The hon. Member for Battle River-Wainwright.


Mr. Griffiths: Thank you, Mr. Speaker. It’s a pleasure today to rise
to speak to Bill 206, the Alberta Personal Income Tax (Physical
Activity Credit) Amendment Act, 2008. I’d first like to begin by
applauding the member for his action. Every single one of us knows
how important exercise is and that it can reduce heart disease,
diabetes, anxiety, depression, cancer, obesity. There are so many
things that exercise can do to cure many of the maladies that all of
us have.
We also know, Mr. Speaker, that if we all get healthier, we’ll use
less drugs and need to have less doctor’s visits and spend less time
in the hospital. If we were all more active, then instead of seeing a
doctor for a stress headache, we could just work out or jog for half
an hour to eliminate that headache. Instead of going to see a doctor
for diabetes, exercise can help reduce the incidence of diabetes. Or
for a strained back: most any doctor will tell you that exercise is one
of the best cures for a stressed back.
Instead of taking drugs for the first incidence of a sickness or a
malady that you have, Mr. Speaker, if we all exercised regularly to
begin with so that we never got that malady, it could save the health
care system an incredible amount of money. In this day and age
when we all talk about natural and homeopathic medicines, no herb,
nothing that we have in homeopathic medicine, is a better cure than
the most natural thing you can do, and that’s exercise. Everyone
knows that an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure, and
exercise is the best ounce you can possibly spend in looking for a
cure for anything, for a physical or a mental condition.
Mr. Speaker, incenting people to get healthy, to exercise is
critical. But it’s not just about exercise; it’s about eating right. It’s
about taking the proper holidays, about taking the proper rest, about
taking time for yourself, about exercising your mind and your body
together. It’s not just about running on a treadmill for half an hour
or lifting a few weights. It’s about an entire healthy lifestyle that can
help reduce costs to health care.


Alberta Hansard October 20, 2008
1398
Now, as the hon. member has presented Bill 206, I do commend
him because the encouragement of physical activity is important.
Although, Mr. Speaker, I do have to point out, with an honourable
intent, that I don’t agree with the philosophy of this bill. You see,
I understand that on occasion governments do try to incent behaviour.
They try to encourage the populace to do certain things
because, after all, we use taxpayers’ dollars to treat a lot of different
conditions that society has, so we try to reduce some of those costs
by incenting behaviour within society. I believe, quite frankly, that
this bill will not accomplish this. It won’t achieve the goals that we
have.I’ll explain this to you. We have to start this entire process by
asking ourselves: what do we want? Mr. Speaker, we want people
to be healthy. We want them to exercise more. We want them to
lower their cholesterol. We want them to take appropriate holidays
and breaks. We want them, in essence, to become healthier. Period.
The second question we have to ask is: will this accomplish it? I
say, no, not necessarily. Buying a gym membership when someone
won’t use it will not make people healthier. In fact, I think it has
been mentioned by my colleague across the way that many gyms
will tell you that when they actually budget, do their books, their
business plan, they know that only about a third of the people who
buy a gym membership will actually go and work out. Otherwise
the gym would be too full to accommodate all the memberships they
have.As well, if people play hockey but then go and eat nachos for two
hours and drink beer with all their buddies and undo all the exercise
that they just got from playing hockey, is that really what we’re
trying to incent when we give them a tax credit for actually paying
to join a hockey team? I don’t believe that’s what we want.
We have to ask ourselves: will this accomplish it? We also have
to ask ourselves: who will this miss when we go through this
legislation? Families that can’t afford organized sports or can’t
afford a gymmembership: this will miss them. Perhaps, instead, Mr.
Speaker, the entire family goes for a walk for an hour every evening,
or perhaps they just go to the park and they all toss around a football
or a baseball or they play Frisbee or something. This will miss them
because they can’t afford to buy a gym membership or to pay for
organized sports.
