Food
The Trudeau government’s latest assault on transparency is buried in Bill C-69
From the Macdonald Laurier Institute
By Aaron Wudrick for Inside Policy
The new powers granted to the minister of health under Bill C-69 are considerable. For example, they allow the minister to unilaterally make decisions regarding drug approvals and food safety regulations, effectively pulling products off the shelves of stores without the typical procedural safeguards. This concentration of power in the hands of the minister circumvents much-needed scrutiny and risks politicizing health decisions.
As the Trudeau government scrambles to pass its spring 2024 budget measures through Parliament before the summer recess, most of the media’s focus has centred on the budget’s headline measure, the increase in the capital gains inclusion rate. Unusually, Finance Minister Chrystia Freeland chose not to include that change in its main budget bill, saying she would instead soon introduce those measures in a separate bill.
Meanwhile, the remainder of the budget measures are contained in Bill C-69, an omnibus bill that has attracted little media attention. That is a shame, as it contains provisions that warrant closer scrutiny, particularly the proposed changes to the Food and Drug Act. These amendments grant the minister of health sweeping powers, exacerbating the Trudeau government’s longstanding habit of undermining proper procedural channels when it finds them to be inconvenient.
The new powers granted to the minister of health under Bill C-69 are considerable. For example, they allow the minister to unilaterally make decisions regarding drug approvals and food safety regulations, effectively pulling products off the shelves of stores without the typical procedural safeguards. This concentration of power in the hands of the minister circumvents much-needed scrutiny and risks politicizing health decisions. It is not hard to see how such authority could easily lead to arbitrary or politically motivated actions, further diminishing public trust in a health system battered by the COVID-19 pandemic.
Health Minister Mark Holland defends these new powers by arguing that they are necessary for protecting public health swiftly and effectively and suggests that only a “dishonest” minister would misuse such powers. He fails to mention that governance should not rely solely on the personal integrity of individual ministers but on robust, transparent processes that ensure accountability. It is concerning that Holland advocates bypassing established departmental procedures, which raises questions about the motivations behind these proposed changes.
A more appropriate regulatory approach would trust independent agencies, including Health Canada, to oversee the safety of health products. Establishing clear guidelines and procedures for evaluating and removing unsafe products would ensure consistency, fairness, and transparency in decision-making processes.
Unfortunately, this approach contrasts sharply with the Trudeau government’s preference for consolidating power and limiting oversight.
For instance, the Trudeau government has been criticized for its use of secret orders-in-council, which bypass public scrutiny and reduce transparency. These orders often contain sensitive decisions that the government simply prefers to keep out of the public eye.
The government has also allowed the federal access to information system to atrophy, with frequent delays and heavily redacted documents further undermining the principle of open government.
In 2017, the Trudeau government introduced changes that critics argued would limit the independence and effectiveness of the Parliamentary Budget Officer (PBO). These amendments allowed the government to control the PBO’s work plan and staffing, potentially reducing its ability to hold the government accountable. More recently, the government cut the budget of the Information Commissioner’s office, undermining the capacity of an already overwhelmed independent officer of Parliament to hold the government to account, with the commissioner herself noting that “this reduction in my budget will spell long delays for complainants who are seeking information from government institutions.”
Further examples of this troubling trend include the government’s proposal in the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic that sought to grant the government extraordinary powers to tax and spend unilaterally – without parliamentary approval – for almost two years. Later in the pandemic, the government faced significant criticism from Auditor General Karen Hogan for the lack of transparency and accountability regarding the allocation and spending of tens of billions in relief funds: “I am concerned about the lack of rigour on post-payment verifications and collection activities,” Hogan said in 2022.
Taken together, a clear pattern emerges of a government that regularly seeks to undermine transparency, limit oversight, and concentrate power within the executive branch, and Bill C-69 is just the latest attempt.
The government should back off and drop these proposed new unilateral ministerial powers. Strong regulatory oversight, coupled with transparency and accountability, won’t impair the government’s ability to regulate health products – all while safeguarding democratic principles and public trust.
Aaron Wudrick is the Director of the Domestic Policy Program at the Macdonald-Laurier Institute.
From LifeSiteNews
The workforce reduction at a London, Ontario, facility that received $8.5 million in government funding appears to be a sign that Canadians do not have an appetite for bugs.
It appears Canadians’ taste for eating food made from bugs is not in high demand after news broke that a farm given millions by the federal government to raise crickets for “human and pet consumption” laid off two-thirds of its staff.
The cricket farm in London, Ontario, run by the Aspire Food Group just broke ground on a new 150,000-square-foot facility last year. The company said it was cutting shifts and going from 150 workers to 50.
In comments made to the trade news outlet AgFunderNews, company CEO David Rosenberg said the layoffs are due to making “improvements to its manufacturing system.”
The fact the company is already cutting costs in dramatic fashion comes only a short time after Canada’s federal government under Prime Minister Justin Trudeau contributed $8.5 million to it in 2022.
The cricket farm when fully operational can make 13 million kilograms of crickets for “human and pet consumption.”
It was given widespread coverage several years ago by Canada’s state-funded CBC, which billed it as the “world’s largest cricket production facility.”
