Introduction:

The right to food was first recognized as a fundamental human right in 1948. Since then, Canada
and many other OECD nations have signed several national and international agreements
promoting the right to food. The food security has not been achieved in Canada despite strong
economic growth in the past decade and a comprehensive Charter of Rights and Freedoms, with
which food security could be embedded into a domestic human rights framework. The term food
security is broadly defined as the availability of food, equitable access to food, and adequacy of the
food supply in terms of culture, nutrition and sustainability.

Canada’s Action Plan for Food Security (drafted in response to the 1996 World Food Summit) and
the Food Security Bureau (established to oversee implementation of the Action Plan), articulates a
commitment to the progressive realization of the right to food.

Canada is often viewed by other countries as a successful welfare state and a beacon of human
rights. Human rights are an important part of the Canadian legal and political landscape and
already shape the way in which many government policies and programmes, both domestic and
international, are developed and delivered. Finally, Canada has undertaken numerous international
commitments to recognize and implement the right to food. Canada has a strong record of ratifying
international human rights accords which advocate the right to food.
Why the right to food? (Prevalence of food insecurity across Canada)

-3.7 million Canadians (14.7% of population aged 12 or over) experienced food insecurity in
2000/01).

-Canadian Community Health Survey Considered food insecure if for lack of money they

-Had not eaten the quality or variety of food they wanted (12%)

-Or, had worried about not having enough to eat (11%)

-Or, had actually not had enough to eat (7%)

-More than 40% of people in low income (less than $20,000 p.a.) or lower middle income
households (3-4 family members) reported food insecurity.

-28% of these households had not had enough to eat in the past year.

-Prevalence of household food insecurity, by province of territory.

-840,000 dependent on charitable food banks in 2004 of which 47% reported difficulty in meeting
demand.

The Right to Food

Although the right to food is not entrenched in the Canadian Charter of Rights and
Freedoms (Canada 1982) and is therefore not justiciable, the Government of Canada has
historically acknowledged a right to food in a number of international conventions, including the
1948 International Bill of Human Rights (United Nations 1985), the International Covenant on
Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (United Nations 1966), and the Convention on the Rights of
the Child (United Nations 1989). In recent years, Canada has also committed itself to supporting a
number of international declarations with immediate and practical implications for the
implementation of the right to food: the World Declaration on Nutrition (adopted in Rome in 1992),
the Declaration on Social Development (adopted at the World Social Summit in 1995), and the
recent Rome Declaration on World Food Security (FAO 1996), which affirmed “the right of
everyone to have access to safe and nutritious food, consistent with the right to adequate food and
the fundamental right of everyone to be free from hunger.” This right is also expressed at the
federal level in the actions of Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada (AAFC) along with the Global
Network on Food Security to shape the Canadian commitments and follow-up to the World Food
Summit.

Canada repealed the federal–provincial cost-shared Canada Assistance Plan, which for a
generation had sought to guarantee national standards in the provision of social assistance and
meet basic requirements, including food adequacy. Provincial governments have also engaged in
massive restructuring of their welfare programs and undermined the right to food. Welfare benefits
have been denied or cut, and food allowances have been rendered inadequate. In 1995, AAFC
eliminated its nutritious-food-basket costings, thereby removing the one relatively objective way of
measuring national nutritional adequacy.
Clearly, the domestic commitment to the right to food has been abandoned, though Canada’s
international human-rights commitments and federal initiatives suggest a degree of official
ambivalence. However, the growth of hunger means that entrenching the right to food in the
Charter and establishing it in domestic legislation should be a prime policy objective.

Hunger and its causes in First World societies

Since the early 1980s evidence has been mounting that hunger and food insecurity remain critical
global issues, not just in the countries of the South but also in the advanced welfare states of the
North, such as Australia, Canada, New Zealand, the United Kingdom, and the United States.
Canada and the United States conservatively suggested that at least 8–10% of the population is
hungry or at risk of hunger. In Canada, 456 food banks provide food to 2.5 million Canadians a
year (CAFB 1995). More than 49% of those who use these food banks are children and
women. First Nations people, immigrants, the unemployed, and people with disabilities are
overrepresented in food-bank lineups. Public begging is now seemingly accepted as part of the
new economic order and serves, along with food banks, as a visible indicator of growing food
poverty and inequality. Since 1994 Canada has been ranked first in the world on the United
Nations Human Development Index.

Three factors explain the increase in hunger and food insecurity in Canada. 

1. Global economic restructuring, mass unemployment and underemployment, work and income
polarization, and the decline of household purchasing power have demonstrated the inadequacy
of residual safety nets. Social assistance benefits (based on the poor-law principle of less
eligibility) have proven inadequate to guarantee affordable nutritious diets.

2. Second, the responses of the state and civil society to hunger have encouraged its growth.
Promarket governments, committed to structural-adjustment policies, which treat welfare as a
direct function of labor-market policy, have undermined any previous commitments to food
security. In fact, welfare-reform policies have reinforced the commoditization of welfare (the idea
that the receipt of public benefits should be directly linked to labor-force participation) by
promoting the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development’s idea of the “active
society” (less eligibility, reciprocal obligations, training, and workfare). As a result, benefits have
been cut or eliminated, and participation in low-wage work has been required as a condition for
the receipt of benefits. Such policies create conditions for the growth of hunger and are
antagonistic to the idea of a right to food.

3. Third, in line with global structural-adjustment policies, new international trade agreements have
fostered increasingly unregulated markets and granted more powers to transnational
corporations, thereby undermining Canada’s sovereignty over its social programs. More
profoundly, this globalization (marketization) of the food system erodes the capacity of nation-
states and local communities to feed themselves and increases food inequality within and
between countries of the South and North, including Canada.

A Human Rights Framework strengthens Food Security

1· Governments are legally bound to comply with obligations outlined in human rights treaties.

2· Human rights offer dignity to marginalized groups who claim rights rather than receiving charity.
3· Human rights are governed by a comprehensive monitoring system within the United Nations.

Conclusion:
Itzi: In my opinion Canada has many problems to help all people in that country because there are
many people that are depending from the “food banks”. Food banks provide food to 2.5 million
Canadians a year; more than 49% of those who use these “food banks” are children and women;
but that is a fundamental right human and they must to help that people.
Christopher: I think that the food is necessary to be freedom because all the people needs to eat
to survive. So the Canada’s Action Plan for Food Security (drafted in response to the 1996 World
Food Summit) and the Food Security Bureau (established to oversee implementation of the Action
Plan), articulates a commitment to the progressive realization of the right to food.
Andrea: in my opinion should not have that right to food, although the economy is too low or the
government fails to make payments to workers as a result of which people are left
unemployed, and if the level of economy would be very low and can not support his
family and give it food.

Bibliography:
http://www.idrc.ca/en/ev-30624-201-1-DO_TOPIC.html
http://www.ccsd.ca/cswp/2005/riches.pdf
http://web.uvic.ca/~ostry/selected_publications/nutrition_food_security/2007_Rideout_etal_Right_to
_Food_in_Canada.pdf