Who else will it miss, Mr. Speaker? Rural Albertans. Rural
Albertans don’t often have access to organized sports or to gym
memberships. I know many people who live on the farm who walk
eight or 10 miles a day. They go around and check their crops that
way or go check on the cattle. There are many people who live on
the farm or have jobs where they get incredible amounts of exercise
every single day, but they don’t belong to a gym, so this will miss
them.Now, Mr. Speaker, we have to ask: what will this particular bill
do? Well, in short, it rewards those who spend money. Whether
you’re buying a gym membership or you’re joining a hockey team
or whatever you’re doing, the reward is not the healthy activity; the
reward is spending the money to buy the membership or to do the
activity. Quite frankly, as was mentioned by my colleague across
the way, there is no assurance, no guarantee that by spending that
money you will adopt a healthy lifestyle, that you will actually go
and work out at the gym, that you will actually go play hockey or
that even if you go play hockey, you won’t sit around eating nachos
and hot wings and drinking beer for four hours after. There’s no
incentive to adopt a healthy, quality lifestyle. I enjoy beer and hot
wings as much as the next guy. The point is that this is not incenting
people for a healthy lifestyle; it’s incenting them to spend money.
The final question we have to ask ourselves, Mr. Speaker, is why
are we incenting people to spend money? We should not be incenting that activity. Now, by activity I don’t mean working out
in a gym or playing hockey; the activity I’m talking about is
incenting people to buy the membership or to spend the money.
That’s not what the purpose of government is. We don’t need to
incent people to spend money; what we need to incent people to do
is achieve the results that we want. If we want a healthier populace,
we need to find a way to incent them to become healthier, not incent
them to buy the gym membership.
Mr. Speaker, I have to say that I personally wish we had not
eliminated health care premiums because it was the best tool we had
for incenting people’s behaviour. Bear with me for a moment. We
have vehicle insurance now. When people buy insurance for their
vehicles, we have a grid system so that everybody starts at an
average. Everyone pays the exact same amount. The more accidents
you have, the higher up the grid, the more you pay for that
insurance. The fewer accidents you have, the fewer speeding tickets,
the better driver you are, the lower you go down on the grid, which
is a natural enhancement to make you want to drive safer. If you
insist on speeding and having accidents and moving up the grid, I
guess you’re going to pay for it. It’s sort of a carrot and a stick. It
turns around and tells every single person: you have personal
responsibility. If you make the right choices when you’re driving,
then you will be rewarded with lower premiums, but if you make
improper choices, incorrect choices, then you will pay more. It’s
your choice whether or not you’re going to speed, whether you’re
going to get into an accident. It’s your choice where your premiums
are going to be.
Mr. Speaker, with the health care premiums we had a perfect
opportunity to do the same thing. We had the opportunity for
everyone to be set at a base health care premium that operated like
insurance. If you lowered your cholesterol, if you lowered your
weight, if you got physical exercise and made yourself healthier –
there are measurements you can do with a body mass index or a hipto-waist
ratio test or a cholesterol test or a smoking test that tells if
you’ve had a cigarette within a year: all things to measure whether
or not you’re a healthy individual. Any doctor can do those tests.
How you get to that point would be entirely up to you. It would be
entirely up to every single Albertan to make the decision on what
they were going to do. Perhaps they want to walk eight miles a day
to go check the cattle. Perhaps they want to buy a gym membership
and go and work out. Perhaps they just want to take the kids to the
park and play Frisbee every day. It’s up to them to decide what they
want to do, but if they make inappropriate decisions and their
cholesterol goes up and their body mass index ratio goes up and they
continue to smoke, then they will pay those consequences of higher
health care premiums.
Mr. Speaker, my point is that we can offer all sorts of tax
incentives. Some people will use them for a tax advantage. Some
people won’t be able to utilize those advantages that we’ve created
if they live in rural Alberta or they can’t afford the memberships.
But if we actually had a system with the health care premiums that
operated like real insurance, every single Albertan, every single
family would be able to make their own choices of how they’re
going to achieve the results. Quite frankly, as a government we
don’t care how they achieve those results as long as they achieve
those results.
For that reason, Mr. Speaker, although I admire the intent of the
bill to make Albertans more active and healthier, I won’t be
supporting this, and I encourage all of my colleagues in this House
to not support it.