The Ontario Food and Nutrition Consultation has launched!

April 24, 2012

We’re excited to announce that the Ontario Food and Nutrition Strategy Consultation has launched!

How to Participate:

1)   Read the strategy.

2)  Respond: Note which suggestions you support, oppose, or would suggest changes to. Add your own ideas for policy and action. The deadline for submissions is MAY 31, 2012.

3)   Submit your feedback through the web forms. Give us your feedback (big and small!) – from broad themes to word-smithing. If you REALLY, REALLY can’t use the web form, you may provide your feedback to strategy@sustainontario.ca

4)   Review the revised Strategy in June 2012.

How to organize community or group feedback:

We encourage you to review the strategy as a group and discuss it together. We hope that bringing a group together to discuss this will benefit you in thinking about your own work and your own food system. We welcome group submissions. To make it easy we’re providing some resources to help you organize your own consultation event.

1)   Use the materials provided and your own materials  to gather feedback on the strategy.

2)   Input the information into the web forms. If that is too difficult, you can mail the hard copies to Sustain Ontario at 365-401 Richmond St. W; Toronto, ON; M5V 3A8.

Thank you for the work that you do and for your participation. We look forward to hearing from you!

If the links in this email do not work, for you, please visit http://sustainontario.com/initiatives/ontario-food-and-nutrition-strategy

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Ontario’s Budget for 2012: What does it mean for Healthy Food and Farming

March 29, 2012

As we waited for Ontario Finance Minister Dwight Duncan to present the 2012 Ontario Budget yesterday, many of us were wondering what it would mean for food and farming. Would we see the budgets of the ministries and programs fundamental to our work cut? The Drummond Report recommended  bolstering economic growth rates and increasing focus on health promotion. Would those translate into greater investment and focus on health promotion? What about building on the potential of the food and farming sector to create more jobs and generate economic development? Or would the budget-makers come down somewhere in the middle neither undermining our work nor advancing it to its full potential.

As many might have imagined the answer was right in the middle. The 2012 Ontario budget opens up a couple of opportunities to advance healthy food and farming systems, but mostly maintains the status quo.

Here’s what’s relevant to building healthy and sustainable food systems in the 2012 Ontario Provincial Budget: Read more »

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Upcoming: Early Registration for CAFS’ Annual General Meeting

March 7, 2012

The Canadian Association for Food Studies (CAFS) will host its seventh Annual General Meeting at Wilfrid Laurier University and University of Waterloo from May 26 – 28, 2012.  The conference is running in conjunction with the 2012 Congress of the Humanities and Social Sciences, with the CAFS theme being Crossroads for Food Studies: A Fork in the Road?

The conference will explore the relationships between food production and consumption, regional and local foodscapes, relationships between urban practices and rural environments, as well as crossings of food that occur on a larger, global scale.

To register for this innovative event, visit the Congress 2012 website.  Program highlights are listed below, but a full schedule for the conference can be found here.
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Report: Booming Job Market in Ontario’s Agri-Food Sector

March 6, 2012

On the heels of the Greater Toronto Area Agricultural Action Committee’s (GTA AAC) recent launch of their Food and Farming Action Plan comes an encouraging report from Guelph’s Ontario Agricultural College (OAC) on the increasing job opportunities in Ontario’s agricultural and food industry.

Read more about the Food and Farming Action Plan here and continue on for the full OAC article.
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Chicken-Keeper Challenges Charter

February 3, 2012

Toronto Chickens Supports Charter Challenge in Upcoming Court Case

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE:  The working group of backyard chicken owners in Toronto, Toronto Chickens, fully endorses the upcoming Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms challenge that has been undertaken by Calgarian Paul Hughes.

Mr. Hughes’ court case is set for March 5, 2012. He is challenging his city’s bylaws that disallow the possession of urban chickens in Calgary. As a group that is working to change Toronto’s bylaw so that urban hens will be allowed again in the city, Toronto Chickens will monitor the course of this upcoming trial very closely.

 We call upon Toronto city councilors and city bylaw officers to suspend enforcement of the chicken bylaw until the results of this case are determined. Even though the court case is taking place in Calgary, because it challenges the federal Charter of Human Rights, it will impact all Canadians and override any municipal rulings.  

If you are interested in supporting Toronto Chickens or other backyard chicken legalization struggles, please write to Toronto Chickens at torontochickens@gmail.com


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Concerned About Supply Management In Ontario

January 24, 2012

by Ann Slater
National Farmers Union
This is written in response to the article by Mark Schatzker published in the January 4 edition of The Globe and Mail which takes a critical look at supply management. Unfortunately, along with being a critical critique of supply management in Canada, the arguments put forward by Mr. Schatzker are developed on misleading information.

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