Indian Act again under attack

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Indian Act again under attack

Joseph Quesnel

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Political attacks on the Indian Act are back in the news, and that is a good thing.

However, Canadian politicians, including First Nation politicians, need a credible plan about what to do before we pull out the champagne.

Attacking the Indian Act is not a big deal for these politicians. First Nation leaders routinely criticize this relic of our distant colonial past, but nothing seems to happen to make their lives better. The Indian Act is, in fact, the Pinata of Indigenous political life in Canada.

Recently, it was Conservative Party Leader Pierre Poilievre’s turn to swing a stick at the Pinata.

“The Indian Act is a disaster. It is a racist, colonial hangover that gives all the control to self-serving, incompetent politicians and bureaucrats and lobbyists in Ottawa and takes away control from the First Nations themselves,” Poilievre told Global News.

Of course, he is correct. Racist? Check. The architects of South Africa’s apartheid regime looked to the Indian Act for inspiration. Colonial? Check. The legislation removed control over political life and took resources away from First Nation communities and placed it in the hands of a colonial elite. Fast forward to now, and those colonial elite are federal bureaucrats.

The last time our politicians discussed a credible plan to repeal the Act was in 1969 with the infamous White Paper. The government of Trudeau père proposed changing the relationship between Indigenous communities and the Canadian state in a fundamental way. Fear of the unknown and justifiable concern over abandoning treaties and collective rights caused First Nations at the time to come together to oppose the proposed changes.

Harold Cardinal, a young but prominent Indigenous leader from Alberta, said it best: “We do not want the Indian Act retained because it is a good piece of legislation. It isn’t. It is discriminatory from start to finish. But it is a lever in our hands and an embarrassment to the government, as it should be. No just society and no society with even pretensions to being just can long tolerate such a piece of legislation, but we would rather continue to live in bondage under the inequitable Indian Act than surrender our sacred rights.”

Cardinal then invited the government to re-write a law with Indigenous help.

Over 50 years later, no government has accepted Cardinal’s offer to revise the Act in any meaningful way. The previous Conservative government was clear in 2012 that they would not repeal the law. At a Crown-First Nations gathering, Prime Minister Stephen Harper said: “Our government has no grand scheme to repeal or unilaterally re-write the Indian Act. After 136 years, that tree has deep roots. Blowing up the stump would just leave a big hole.”

However, it would be incorrect to say First Nations have not moved away from supporting the Act. Harper, in his comments, acknowledged collaborative ways to move away from the Indian Act.

First Nations can now remove themselves from some or even all of the provisions of the Indian Act through self-government agreements and various legislative escapes covering many areas of jurisdiction.

But moving away from the Act in its entirety would be a very big feat. They could attempt if Ottawa can create enough goodwill and political capital with First Nations communities.

Two years ago, I released an ambitious plan to abandon the Indian Act completely over 10 years.

If Poilievre or another politician wants to repeal the Indian Act, it would be helpful to compare the debate with that over the Canada Health Act, which imposes a top-down system that undercuts innovation or reform at the provincial level. Both show how distant bureaucrats are unsuited to making decisions for local communities.

The Indian Act forced First Nations across Canada to adopt the same governance, community membership, and economic restrictions despite a high level of diversity among communities. One idea is to make it easier for First Nations to opt out of provisions in the Act that don’t work for them. Or Ottawa could allow more regional decentralization on policy and service delivery. The principle of subsidiarity holds that every issue should be decided at the lowest level possible, involving all those affected. This should apply to Indigenous communities.

The federal bureaucracy overseeing First Nation communities should loosen its tight grip on Indigenous communities and allow them to experiment and innovate through local self-rule and decentralization. This is the first step on the ways towards abolishing the Indian Act.
Joseph Quesnel received a BA honours in political science and history from McGill University and is currently completing a master of journalism degree from Carleton University, with a specialization in public affairs reporting. Joseph has over 15 years of experience in print journalism including over three years as lead staff writer at the Drum/First Perspective, a national Aboriginal publication.

Canadian emission reduction targets making things worse for the planet

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Canadian emission reduction targets making things worse for the planet

by Krystle Wittevrongel

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If Canada were to be carbon neutral tomorrow, it would take China only 21 days to ensure our current annual emissions were put back into the atmosphere.

And it’s only expected to get worse. As a share of the global total, China’s greenhouse gas emissions have risen from 19.4 per cent in 2005 to 27.4 per cent in 2019. Meanwhile, Canada’s shrank from two per cent to 1.6 per cent of the global total over the same period.

Needless to say, with such a small carbon footprint, Canada alone can’t solve climate change.

That has not prevented Ottawa from setting aggressive emissions reduction targets for Canadians. Its plan is so aggressive it aims to eliminate nearly half our emissions by 2030, which will lead to drastic cuts to the standard of living for Canadian families and a reduction in the bottom line for Canadian businesses. We can also expect it to be accompanied by a fast-increasing carbon tax.

