February 2014 News Briefs

Food and Federal Policy

There is no shortage of action on food policy at the federal level these days!  Some matters of ongoing concern to our food movement are:

The Federal Budget

There are at least three items in the federal budget that are of direct concern to the food movement:  provisions on charities and non-profits, new food safety resources and adjustments to Nutrition North Canada, which subsidizes retailers to make food more affordable in the north, where up to 70% of people live with food insecurity.

Charity Chill

Recent audits and attacks on charitable organizations have received renewed media attention as Canada Revenue Agency (CRA) audits of some of the most well-respected organizations in the country  -- David Suzuki Foundation, Equiterre, CCPA, amongst others. Organizations are denouncing this unnecessary and time-consuming process as a form of political intimidation. The budget contained two potentially alarming pieces of news related to charities:

  1. The CRA would be given more powers to investigate links with “terrorist activity” (indeed one organization is suing the federal government for falsely accusing them of having such links);
  2. There is a suggestion that the CRA impose increased reporting requirements on non-profit organizations to enable it to evaluate their entitlement for tax-exempt status.

Many charities are understandably confused or concerned about their ability to do legitimate policy work or engage with their elected representatives, the rules around lobbying, and related matters. Thankfully there are some additional resources to help us navigate this minefield, but clearly in the months ahead it will be critical to assert our right to criticize (or praise, or question) the policies that affect our work.  It is vital that civil society organizations maintain and augment their work in policy reform.  Indeed without it, many of our movements would be limited to working on the margins.

Food Secure Canada is the voice of the food movement in Canada and if you are concerned about these issues, please let us know.   

More resources: 

Who will they come for Next? by CCPA’s Bruce Campbell 

2014 Federal Budget and its Impact on Canadian Charities by Mark Blumberg of Global Philanthropy or

Imagine Canada’s press release giving a favourable review.

Nutrition North

The Federal budget also announced that there will be increased funding for Nutrition North but it is short on the details. This funding is long overdue.  In the chapter on Food Sovereignty in last year’s Alternative Federal Budget, we called for the doubling of Nutrition North’s paltry $60 million budget, which has failed to nudge alarming food insecurity levels in northern and remote communities down at all.

Terry Audla, President of Inuit Tapiriit Kanatami reacted favourably to the news.   Food Secure Canada’s Northern network eagerly awaits more details, perhaps to be announced when the Council of Canadian Academies releases their long awaited report on Food Insecurity in Northern Canada on March 27th.  In 2012, the Federal Government dismissed the conclusions of Olivier de Schutter, UN Special Rapporteur on Food, a report FSC member Tom Rudge, based in the Yukon, thinks they would do well to heed. " It would be better to focus more on food security in the North and to treat the 3 largest health issues: heart disease, diabetes and obesity. There is money for developing mineral resources but nothing for better housing or food security."

Food Safety

The budget scales back on previously announced government cuts at the Canadian Food Inspection Agency. It promises $390 million over five years to strengthen Canada’s food safety system, funding 200 additional inspectors, establishing a national information system and continue programming aimed at safeguarding human and animal health.  It remains to be seen whether the additional resources will be effectively deployed, in a matter that is scale sensitive and appropriate to different regions and economies. There have been many complaints from the Public Service Alliance of Canada about the tools inspectors need to effectively do their jobs and PSAC said the budget announcement “does little to fill the gap they themselves have created to the integrity of our food safety system”.  Meat safety remains an ongoing concern that would best be dealt with in the context of a complete overhaul of Canadian food policy as called for in Resetting the Table: A People’s Food Policy for Canada.

Conference Board Summit

The Conference Board of Canada will be releasing its industry-sponsored Canadian Food Strategy at the third summit of its kind in the past three years, to be held in Toronto,18-19 March. The event is the product of the three-year long process, dominated by the food industry, that has produced 19 research papers of varying quality. Oddly, the “strategy” being promoted has little to do with government policy and is more characterized by industry leading the chorus, with non-governmental and governmental actors chiming in from the sidelines.  The preliminary program suggests this will again be the case, as this Conference aspires to move from Strategy to Action.  Many voices were excluded in the process of elaborating the strategy, as underlined in last year’s parallel event, Tasting Food Democracy.  Nonetheless, there may be some grounds for common action on issues like student nutrition where a common-sense forward-looking approach is gaining ground across the board.

Stay tuned for an event to be sponsored by Food Secure Canada, FoodShare Toronto, Evergreen and others.