Sasha's blog

*This blog post is part of a series profiling various communities, individuals and organizations who have been using the People’s Food Policy in their amazing work*

by Steffanie Scott (Director of the local economic development program at the University of Waterloo and Vice-President of the Canadian Association for Food Studies)

Who’s setting the table for the food that Canadians are eating? And who should be involved in establishing a national food strategy for Canadians?

Between 2008 and 2011, over 3500 Canadians participated in ‘kitchen table talks’, a process that culminated in the publication of Resetting the Table: A People's Food Policy for Canada. The report was coordinated by Food Secure Canada, a national network of people and organizations mobilized around three priorities: zero hunger, healthy and safe food, and sustainable food production and distribution systems.

In stark distinction to this grassroots process, and to these priorities, this past week in Toronto the Conference Board of Canada hosted a food industry-sponsored Canadian Food Summit 2012, and the Conference Board is purporting to be leading a process to create a Canadian Food Strategy.

The Fondation du Barreau recently released a guide on food labelling.

The Québec government has recently put forward a proposal for a new agrifood policy for the province, which is supposed to centre efforts on food products and thus on consumer satisfaction.

The documents three positions are to:

Food Secure Canada has been funded by the Rural Secretariat of Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada to undertake a knowledge-building project for Remote and Northern Communities titled Local Food Connections. The project will run from 2011 to 2013.

We're happy to announce the winners of the first annual Good Food Hero Comic Contest. Students from Kindergarten to Grade 12 were asked to submit comics dealing with healthy, sustainable and fair food and addressing issues in and solutions for the food system. We received hundreds of amazing entries from across the country and have published the top 30 in Canada's Good Food Hero Comic Book.

The People's Food Policy Project (PFPP) was launched on April 18th with the release of Resetting the Table: A People's Food Policy for Canada.  For the past two years, the PFPP, a grassroots movement of organisations and civilians, has engaged 3,500 across the country in the creation of a Candian food sovereignty policy.

What if you could bake someone a pie as easily as updating your Facebook status? That is the question asked by BBC reporter Lakshmi Sandhana in her recent article "The printed future of Christmas dinner" (and by the ÇBC).