The right to food in Canada
What would you say about hunger in Canada if the United Nations were to ask?
Canadians had to think hard about that question, and so did I when I was asked to speak before Olivier De Schutter, the UN Special Rapporteur on the Right to Food, during his visit to Canada in May.
Mr. De Schutter was on an eleven day mission to Canada, his first to a developed country, in order to map out Canada’s compliance with our international human rights commitments. He met with families on social assistance who find it hard to feed their children healthy food. He visited inner city neighbourhoods in Ontario and Quebec. And he traveled to remote aboriginal communities in Manitoba and Alberta.
You may remember from press reports that the UN envoy urged Canadian governments to put an end to the need for almost 900,000 Canadians to visit a food bank each month. He decried the fact that in such a wealthy nation, one in ten families with a child under six is unable to meet their daily food needs. “This is a country that is rich but that fails to adapt the levels of social assistance benefits and its minimum wage to the rising costs of basic necessities, including food and housing,” De Schutter said.
At least initially, federal government Ministers refused to meet him and discuss his findings. After his press statements however, Immigration Minister Jason Kenney angrily suggested De Schutter was wasting the UN's money by visiting a developed country. Health Minister Leona Aglukkaq then met with De Schutter, but strongly objected to his remarks on food issues facing aboriginals. “He’s ill-informed,” Aglukkaq told reporters; “In the Arctic, the food security issue is not about access to (food). It’s about fighting environmentalists trying to put a stop to our way of life.”
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