The Trudeau government alleges that reducing Canada’s emissions will help reduce worldwide emissions, despite criticism that it will lead to widespread economic and social harm, is wildly unrealistic, and will even trap Indigenous Canadians in poverty.

Adding insult to injury, there’s a good chance the Trudeau government’s emissions reduction targets will not achieve its goal of greening our environment. With the way the plan is designed, a decent share of any emissions we cut here will simply – like a game of environmental Whac-a-Mole – pop up elsewhere.

This is due to a phenomenon known as “carbon leakage,” where investment and industrial activity, and the associated emissions (often in energy-intensive sectors), shift or “leak” from one jurisdiction to another where carbon taxes are lower and emissions standards are likely not as stringent.

Let’s look at aluminum. Both China and Canada are major aluminum producers, but production in Canada doesn’t emit nearly as much pollution into the atmosphere as production in China. By some measures, Canadian aluminum is about seven times greener than Chinese aluminum.

Logically, we should be trying to attract as many aluminum smelters here as possible and make it more advantageous for consumers to buy Canadian aluminum. Unfortunately, Canadian aluminum producers are currently less competitive due to the added costs of carbon taxes. This is a clear-cut case of the loss of competitiveness due to locally focused emissions reduction schemes actually making things worse for the planet.

But by Ottawa’s reckoning, as long as these extra tonnes of greenhouse gases don’t get emitted within our borders, it’s a reason to pop open the champagne and celebrate.

If our reductions are having no impact on the global climate, are the concessions that Canadians are making worth it?

It will take only nine days (or less!) for China to erase the cuts made by Ottawa’s emissions reductions plan through 2030. The constrained production, lost jobs, and forgone quality of life improvements (not to mention government revenues) through 2030 will be quickly invalidated by Chinese emissions.

This is why our governments need to shift their focus from reducing local emissions to measuring their climate strategies’ global impact. It should take into consideration that reducing global emissions may actually mean an increase in local or domestic emissions.

The Trudeau government’s greenwashing, which leads to Canada exporting emissions (and jobs), doesn’t help anybody. We’re too small an emitter for our efforts alone to make a difference.

Krystle Wittevrongel is a senior policy analyst and Alberta project lead at the Montreal Economic Institute.

MAiD: Legalize first, ask questions later

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MAiD: Legalize first, ask questions later


In 2021, Parliament set up a special committee of MPs and Senators to study the issue of “medical assistance in dying” (or MAiD) and to make recommendations to Parliament. The Special Joint Committee on Medical Assistance in Dying released its “Choices for Canadians” report on February 15.
 
The Committee recommends expanding MAiD further, even though Canada’s existing MAID regime has major problems. Canada already has one of the most permissive euthanasia regimes in the world and has failed to protect vulnerable Canadians. Further expansion will only exacerbate the problems.
 
The Committee addressed three areas for expansion; MAiD where a mental disorder is the sole underlying medical condition, MAiD for “mature minors” (i.e. older children), and MAiD by advance request – meaning that a person can ask now to be euthanized later, when they have lost the capacity to give consent.
 
On MAiD for mental illness, the Committee’s report summarized arguments that witnesses made about whether mental illness is ever irremediable, whether being suicidal is different than wanting to be euthanized, and whether Canadians will choose MAiD due to lack of access to services.
 
Meanwhile, a 2021 report by a committee of the Quebec legislature recommended against MAiD for mental illness. And a 2022 Expert Panel report on MAiD for mental illness noted significant risks and concluded, “This report is the beginning of a process, not the end.”
 
The Committee endorses the government’s decision to delay legalizing MAiD for mental illness until March 2024, acknowledging that potential problems have not been adequately addressed. But they support legalizing it anyway, assuming the problems will work themselves out. The Committee says it should reconvene five months before MAiD for mental illness begins to discuss it again.
 
Next, the Committee recommends legalizing MAiD for “minors deemed to have the requisite decision-making capacity upon assessment.” Here too, there are major gaps in the research, and multiple witnesses told the Committee about the need for further consultation and research, about the need for greater access to supportive services for youth, and about the limited capacity of minors to understand and make a decision to end their own life at their age.
 
The Committee admits it is “important to proceed cautiously in allowing MAiD for mature minors.” Hence, it recommends that an independent expert panel study and evaluate the provision of MAiD to minors in the five years after it is legalized. Permit, then study. Experiment, that is. Who knows what problems they will discover in their study five years from now, but there’s no undoing the past. There’s no bringing euthanized children back from the dead.
 
The Committee supports conducting “consultations” with minors to get a sense of their views on MAiD, as this remains largely unknown. But again, for this Committee, it’s legalize first, consult after.
 
