Food Secure Canada (FSC) is calling on Stephen Harper and all other federal party leaders to mark World Food Day (October 16) by speaking up about Canada’s broken food system and what can be done to fix it.
People from across the country have responded to the Food Secure Canada national initiative on food security by posting their own videos on what they think Harper should address in the Throne speech. Individuals are calling on the government to reduce waste, eliminate hunger, protect farmland, support local food providers and improve labeling and food safety, amongst other ideas.
Asked what prompted FSC to launch this campaign, Diana Bronson, Executive Director of FSC, explained: “We cannot believe that there is a throne speech which is supposedly focusing on consumer issues that won’t have a prominent place for food — the one item that all Canadians need to buy. And an item they are worried about: what additives, what GMOs, what health consequences, whether or not it is safe and who cannot consumer it because they cannot afford it.”
“Canadians across the country want action on food and they know what needs to be done, as these videos show,” says Bronson. “Over three million people in Canada are food insecure, more than three in five Canadian adults are overweight or obese, we are losing thousands of family farms every year and people are unable to access the healthy, local food they want to consume.”
What would you include in your own speech from the throne? Here is a sampling from the Food Secure Canada YouTube channel:
Leila’s Speech from the Throne
Annette’s Speech from the Throne
Jay G’s Speech from the Throne
For the occasion of World Food Day, at the request of FSC, Wayne Roberts, author of The No Nonsense Guide to World Food, has filmed his own Throne Speech, laying out what a vision for food in Canada could look like. He will participate in a national webinar with other food movement leaders on October 16 at 1 pm (EDT) on the same day.
Photo credit: Fickr/ Oxfam America G8 Leaders look lost looking for food security — signs for shortcuts and silver bullets distract them from the path.
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