UN food monitor probes Canada

The United Nations Special Rapporteur on the right to food will begin a tour of Canada on Saturday, but the visit is hardly a positive one. Canada, traditionally a food exporter will be the first wealthy nation probed by Olivier De Schutter since the UN created his position in 2000.

De Schutter will be visiting Toronto, Ottawa, Montreal, Winnipeg and Edmonton, and a number of aboriginal communities in the prairies. He will be looking at Canada’s food supply chains and governmental policies affecting the right to food.

A critic of Canada’s record on providing food to its citizens, the executive director of Food Secure Canada, Diana Bronson, said two million Canadian regularly lack access to sufficient food.

Speaking to Postmedia News, Bronson said:

“What we can say about Canada is that our food system is broken.”

“When we’re lacking clean water on reserves across the country and food prices in the North are so notoriously high that people cannot afford to give milk to their kids, we’re not realizing the right to food, we’re not realizing the obligations under the covenant, so that’s what (the Special Rapporteur) is going to be looking at here.”