Connect Summit on Food Sustainability

At the first Connect Summit on Food Sustainability, the J.L.A. party had a chance to discuss our ideas and plans with the P.L.A.N. Party. The main issues both parties were concerned about was the environment, economy, human rights, health, and trade. Mainly, both parties agreed, that between all these issues, there should be an overarching balance.

First and foremost, the idea of promotion came up. Both parties agreed this was most effective way to change Canada’s stance on food sustainability. We discussed varying action plans to address the idea of promotion, and following are some of the ideas:

1) Encouragement of Local Economy (see More Details below): Creating a Imported Goods Tax (IGT). This would also, in turn, lead to the lowering of organic food prices. Promoting organic and local foods as our main food source would soon lead to a healthier population. The balance between lowering prices of local food and the IGT would improve our economy in the long run.

2) Education and Awareness: Create advertisements to gain consumer attention on where their food comes from and how it is processed. The J.L.A. Party believes that Canadian consumers should support local economies to a greater extent, however, we are aware of the implications of this. First off, many consumers are not aware of organic foods. Advertisements can create more awareness on this. Secondly, and more importantly, ease of access. Often, organic and locally-made food is hard to find, and the J.L.A. Party wants to create Universal Access on organics. This can be implemented by creating laws for companies which would require them to carry a certain amount of organic products. This is still being discussed.

→ Bring awareness to health effects from pesticide and fertilizer use, and the risk of developing disease or a shortened life span. Many people do not know where their food comes from and what it can do to their health, and in turn encourages consumers to buy organic and locally grown food

More Details on Encouragement of Local Economy: Introduce a tax reduction for farmers and agricultural local businesses, livestock and fisheries in Canada as a way to promote the use of these businesses and allow those individuals to pay lower taxes in order to lower the price of most organic food products so that the citizens could be able to purchase more of these products more often. And as the demand for these organic products goes up, the price would be able to go down allowing more spread and success for local businesses. In this the use of imported food products from countries like japan and china could be cut down for the better health of our citizens. The main issue with this right now is that we are more focused on having a better economy by buying these foreign products rather than realizes the long term effects it has beheld on our health. With this our idea of implementing tax reductions for farmers and local organic businesses would help raise our economy in canada and also allow canadians to be more healthy and making good food choices.