Serving Us Rights: Securing the Right to Food in Canada (original) (raw)
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Bringing home the right to food in Canada: challenges and possibilities for achieving food security
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We offer a critique of Canada's approach to domestic food security with respect to international agreements, justiciability and case law, the breakdown of the public safety net, the institutionalisation of charitable approaches to food insecurity, and the need for 'joined-up' food and nutrition policies. We examined Canada's commitments to the right to food, as well as Canadian policies, case law and social trends, in order to assess Canada's performance with respect to the human right to food. We found that while Canada has been a leader in signing international human rights agreements, including those relating to the right to food, domestic action has lagged and food insecurity increased. We provide recommendations for policy changes that could deal with complex issues of state accountability, social safety nets and vulnerable populations, and joined-up policy frameworks that could help realise the right to adequate food in Canada and other developed nations.
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Canadian Food Studies / La Revue canadienne des études sur l'alimentation
Long before the exacerbating effects of COVID-19, household food insecurity (HFI) has been a persistent yet hidden problem in wealthy nations such as Canada, where it has been perpetuated in part through dominant discourses and practices. In this critique of HFI-related frameworks, we suggest that discourses organized around the production and (re)distribution of food, rather than income inequality, have misdirected household food insecurity reduction activities away from the central issue of poverty, even inadvertently enabling the ongoing neoliberal “rollback” of safety net functions. Unlike most scholarship that focuses on the politics of food systems, or health research that insufficiently politicizes poverty, this analysis emphasizes the role of politics in income discourses. In spite of their contradictions, food-provisioning- and income-based discourses are potentially complementary in their shared recognition of the right to food. Operating from the perspective of political ...
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In recent years, food crises have heightened awareness of food security vulnerabilities even in rich nations. However, the extent to which various issues related to food security (such as consistent access to nutritious food in conditions which maintain human dignity) have been incorporated into Canadian policy and practice is not well documented. This article draws on a number of sources—including policy documents and media reports—to explore how food security is being conceptualized in Canada, particularly at the national level. The article chronicles changes in food security discourse over time, suggesting that recognition of food security as a “Canadian” problem has been partial and contested, and reflects persistent geographic imaginaries of Canada (e.g., as a land of agricultural abundance) and unrelenting social and cultural exclusions (e.g., of Canada's Aboriginal people).
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Canadian Food Studies / La Revue canadienne des études sur l'alimentation
Eradicating household food insecurity is essential to the articulated vision of a national food policy that aims to promote healthy living and safe food for families across the country. Household food insecurity refers to the insecure or inadequate access to food due to financial constraints. Despite federal commitments to improve the situation, food insecurity in Canada increased between 2007-08 and 2011-12. It currently affects more than four million Canadians, and is particularly grave in Indigenous communities. Food insecurity takes a toll on individuals’ health and well-being, and it is a burden on our healthcare system. The social epidemiology of household food insecurity shows it to be inextricably linked to the social and economic circumstances of households. Federal and provincial policy interventions that improve the financial circumstances of very low income households have yielded reductions of up to 50 percent in household food insecurity prevalence and severity. Yet, p...
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Despite Canada’s position as both a developed nation and a leader in human rights, the nation has failed to develop a domestic social food policy. Not only does Canada stand out among its counterparts as the only western nation without a federally-funded food policy, but the nation is experiencing growing food insecurity. This paper argues that it is not for lack of need or will by citizens, but that the guiding political ideology is deaf to such demands. This is due to a paradigm shift which began during the Mulroney period and directed Canada's political agenda away from social support towards a supply side approach in sync with the neoliberal geopolitical climate.
International Journal of Consumer Studies, 2011
In a context where food assistance continues to dominate talks on food security, this study was undertaken to refocus the debate on households' needs. Our objective was to examine the food security experience and needs of food-insecure households from the standpoint of those participating in community programmes for food security as well as those not doing so. Semi-structured individual interviews were conducted with a purposive sample of 55 food-insecure households in Quebec City, Canada. Transcriptions were subjected to content analysis. The results revealed distinct food insecurity situations. The interviewees' accounts show that households participating in community food security programmes and nonparticipating households did not have the same profile of food insecurity risks and capacity to cope with those risks. Nevertheless, three main categories of needs emerged from all the households: needs specific to food security (particularly good quality diet), needs regarding the conditions necessary for achieving food security (especially financial access to food) and related needs. Food insecurity was seen as involving a cluster of problems. The results reinforce the necessity for responses that are not uniform but rather situation-specific. Clearly, households are demanding more than food for survival: they need a set of conditions that will ensure them regular and sustainable access to a good quality diet.
Power Imbalances, Food Insecurity, and Children's Rights in Canada
Frontiers in public health, 2016
Increasingly, food is provided through an industrial food system that separates people from the source of their food and results in high rates of food insecurity, particularly for the most vulnerable in society. A lack of food is a symptom of a lack of power in a system that privileges free market principles over social justice and the protection of human rights. In Canada, the high rates of food insecurity among Canadian children is a reflection of their lack of power and the disregard of their human rights, despite the adoption of the United Nations (UN) Convention on the Rights of the Child in 1991 and ratification of the International Covenant on Social, Economic and Cultural Rights in 1976, which established the right to food for all Canadians. Dueling tensions between human rights and market forces underpin this unacceptable state of affairs in Canada. Gaventa's "power cube" that describes different facets of power - including spaces, levels, and forms - is used ...
Structural Constraints and Enablers to Community Food Security in Nova Scotia, Canada
Journal of Hunger & Environmental Nutrition, 2016
As one output of a large participatory action research project, this article presents an empirically grounded analysis of constraints and enablers to community food security (CFS) in the province of Nova Scotia, Canada. Our objective is to lay the groundwork for identifying strategic intrasectoral and crosssectoral opportunities to further CFS. Theoretically, our research is informed by neo-Gramscian theories of the forces that enable sociopolitical change in the political economy of food systems and is grounded in the principles of participatory action research. The analysis is based on 41 interviews and a stakeholder gathering with people representing public sector, private sector, and civil society organizations working on food, poverty, health, agriculture, and fisheries issues in Nova Scotia.