Finally, the Committee recommends that the government “allow for advance requests following a diagnosis of a serious and incurable medical condition, disease, or disorder leading to incapacity” despite the difficulty in predicting the rate of decline and anticipating in advance what a person might later feel is an intolerable condition, after he has lost the capacity to give (or refuse) permission to euthanize him.
 
The report also addresses the fact that many Indigenous people are worried about what MAiD means for their communities, and that they have not been adequately consulted. Yet, MAiD is already available to them and is having an impact on their communities.
 
The Committee report raises more problems than it resolves. In March 2021, Parliament passed Bill C-7, which was supposed to legalize MAiD for mental illness in March 2023. They legalized it at a future date, then spent two years trying to justify the forthcoming legalization. They failed. Then they delayed for another year. The Committee commits the same folly. Commit to legalizing now; justify later.
 
We cannot afford to play catch-up on implementing safeguards, monitoring implementation, and researching risks after expanding euthanasia and ending thousands more lives. MAiD is irreversible, and the federal government must recognize the inherent problems with any further expansion.
 
Daniel Zekveld is a Policy Analyst with the Association for Reformed Political Action (ARPA) Canada.

Farmers are partnering with investors to bolster the agricultural sector

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Farmers are partnering with investors to bolster the agricultural sector

We all know what’s happening to real estate these days. Everything got more expensive in a hurry, fueled by rock-bottom interest rates. But farming has also been impacted by lower interest rates and investors looking for safety and better yields.
 
The increase in farmland value in Canada has been nothing short of spectacular. The value per acre of farmland in Canada has skyrocketed by 334 per cent since 2001, but most of the increases have occurred within the last few years. Since 2016, the increase has been 213 per cent. According to Statistics Canada, the average acre in Canada is now worth almost $3,800, compared to $862 back in 2001.
 
The value of an acre of farmland in Saskatchewan has increased by 391 per cent since 2001, the highest in the country. The highest increase since 2016 is in Manitoba, by 266 per cent. Depending on what is produced, some farmland valuations have increased more than others due to various factors such as location, soil quality, and potential revenues.
 
The Atlantic region, though, is not seeing much change compared with other regions. Increases in New Brunswick, Nova Scotia, and Prince Edward Island have been more modest. Farming in the Atlantic region remains affordable compared to other provinces, not due to protectionist policies but more because farming is not as profitable and options to market are limited for many farmers. With lower value increases, building capacity when land is barely worth more year after year is more challenging.
 
In contrast, since 2016, the average farm real estate value in the United States has increased by 27 per cent, according to the latest report from the U.S. Department of Agriculture. But an acre of farmland on average in the U.S. is now worth about US$3,800, so Canada has somewhat caught up to the U.S. in recent years.
 
Farmland values are being pushed higher in Canada by a series of economic forces. The includes high prices for commodity crops, a robust housing market, an extended period where interest rates were extremely low until recently, and a profusion of government subsidies supporting certain sectors. Compensation, which exceeded $5 billion, linked to trade agreements and given to supply-managed sectors like dairy, poultry, and eggs, has overcapitalized many farm operations out there, compelling many to buy land. That’s a problem few are talking about.
 
In Canada, barely seven per cent of all our land is devoted to agriculture. It’s not a lot, and that amount of land where farming occurs is shrinking. In 2011, 166 million acres of land were devoted to farming to support over 245,000 farms. Today, this amount is about 150 million acres for about 188,000 farms. Farms are bigger, more resourceful, and more efficient.
 
Yes, farmland in Canada is getting more expensive, but farmers in Canada are also making more money. In 2021, cash receipts exceeded $83 billion, a record, and 2022 is likely to be another record year. Last year was also a record year for agri-food exports; if you’re a hedge fund or an investor, these numbers will catch your attention, and they have. Fewer barriers, including the end of the Wheat Board’s single desk on wheat and barley, have brought a slew of new possibilities for the farming community.
 
As a result, we have seen more farmers renting land instead of owning. Close to 50 per cent of farmers in Canada now rent land instead of owning. Some may see this as a threat to normal ways of producing food and supporting agriculture, but it’s not necessarily a terrible strategy.
 
In fact, the largest farmland owner in the country is not even a farmer. Alberta’s own Robert Andjelic has bought over 225,500 acres of land, a portfolio worth somewhere between $500 and $700 million. At the root of this investor’s move into agriculture is the will to produce more food and address our global food security crunch. Along with his capital, his team brought knowledge of sound soil management practices, helping over 250 farmer-tenants to benefit from such expertise. Andjelic’s job is to make sure his tenants make money. Otherwise, he’s not getting paid – simple as that. This new way of thinking can make Canadian agriculture more profitable.
 
