UN right to food envoy finds milllions of Canadians are food insecure.

Olivier De Schutter is the UN right to food envoy. His report on Canada made the Harper government go ballistic DeSchutter said: 'It’s even more shocking to me to see that there are 900,000 households in Canada that are food insecure and up to 2.5 million people precisely because this is a wealthy country. It’s even less excusable.'


Schutter said that Canada had a self-righteous attitude about being a great country which it needed to drop. Instead Canada needed to deal with a widespread problem of food insecurity. He noted too that Canada had an appalling record as far as acting on UN human rights recommendations were concerned.

De Schutter just finished an 11 day mission to Canada. This is his first visit to a developed country. His findings show that food insecurity can be a problem in developed as well as undeveloped countries.

De Shutter visited poor inner city neighborhoods as well as remote aboriginal communities. Some critics complain that De Shutter should be visiting under developed countries where there is widespread hunger and starvation. No doubt such critics do not like the spotlight being turned on the failings of developed relatively rich countries.

The Conservative government paints a rosy picture of Canada and certainly does not appreciate the UN report. However, the Conservative government did not arrange any meetings with cabinet ministers. De Shutter complained about this while he expressed appreciation for the time technical staff spent with him. For action on problems he said key politicians need to be involved. For much more see this article.