The federal government’s recently announced National Food Security Strategy (NFSS) feels more like the follow-up to the hypocritical Davos speech that Prime Minister Mark Carney gave earlier in 2026 than an honest attempt to secure our food system for the benefit of current and future generations. The strategy is filled with good information, promising words, and concludes with contradictory and damaging policy actions.

The first several pages of the document released in mid-June and titled “More Choice. More Control. More Canada: The National Food Security Strategy”, clearly identifies several of the major issues facing the Canadian food system.

As one reads through the pages, it would appear that the strategy contains ‘all the things’.

It notes that there is a need to support families, farmers, and a need to strengthen domestic production, distribution and methods of marketing. The NFSS also notes that the food conglomerates are making huge profits and that the retail sector is highly concentrated, leading to rapid and astounding increases in food prices.  The report even outlines in clear statistical detail the cost of food and the retail sectors that are the most concentrated.

The NFSS underscores that corporate concentration and the lack of competition in retail, wholesale, and processing are major problems. It includes much of the information that House of Commons Committees have gathered when discussing corporate profits in the food industry, bread price fixing, and more. (see column “Bread price fixing is a small part of the problem”). And much like this recent column which provides detail on our growing food crisis, it underscores the need to grow more food at home.

The NFSS even points to the food strategies in countries such the Netherlands, France and Japan, which are promoting food self-sufficiency targets by 2030. The NFSS includes several objectives and identifies the need to grow more food within Canada, lessen dependency on imports, and enable the buying of local food by creating food terminals and food hubs where farmers and processors can band together to support stronger distribution systems for local products. And while it........

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