Canada’s agri-food potential is immense, and farmland has always been a good investment. A growing number of groups and investors who understand how to make capital work are making a difference. The intent of investors from outside the agriculture sector is to make our agriculture stronger.
 
Farmers who have been in the system for decades still have a lot to offer. But producing and investing simultaneously is getting harder, which is slowly getting agricultural pundits to specialize. Capital markets and the investment community worldwide have changed dramatically over the last five years. This is why more than half of younger farmers in Canada are leasing land now in order to operate.
 
The correlation between land prices, rental rates, and farm revenues is quite strong. All three tend to move synchronously higher over time, according to a report from Farm Credit Canada last year. With more specialization, everyone wins. Younger farmers also see value in renting and partnering with investors. It’s just a different way of seeing farming.
 
Dr. Sylvain Charlebois is senior director of the agri-food analytics lab and a professor in food distribution and policy at Dalhousie University.

Canada can easily fix its milk dumping problem

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Canada can easily fix its milk dumping problem

A video of an exasperated Canadian dairy farmer, Jerry Huigen, went viral last week. For probably the first time in Canadian history, a Canadian dairy farmer was filmed while discarding milk on his own farm. Almost three million people have now viewed that video. It shocked many Canadians, who were left wondering why this is even possible when food prices are skyrocketing at the grocery store.
 
The dairy industry has its reasons. Supply management, which is our government-sanctioned quota system, allows 9,500 dairy farmers to produce what we need as a country. The system is highly protected with import tariffs, and the Canadian Dairy Commission sets an appropriate price for farm milk so that farmers can make a decent living.
 
But dairy cows cannot magically start and stop making milk and butter fat. It just doesn’t work that way. So, most farmers will overshoot to hit their quota. Feed, the weather, and many other factors influence milk production – most Canadians can appreciate that.
 
Based on rough estimates, it is believed Canadian dairy farmers can dump up to 300 million litres a year in Canada. I asked the Canadian Dairy Commission for exact figures on the amount of milk dumped, and they could not say, which is a problem in and of itself. Since the dairy industry is self-regulated but highly protected by public policy, the Commission, a crown corporation, ought to know. But transparency is hardly the dairy sector’s strong point.
 
In Ontario, an amendment to By-Laws for Marketing Boards under the Milk Act was made last fall, allowing the Dairy Farmers of Ontario to “list and maintain the confidentiality of commercially sensitive DFO board documents.” Similar rules affect other dairy boards across the country. The DFO did disclose the amount of wasted farm milk prior to 2022. Moving forward, that is highly unlikely to happen again.
 
Now, as usual, dairy advocates were quick to go on the defensive in an attempt to trivialize the issue of milk waste on the farm. The Dairy Farmers of Canada are always ready to send marching orders to those affiliated with Canada’s dairy practices. Their message always implies supporting the status quo, without saying so directly. They did the same with the “Buttergate” scandal in 2021 when it was disclosed that dairy farmers were using palm oil derivatives to feed cows, making butter harder. And they are doing it again, normalizing what is seen as completely unacceptable for Canadian consumers and taxpayers.
 
Milk dumping remains a highly taboo subject within the industry, which is why dairy boards do everything they possibly can to silence people and make embarrassing stories disappear. It shows the true dark side of supply management, the system farmers care very much about.
 
What is being missed in this debate is how supply management can actually eliminate all waste as the quota system can be used to our own advantage. Producing food only to destroy it makes no sense, especially with looming emission targets. Most dairy farmers around the world do discard milk occasionally. But Canada has the perfect system in place to eliminate all waste.
 
Firstly, we need to make milk dumping illegal. This policy shift will provide an incentive for farmers to adjust. Right now, dumping is the easiest thing to do: making it illegal would force marketing boards to find a market for the surplus.
 
Secondly, the CDC should create a strategic reserve for milk or powdered milk. Most Canadians aren’t aware that we already have a strategic reserve for butter, which includes over 85,000 kilos. Such a buffer could help between processing and shipping to markets abroad. And finally, we need processing plants.
 
Canadian dairy farmers have often argued that we can’t ship Canadian milk abroad; that is until China decided to build its own plant in Kingston, Ontario, called HYPERLINK “https://r20.rs6.net/tn.jsp?f=001PGbEyYult-zfa_KzPMoKMUEL7udHZ6uHiAmEQggNxe_Y098X_qE943704qoBdz–A5LRGF_c_K3DJ9r7zMY0JYW-tbdZZa-OWkXRVfd_Nw4Ara8x0FYLltTRpvRNGo9rkIbxZFl3jQIReGg20p_7OuMh1lopdamO261C_nRcDz5xqDStBWmzXBUKXWCcZZxw0kSp0AHww9yZ5AitPnG1I-L_z-rEmEgb&c=gLcpYDCzhRnvcd4G3TTPk59oQ5mB4t8IYqZ8KSiUkEpJlfDGLiUNyw==&ch=Je8L-cpUP6myjzkL3ormPxO6pmjNn_4M45uXG4_xU4EbuGgJUGzPYg==” \t “_blank” Canadian Royal Milk. That’s right, Ontario dairy farmers are supplying this Chinese-owned plant to produce baby formula, and all its products are shipped to China. We can certainly do this ourselves. All we need is to create an incentive for change.
 
