(Vancouver) A new report is calling on the BC government to take action to make BC’s food system work better for farmers, eliminate hunger, shift away from imported products, and reduce greenhouse gas emissions.
The report, Every Bite Counts: Climate Justice and BC’s Food System, released today by the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives (CCPA), calls for a rethink of BC's food system in light of climate change. The report acknowledges grassroots efforts to move to local, sustainable agriculture have found support at the local government level. Largely missing, it says, are actions by the provincial government to accelerate change.
The report argues that climate impacts will undermine the abundance of the modern supermarket. "BC imports about half of its food, leaving the province vulnerable to supply disruptions and price shocks," says report co-author and CCPA-BC Senior Economist Marc Lee. "Our food system is also a contributor to climate change."
Leadership from the provincial government for a "made in BC" strategy is essential, through a more coherent planning framework. Says Lee, "this is not a task that can be left to market forces alone."
A key recommendation of the paper is to link local food to the purchasing power of large public and non-profit institutions such as schools, hospitals, universities, prisons, and social housing units. “If a growing portion of food budgets in the public sector were dedicated to local food sources, it would provide a huge boost towards creating a more localized food system,” says Lee.
“BC needs to develop a more just distribution of food, better support farmers, farm workers and fishers, and seek healthier nutritional outcomes from our food system,” says Herb Barbolet, report co-author and Associate with the Centre for Sustainable Community Development. “At a deeper level, this is more about an ongoing cultural transformation in how we think about food, waste, the economy, labour, health and education.”
Alejandro Rojas, Principal Investigator of the UBC-based community-university research alliance Think & Eat Green @ School Project, notes, “Schools have tremendous potential for addressing hunger, improving nutrition and teaching kids where food comes from, through meal programs, school gardens and curriculum development.” The Think & Eat Green @ School Project involves 25 community partners and works to connect Vancouver K–12 students to food and sustainability issues while helping schools lighten their ecological footprint and reduce greenhouse gas emissions.
Other recommendations include:
“These ingredients point towards a food system that could be, with strong public policy actions, just and sustainable. BC is starting in an excellent position to move forward,” says Barbolet. “But we need strong leadership from our provincial government.”
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To arrange an interview call Terra Poirier at 604.801.5121 x229. Every Bite Counts: Climate Justice and BC’s Food System by Marc Lee, Herb Barbolet, Tegan Adams and Matt Thomson is available for download at www.policyalternatives.ca. This study is part of the Climate Justice Project, a partnership between the CCPA-BC and UBC, funded by Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC).
Join us at this free event to hear from award winning journalist and best-selling author Linda McQuaig, with tax law professor and author Neil Brooks: an eye-opening and provocative discussion about the damage extreme wealth causes to equality and a healthy, functioning society.
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Speech rights are one of our most precious freedoms, and never are they more vital than during an election. Yet in the lead-up to the 2009 provincial election in British Columbia, a significant number of non-profits, charities and other small groups censored their public communication efforts.
That's the central finding of a new study released today by the CCPA's BC Office, the BC Civil Liberties Association, and BC's Freedom of Information and Privacy Association. The study follows up on controversial "third party election advertising rules" introduced in 2008.
"When the provincial government introduced these new rules, its rationale was to limit election advertising by ‘big spenders’,” says study author Shannon Daub. “But major flaws in the legislation mean that in practice, the rules extensively regulated 'small spenders' and cast a chill on the democratic process."
Find out more here.
Today the CCPA released a new report by Marc Lee and Ken Carlaw that looks at industrial and employment strategies the BC government can use to transition to a sustainable economy and create a new generation of well-paying green jobs. Read the report or summary...
Despite many recent announcements from the provincial government (over 100 housing-related news releases in the last year), BC continues to face a serious lack of affordable housing. We partnered with the Social Planning and Research Council of BC (SPARC) to assess the true state of social housing in the province. Our analysis of BC Housing's own service plans for the past five years reveals that only 280 net new units of social housing have been built since 2006. Find out more in Unpacking the Housing Numbers: How Much New Social Housing is BC Building? Or you can listen to Seth Klein talk about the report later this morning on the Bill Good Show (CKNW radio, 980 AM).
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— Farley Mowat