Federal Liberal food caucus hears call for domestic fair trade policy NIGEL ARMSTRONG The Guardian

Members of the federal Liberal food caucus, including MPs, from left, chair Kirsty Duncan, Wayne Easter of Malpeque and Carolyn Bennett, listen to presenters at the Charlottetown Farmers Market last week. The caucus is planning to create a report guiding Liberal policy on the issue of food security and sustainability. Guardian photo

The federal Liberal food caucus rolled into P.E.I. last week and heard something brand new — a call for a domestic fair trade program.
Liberal members of Parliament are touring Canada collecting ideas to incorporate into a broad, all-encompassing food policy in time for the next election.
Food caucus member Wayne Easter, the MP for Malpeque, hosted caucus chair Kirsty Duncan and MP Carolyn Bennett for a meeting at the Charlottetown Farmers Market last week.
“It is heartbreaking,” Duncan said about some of the presentations that focused on the crisis in farming, fishing and food consumerism.
“I was pleased to hear the hope,” said Bennett of the other, more positive presentations. “There is this breakthrough, organic now becoming one of the few areas of growth.”
“Consumers do not know where that product actually came from,” said Easter, picking up on Raymond Loo’s comments about grocery store branding like President’s Choice or Our Compliments.
“It is about power in the marketplace and the lack of power both at the consumer level and the farm level. We have to change that picture.”
One element of change might come from a labelling and education program that highlights fair trade products domestically, a label on food that says that a Canadian producer was given a fair and sustainable price for the product inside.
The idea was presented to the caucus by David Daughton, representing the Canadian Community Economic Development Network.
“I have noticed that fair trade, which I am a supporter of, and which has been popularized especially around coffee, is something that seems to apply to the global south, Third World countries, oppressed peoples but somehow fair trade doesn’t seem to be operating within our borders,” said Daughton.
“I think it is time for a domestic fair trade strategy. People have done the work and I think we are probably getting to the point where urban people might be interested in fair trade with rural people in the way that northern, developed nations are becoming interested in fair trade with impoverished southern nations.”
It will be one of many ideas that will go into a policy report at some later time from the caucus.
The MPs said they want a food policy that includes many aspects of government and society, from the farm, fishing, trade, foreign policy, transportation, and security sectors, to name a few.
“We have to look at food policy from a more comprehensive approach,” said Easter. “The whole idea was to pull as many players as we could from the consumer level, farm, fisheries sectors and some in between to build that understanding, bridge that gap.”