Change for the better is possible. The first step to fixing a problem is to recognize that we have one. Meanwhile, though, many dairy advocates and academics will continue to normalize the issue of milk dumping by calling farmers like Jerry Huigen incompetent, foolish, and irresponsible. We also have zero publicly available data about farm milk waste, as we continue to pay more for milk and dairy products at the grocery store.
 
Huigen, with his 43 years of experience as a dairy farmer, has now delivered what Canadians deserve from the industry. Courage, transparency, accountability. This is what we need, now more than ever so we make supply management work for farmers and Canadians.
 
Dr. Sylvain Charlebois is senior director of the agri-food analytics lab and a professor in food distribution and policy at Dalhousie University.

New alcohol guidelines hard to swallow

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New alcohol guidelines hard to swallow

Looks like we all need to drink less alcohol. Last fall, the Canadian Centre on Substance Use and Addiction (CCSA), a national organization that provides information and advice on substance use and addiction, shared recommendations that we should all drink no more than one or two drinks a week. We just learned that these are now Canada’s official guidelines.

Since 2011, in Canada, moderate drinking has been defined as up to two standard drinks per day for women and up to three standard drinks per day for men, with no more than 10 standard drinks per week for women and 15 standard drinks per week for men. So, a limit of one or two drinks a week is a complete departure from the public recommendations we had been given before. Furthermore, the CCSA also recommends adding warning labels on bottles, stating that alcohol can cause cancer.

It’s unclear whether Canadians would appreciate such labels, but when looking at the scientific literature and the links between alcohol consumption and cancer, the findings in recent years are overwhelming. The evidence that alcohol causes seven types of cancer is now incredibly strong. Numerous studies from all over the world can easily be found; many of them aren’t cited by the CCSA. Some articles claim that current estimates suggest that alcohol-attributable cancers make up 5.8 per cent of all cancer deaths globally.

These studies, coupled with the CCSA’s recommendations, will likely be received by many Canadians with great skepticism. After all, we are living longer, and many seniors drink regularly and responsibly without experiencing any health issues.

Alcohol has been around for a very, very long time. Historians claim that fermented beverages existed in ancient Egypt. Some archives also suggest alcohol was drunk by the Chinese over 9,000 years ago. Intuitively, it’s hard to understand why anyone would put alcohol in the penalty box, as we did with cigarettes or other such harmful products in our lives. According to multiple studies, other substances and factors can cause cancer. But the risks have now been demonstrated scientifically.

But the CCSA’s scientific evaluation is far from perfect. For one, a number of studies still show the benefits of moderate consumption when considering all the causes of mortality in determining health risks. In other words, drinking may not be the main cause of death, even for a regular consumer of alcohol. These studies are mentioned in the report but barely in passing.

Another of the CCSA’s most significant oversights is its evaluation of the social and cultural aspects of drinking. Alcohol is very much part of many celebrations, leisure events, holidays, vacations, end-of-day routines, and more. The CCSA dismissed all research which looked at the social value of alcohol, believing none of it was worthy of scientific consideration. Perhaps overlooking such an important piece of behavioural science will only make more Canadians unconvinced. This research area requires more attention, and many Canadians would likely concur.

Socializing alcohol doesn’t just have its bright side, though. Undesirable social problems are also obvious, including mental and physical ailments, incidences of abuse, sexual and domestic violence, harassment, and so forth. Alcohol is often part of our society’s darker side.

The CCSA’s recommendations point to an opportunity for Canadians to have a deeper, better understanding of our relationship with alcohol. We need to be open and honest with ourselves while appreciating the fact that enjoying our favourite alcoholic beverage responsibly, in moderation, remains the most balanced policy.

But there is hope. If we can make chicken meat in the laboratory, we can certainly make synthetic, non-cancer-causing alcohol. In fact, GABA Labs, based in the U.K., has already launched a product called Sentia, which mimics the effects of alcohol, but doesn’t cause a hangover or long-term health consequences. Many expect the science to be perfected and commercially available in many outlets within five years. Quite promising.

Still, our beverage industry has done wonders for Canadians and will undoubtedly continue to innovate and offer great products for all to enjoy.

Food science can come to the rescue and help many Canadians lead better, healthier lifestyles. But in the meantime, the CCSA’s report is likely a difficult message for Canadians to swallow.

Dr. Sylvain Charlebois is senior director of the agri-food analytics lab and a professor in food distribution and policy at Dalhousie University.

