Olivier de Schutter, the UN rapporteur for food, just finished ten days touring Canada, examining hunger and diet. His findings are disturbing - or at least they should. Even though Canada is a wealthy, developing nation, some parts of Canada have some serious issues regarding access to affordable healthy food. He sees inequalities between the rich and the poor (disparity!); there are too many barriers to healthy food for socio-economically disadvantaged Canadians, especially for the Aboriginal population. He says about one million aboriginals in Canada have a poor diet. He's also found that 25% of Canadians are obese. The Conservative government has basically slammed his findings and have told de Schutter, in not so many words, not to interfere in Canada's affairs and to go find a place with real food issues. Yikes. Not liking the criticism, I guess. Jason Kenny basically said that with all that we do for the UN, they shouldn't be poking around here... double yikes.
Read for yourselves:
At Strombo
At The National Post
At the Huffington Post
At The Globe and Mail
At CBC
An opinion piece in the National Post
Only the Conservatives would pull a stunt like that :) .... Hopefully the Liberals and NDP criticize them during Parliament.
ReplyDeleteThey have no reason to ignore his reports, other than being... hmm, I don't know, full of themselves?
P.S. I come onto your blog a few times a day just to read the articles at the bottom. I'm addicted to it now... especially the CBC ones. The comments on the articles amuse me!