Aspire’s pitch that its food had a lower environmental footprint than protein from cattle or pigs was in lockstep with the radical environmental goals of the Trudeau government as one of the reasons it landed a large grant.
According to AgFunderNews, only a year ago Aspire claimed its factory would be working at 100 percent by the start of 2024.
“We have significant contractual commitments for the majority of our production and expect 100% will be sold within the year,” former CEO Mohammed Ashour told AgFunderNews in March 2023.
Groups such as the Canadian Taxpayers Federation (CTF) blasted the federal government for subsidizing companies that make food out of crickets for human consumption, saying it amounts to giving Canadians “their ‘let them eat crickets’ moment.”
Both crickets and mealworms in recent years have been promoted by global elites as a source of protein that they say could replace beef or pork, and which can also be used in a variety of foods.
Indeed, the Great Reset of Klaus Schwab and his World Economic Forum (WEF) has as part of its agenda the promotion of eating bugs to replace beef, pork, and other meats that they say have high “carbon” footprints.
Conservative Party says layoffs at bug factory show ‘Canadians will not eat bugs’
The Conservative Party of Canada in an email to members said that the news regarding Aspire cutting most of its staff is proof that Canadians “will not eat bugs.”
“Justin Trudeau bet $9 million of your money on edible BUGS! He wants Canadians to own nothing, be happy, and eat crickets,” the party said in the email.
“But his bet failed. The company he invested YOUR tax dollars in has dramatically cut production and fired two-thirds of their staff. Turns out, Canadians don’t want to eat bugs.”
In 2022, Conservative MP Leslyn Lewis blasted the current cancel-culture crusade against red meat by pushing bugs as a source of food and the Trudeau government for funding bug factories.
The Trudeau government has implemented many policies that align with the WEF’s so-called “climate change” agenda, including a punishing carbon tax, and attacks on the nation’s oil and gas industries.
According to records, since 2018, a total of $420,023 has been spent on helping multiple food companies that make human bug food.
At the same time, the Trudeau government has begun to attack Canadian farmers by pushing forth an agenda that would force them to reduce the amount of nitrogen-based fertilizer. This could have a large negative impact on the growing of feed for cattle as well as food for human consumption.
Aspire is not the only factory in Canada breeding bugs to turn them into food for both human and animal consumption. The CTF listed all of the cricket processing companies that receive corporate welfare.
Dr. Joseph Mercola, in a blog posted by LifeSiteNews, documented how Schwab’s Great Reset agenda looks to force the world’s population to, by pressuring local governments, make people “consider eating bugs and weeds and drink ‘reclaimed’ sewage.”
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Cricket Farm Axes Jobs
I remember back a few years ago, making my way down to the midway of the Calgary Stampede to check out all of the new flavorful wares.
The Midway hasn’t really offered much by way of new rides since I was a kid, not entirely sure I’d be interested in riding them, even if they did…
The Budweiser beer grounds get old, when a cold beer sets you back over $10.
Mini donuts have lost their luster…
But every year, there are new menu items that had given a reason to at least make the cost of admission worth giving this another shot.
Walking through the grounds, the wife and I noticed that one of the new Stampede Delicacies was pizza with bugs on it…
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And I remember commenting to the wife that commercially made pizza has always had bugs in it…just nothing that they’d admit too for fear of being closed down by health regulations.
I mean…what’s next – boasting about mouse droppings in your soup?
But this bug thing has seemingly still managed to take off for reasons I cannot fathom. Are cow farts really impacting the planet that much?
It’d be hard to believe and harder to prove, even if this were true.
But then to read about some massive cricket farm in Eastern Canada, where cricket proteins were to be used in the mass production food items – chips, crackers, protein and energy bars and even flour – were soon to become a thing made me even more leery of processed foods.
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Acheta Powder, by listing in ingredients…because this is the soft way to slip something onto the “may contain”, listings…which seems more innocuous than bugs or crickets…
But because my consumption of processed food items is low, were never much of a consideration and hunting for this on items I had no intention on purchasing anyways, seemed an awful waste of time.
The Eastern Canadian Cricket farm was built by Aspire Foods, for the tune of about $90 Million Bucks…$8.5 million provided by yup – you guessed it, Your Taxes, through federal grants.
Which, while is nothing in relation to the $40 Billion that has been extorted by the governments, out of your hard earned paycheque, to subsidize EV Batteries, with a 20 year ROI of ZERO…is still as big of a loss because…apparently, like the failure in trying to force people into expensive and unpractical EVs or turning plants into meat looking substitutes…
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Mmmmmmmmmmmm…
Is also a Huge Failure.
Not enough people are eating Ze Bugs…which has turned out to shutter 2/3rds of the staffing in the workforce, in London, Ontario at the Aspire Cricket Farm.
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Now…I’m all for innovation.
It’s what has created the device I’ve used to create this post and share it with all of you. I love some of the items that have leant to making my life easier and reduced efforts for tasks that offer little by way of satisfaction or payoff…
But with this being said…the market will always be the decider on what will or will not take off…and even with the bombardment of fear mongering around climate change and sustainability, bugs as a protein substitute are rapidly proving themselves out of market because…like me, you are not eating Ze Bugs!
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