Announcing corporate bonuses requires tact and empathy

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Announcing corporate bonuses requires tact and empathy

Sylvain Charlebois
 
With a new year starting, we hear announcements about bonuses in food retailing.
 
Metro recently announced that it offered five top senior executives $3.7 million in bonuses. This represents a four per cent increase in bonus payouts over the previous year, while Metro sales grew 3.3 per cent over the past fiscal year. Unsurprisingly, Éric La Flèche, its CEO, saw his total compensation reach $5.4 million, up seven per cent compared to 2021. His annual bonus this year is around $1.5 million, an increase of 14 per cent compared to last year.
 
Alas, Metro’s statement said nothing about the compensation paid to other company employees.
 
Metro is not alone. Other grocers and other companies in the food sector have done the same thing. In 2021, according to Globe and Mail data, José Cil of Restaurants Brand International, Brian Hannasch of Alimentation Couche-Tard, Galen Weston of Loblaws and George Weston, Neil Rossy of Dollarama, and Michael Medline of Empire/Sobeys, all working in the food sector, have without exception received larger bonuses than those announced by Metro.
 
There is nothing wrong with paying bonuses to executives who help a company grow and create value for its shareholders and customers. In fact, other than José Cil of Restaurants Brands International, who ranks 13th, again according to the Globe and Mail, there is no food CEO whose compensation ranks among the top 20 in the country. Galen Weston of Loblaws is in 42nd place, Michel Medline in 61st and Éric La Flèche in 78th. Nothing exceptional. In food, the margins are thin, and the salaries are, too.
 
Motivating leaders and attracting the talent needed to get things done remains an asset, especially these days. But in the food sector, companies must read the proverbial room, considering what’s happening with our economy. Profits in the food industry have an incredibly sensitive moral undertone; Consumers have a very different perception of bonuses because it is, above all, a question of social acceptability.
 
Most often, performance reviews of corporate leaders are heavily influenced by the company’s sales figures. Like everywhere else, inflation has inflated the numbers in the financial statements. Moreover, food inflation in the country has exceeded 10 per cent for several months and greatly exceeds the general inflation rate.
 
Major grocers have continually been criticized by politicians, analysts, and even journalists for their so-called record profits. The big food companies have been posting very good results for some time; that goes without saying. But food inflation in Canada remains one of the lowest in the world among industrialized countries. Amongst industrialized economies, only Japan, China and India show lower rates than Canada. Since the food sector manages a global phenomenon, it is unwise to point the finger at supermarkets as their profit margins have never really exceeded the profitability thresholds that we see elsewhere, including in the United States.
 
So, for Metro and the others, announcing bonuses requires tact, and above all, empathy. Announcing bonuses to just a handful of executives during the holidays is simply ill-timed. Or the company could increase executive salaries to avoid bonuses and avoid any public outcry. If that’s not possible, there are other ways to go about it.
 
With these bonus announcements, the companies should publicize the steps taken to compensate other employees: all staff, not just executives. People don’t know much about Éric La Flèche, but they know Samantha, Nicole, Vincent, and others who work in stores we all visit. And they work long hours. Perhaps more than ever, it is critical to humanize food companies to demonstrate that employees occupy an important place when evaluating a company’s financial performance.
 
In addition, these companies give generously to food banks and support various causes throughout the year. When announcing targeted bonuses, the company should also display its charitable donations and shed light on its socioeconomic contributions. Again, recognizable and public empathy.
 
Grocers must come to terms with the fact that they are experiencing a real crisis of confidence across Canada. Their image depends on every word written in press releases and every sentence spoken in front of a microphone or a camera. Their relationship with the public changed in 2022, and much the same should be expected in 2023.
 
Dr. Sylvain Charlebois is senior director of the agri-food analytics lab and a professor in food distribution and policy at Dalhousie University.

A Christmas wish list to fix our health care crisis

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A Christmas wish list to fix our health care crisis

Shawn Whatley
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Conservative leaders seem loath to mention health care in equal measure to journalists’ delight in raising it. John Ivison, a columnist at the National Post, took a stab at federal Conservative leader Pierre Poilievre last week: “You simply can’t aspire to be prime minister of Canada today and claim that health care has nothing to do with you.”

Ivison has a point. Endless headlines about health care demand a political response: for example, overcrowding in children’s hospitals, federal-provincial funding battles, and emergency department closures, to name a few.

Some leaders love to expound on health care. Last week, Jagmeet Singh, leader of the federal NDP, threatened to withdraw support for his confidence-and-supply agreement with the Liberals. Singh demanded that the (federal) Liberals detail solutions for (provincial) health-care problems.

Ivison’s demand for details and Singh’s confidence to deliver rest on a shared assumption and a shared vision of how government should address health care. They assume health care is a factory to fix, with Singh knowing just how to fix it.

