Carney government needs to dig deeper on food security

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.

Let me explain.

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 states that producers need access to alternative distribution methods for agricultural products, it does not directly note the importance of cooperative structures to create new frameworks for food distribution. It also neglects to even consider channeling locally-produced foods into publicly-owned grocery stores.

Meanwhile the NFSS does mention supporting controlled environment agriculture production which includes greenhouses, vertical farms, and soil-less production methods, among others. Then in the next leap, the NFSS goes on to focus on attracting multinational corporations interested in investing in the Canadian food sector. Attracting that investment is the launching point for creating what is called an Agri-Food Project Financing Fund through which billions of public dollars will be channeled and managed by the Farm Credit Corporation to support large, capital intensive, private investment into the Canadian food sector.

The objectives in the NFSS are laudatory:

“The National Food Security Strategy will make food more affordable, accessible, and will ensure that more of it is produced here at home, strengthening our domestic resilience and reducing our dependence on others.

Objective: Reducing the price of food for Canadian families

Objective: Process more food domestically

Objective: Increase the production and efficiency of fruits and vegetables

grown year-round

Objective: Lower costs, while protecting health and safety”

And while the first 20 pages or so of the 27-page National Food Security Strategy are promising, the report is missing key issues that are fundamental to food security.

It neglects to provide solid policy solutions for intergenerational transfer of family farms and relies instead on bandaid policies related to capital gains taxes, and increased loans programs to purchase land. Yet, the NSFF makes no mention of policies to curb speculation on agricultural land (see this column “Reunions, rural depopulation, and the rights of small farmers”).

While the report identifies corporate concentration in the retail and wholesale food sector, it makes no mention of corporate concentration of farmland, access to seed (see this column “Regulations matter: Who controls seed”…) in a market controlled by pharmaceutical and agribusiness corporations. And environmental sustainability in agriculture did not make it to the strategy table.

Climate change is mentioned three times in the NFSS, but only in passing, and only as something that happens elsewhere and so has an impact on the cost of food in Canada. The NSFF never addresses climate change as an issue that is fundamental to any sustainable and secure food system in Canada – and makes no mention of homemade policies to lessen agriculture’s impact on climate and how to create farm operations that are more resilient.

Instead the National Food Security Strategy completely bypasses the fundamentals of a secure and sovereign food system. Alarmingly, the report gives a nod to the use of technologies such as artificial intelligence and precision agriculture (see my column on “The Dazzle of Precision Agriculture ”); and as if to add insult to injury calls for the deregulation of both the Canadian Food Inspection Agency and the Pesticides Act.

The National Farmers Union (NFU) is among the organizations that have underscored the damaging actions that the federal government has recently undertaken related to agriculture, including the NFSS.

In January of 2026, major cuts to agriculture research centres and staff were announced. More than 600 jobs and seven agriculture research stations were cut.

The NFU continues to call for a reversal of these cuts and noted in its media release:

“The National Farmers Union is calling for not only a reversal of these cuts, but re-investment in public agricultural research. In a world increasingly fraught with uncertainty, rebuilding our capacity for public-interest agricultural research will provide Canada with the strategic autonomy to deliver security and confidence into the future.”

Then in June, just a few days before the NFSS was released, the federal government passed Bill C-30, an intrusive and sneaky piece of omnibus legislation that went far beyond being about federal budget measures. Deep into Bill C-30 were changes that further eroded key food security safeguards. In its media release the NFU notes the gutting of the Canadian Food Inspection Agency as well as the Pesticides Act, by allowing Cabinet to override the agency and the legislation with impunity. Yet one of the key objectives of the NFSS is “lowering costs, while protecting health and safety”. So gutting safety regulations will somehow lower costs?

Need I say more about the Carney government’s passion for double-speak and obfuscation.

The last few pages of the National Food Security Strategy solidify the direction that the federal Carney government has chosen. It is not one of food security, but rather one of privatization, deregulation, and climate change denial. Nothing could be further than this from a solid food security strategy.

The NFSS has ignored international organizations that are calling for sustainability in the face of a pending global food crisis. It would have been nice to see even one idea, or even one page, taken from the many reports of IPES-Food – the International Panel of Experts on Sustainable Food Systems. This column provides more detail: “The long food movement… a future in the making.”

The National Food Security Strategy takes the same approach as Carney’s Davos speech – lots of nice words, and many actions that are contradictory to what appears to be proposed and also to what is required for true food security.

The National Food Security Strategy lacks vision and courage. Like the Davos speech, it is about smoke and mirrors… and further advancing corporate interests all the while pretending otherwise.

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