Their approach contains three problems. First, health care is not a factory. It is one of the most complex sectors of our economy. One tweak by government – for example, introducing national licensure for physicians – could have vast, unforeseen effects.

Visions of economic dials, levers, pipes, and pulleys have delighted central planners for decades. They are deceitful dreams, a feverish mirage. As Robert Heilbroner, erstwhile defender of socialism, famously admitted: the centrally planned economy was “the tragic failure of the 20th century.”

The first problem misunderstands the nature of what we hope to fix; the second problem assumes we are smart enough to fix it. But if Singh became prime minister, his unstoppable confidence would meet the immovable fact of Hayek’s Knowledge Problem.

Friedrich Hayek, the Nobel-winning economist, argued that economies cannot be controlled because there is too much to know. Especially in a service industry such as health care, individual needs, wants, and preferences determine performance. These inputs are internal to the patients themselves and the clinicians trying to care for them.

The third problem is the least obvious but most lethal. It assumes a purchaser can fix the provision of a product or service. Government pays for health care; ergo, government can fix health care.

What is obvious nonsense for every other product or service – from coffee to construction – somehow seems reasonable for health care. Purchasers cannot fix provision. True, a purchaser can influence providers to change behaviour by demanding different products and services. But purchasers have no idea how to reorganize, retool, or redesign to deliver change itself.

Just as Conservative leaders are reluctant to talk about health care, the rest of us should be reluctant to offer advice. Politicians know politics; outsiders do not.

Furthermore, Conservatives represent a vast coalition of ideas, especially on health care. Red Tories support welfare in general and Medicare in particular. Prairie populists, classical liberals, libertarians, and a dozen other flavours of Conservative form a salad of mixed feelings. It requires fancy stickhandling to get through all the policy preferences.

So, take this wish list in the innocence and earnestness of a child at Christmas.

1. Show enthusiastic support for universal health insurance

Twenty-eight countries around the world have universal care. None of them have government monopolies like Canada. Universal just means everyone needs health insurance, in the same way all cars on the road need to be insured.

Medicare started as state-funded medical insurance but morphed into managed care. In fact, some argue we should stop thinking about “medical insurance” as insurance at all. Do not let that happen. As long as Canadians remain comfortable and familiar with medical insurance, we have a tiny sliver of room for change. If insurance becomes verboten, change will be much more difficult.

2. Fix health-care governance

As I wrote in April, “Medicare cannot change because it is locked in an iron triangle consisting of government, the medical profession, and public-sector unions.” And in June I wrote that it makes no sense to talk about policy until we have fixed governance.

3. Champion (local) innovation

Like politics, all care is local. Care plans must be allowed to evolve based on the needs of particular patients in specific communities. Bold visions and national plans tend to deliver one-size-fits-all services, the antithesis of patient-centred care. Only government can create a regulatory environment that fosters growth, innovation, and expansion of care at the local level.

The crucial element is to allow hypothesis testing to happen, not do it yourself. This means you need to find a way to let clinicians fail as they struggle to innovate toward better care. Easier said than (politically) done.

In summary, all I want for Christmas is for politicians to tell us what they believe about health care, tell us what they think is the biggest problem, and show us what only they can do. Again, this is a childlike Christmas wish. But given all the other advice out there this Christmas, perhaps this offers something new.

Merry Christmas!

Shawn Whatley is a physician, past president of the Ontario Medical Association, and a Munk senior fellow at MLI. He is the author of When Politics Comes Before Patients – Why and How Canadian Medicare is Failing.

CERB repayment fiasco risks ruining a modern approach to federal transfers

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CERB repayment fiasco risks ruining a modern approach to federal transfers

When COVID-19 hit in 2020, the federal government responded by doing something it hadn’t done at scale in a long time – deliver cash transfers in entirely new ways. As the feds doled out relief funds, more government support went to businesses ($176 billion) through programs like the Canada Emergency Wage Subsidy (CEWS) than went to individuals ($151 billion) through programs like the Canada Emergency Response Benefit (CERB).
 
Now, two years after the start of the pandemic, people are still receiving letters from the Canada Revenue Agency (CRA) asking them to pay back the CERB they received in 2020. A new report from the Auditor General (AG) argues that the government should be going hard after people who made errors in applying or came up short in meeting the eligibility requirements – $5,000 in earnings in 2019. It estimates that $5 billion was paid to people who received advance or duplicate payments, and another $8 billion went to people who earned less than the minimum income threshold.
 
The CRA seems to think this money is recoverable – that low-income recipients kept it in their savings accounts instead of spending it – but come on, there has to be a limit as to how long after the fact you can go after people, except in cases of outright fraud.
 
The same report also highlights the fact that $16 billion in Canada Emergency Wage Subsidy (CEWS) went to businesses that likely weren’t eligible (the largest single category the AG looked at). The report rightly bemoans the lack of data on whether companies actually used the money to retain employees and forestall layoffs.
 
While “wage subsidy” was in the name, there was actually no legal requirement for companies to use the money on wages. In fact, 68 publicly traded companies paid out dividends (i.e. profits) to shareholders while receiving the CEWS. A third of the 100 highest-paid CEOs in 2020 worked for companies that received the wage subsidy.
 
Who’s more blameworthy, some poor schmuck who lost their job and only made $4,500 in 2019 or some millionaire CEO who applied for government aid and got a bonus as a result?
 
Looking at how CEWS vs CERB played out isn’t just an interesting historical debate. Getting benefits directly and immediately from the CRA website is the way of the future. The new Canada Housing Benefit top-up and the low-income child dental benefits are going this route. You go to the CRA website, fill in some basic details, attest that you qualify, and the money shows up in your account in a few days.
 
There are clear benefits to this new CERB-like approach. You get the money now and don’t have to wait for tax time. You get a cash transfer, not a “reduction in taxable income,” which is what boutique tax cuts from the 2010s provided. It’s a better and more modern way to help Canadians in difficult circumstances.
 
But going after low-income Canadians for CERB payments from 2020 could well taint this approach for years to come. If you think CRA is going to come after you years from now, you may think twice about applying, even if you need dental care for your kids or you pay too much in rent.
 
For this new model to be successful, there must be clear rules and easily verifiable criteria for eligibility. The rental top-up does have pretty clear eligibility rules. The children’s dental coverage doesn’t – which may force low-income families to repay it years from now.
 
There must also be a clear statute of limitations on recourse, with exceptions for cases of fraud. If people don’t qualify, fine, don’t send them the money. But don’t force them to pay it back two years after they’ve already spent it.
 
David Macdonald is senior economist with the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives, a non-partisan research institute.

COP15 proposes an extremist planetary diet

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COP15 proposes an extremist planetary diet

Sylvain Charlebois
Troy Media
 
COP15 on biodiversity has brought thousands of delegates to Montreal to address critical issues our planet is facing. Regarding food systems, delegates are discussing agroecology, food systems intensification, and fisheries in food security.
 
One issue catching some people’s attention is diet and overconsumption. That’s right; food is being discussed in Montreal.
 
Many believe that food systems are the single largest cause of biodiversity loss on land, and the pressure our diets put on our biodiversity is significant. So COP15 looks at diets and the overconsumption of food.
 
The “diet and overconsumption” motion, which really entails reducing animal protein consumption, is supported by the EU but opposed by Paraguay, Argentina, and Canada. The motion itself appears to be largely inspired by the EAT-Lancet “planetary health diet,” half of which is comprised of fruit and vegetables, with whole grains, unsaturated plant oils, and plant-sourced proteins also playing a large role. Animal protein, including dairy and eggs, would represent about 10 per cent of the diet. The current Canadian diet consists of more than 35 per cent of some form of animal protein.
 
Canada’s animal protein industry’s GDP contribution exceeds well over $60 billion. More critically, our dairy industry’s contribution to our economy exceeds $20 billion annually and relies on a government-sanctioned quota system for its protection. Same for poultry and eggs. This regime has been incredibly safeguarded by all political stripes in Ottawa over the last 50 years. No wonder Canada is against the motion, and very few see that changing anytime soon. But, of course, you never know with Ottawa these days.
 
The motion suggests that COP15 is in the thrall of idealistic and extremist views on what our food systems should look like. And based on some media coverage, debates are not welcomed either.
 
Extreme environmental groups have claimed that lobby groups representing seed, chemical, and fertilizer giants have no place at COP15. They are wondering why some were accredited in the first place. These extremist groups believe they literally own the moral pathway to a greener planet, and other groups – such as companies like Bayer, Corteva, Syngenta-ChemChina, Synagri, and Sollio, should be silenced and excluded from COP15 altogether.
 
The ultimate objective of agri-environmental groups is to turn the entire world organic, which is neither sustainable nor desirable.
 
The views of input companies and farmers – who are also environmentalists but hold a different perspective on agriculture – also need to be represented at COP15. Groups like CropLife have sustainable solutions and have done some valuable research which deserves to be shared. Technologies developed by some companies have and will continue to keep our food more affordable.
 
While 2022 has been unkind to many of us at the grocery store, our food inflation storm could have been much worse without the work being done in agriculture by major players.
 
The we-know-best approach and claims to exclude groups that may not share your view is utterly shameful. That needs to stop. Some reporters have also embraced the urban-centric ecological bandwagon for some time as well, and that also needs to stop.
 
Agriculture is not about adopting one single model over others. While organics may be wonderful, their scalability is limited. Farmers are no longer just happy living out in the field.

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