As MPs on the House of Commons agriculture committee moved their attention to consumer views and interest in the next national food policy, they heard lots about what consumers want.
Oddly, few of them really claimed to represent consumers, but they all surely knew what consumers really want.
The Canadian Restaurant and Foodservices Association knows they want cheaper food, which is why supply management is an inappropriate policy.
A Peterborough manufacturer of a vaccine the reduces E. coli in cattle manure knew consumers don’t want to get sick, so the government should subsidize producers who want to inoculate their cattle.
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An Alberta food processing industry representative said consumers want fewer imports and more domestically produced food, so government should support the domestic industry.
A local food advocate said what consumers really want is more local food, and so government should support local food networks and purchasing hubs and concentrate less on trade.
Over the years, anti-genetic modification and organic advocates have assured MPs that many consumers want non-GM or organic food.
Even the prime minister’s office got involved several years ago in announcing what consumers really want — in that case a Product of Canada label that requires that at least 98 percent of the product be Canadian.
If that’s what consumers really wanted, they were mistaken because almost no food products qualify and they therefore have been denied the chance to buy Product of Canada products.
Through the most recent committee hearings, only one witness, Consumers’ Association of Canada president Bruce Cran from British Columbia, could claim to speak for consumers.
“I represent consumers and nothing but,” he told MPs.
Cran’s argument was that polling shows food safety is the main consumer issue, support for irradiation is strong, imports are thought to be less well inspected than domestic produce and cost is an issue with supply management as part of the problem.
Perhaps the most interesting part of his testimony was his argument that CAC views are based on polling and not member agitation or feedback.
And that really gets to the crux of the issue — at least when it comes to food policy, the consumer lobby in Canada is weak and has been for decades. The CAC rarely is heard on food issues.
That fact is reflected in the Ottawa bureaucracy, where Agriculture Canada is considered the “food” department whose main interest is producers. Other players have no dedicated and knowledgeable defenders inside the system.
So folks for whom consumers really are customers end up telling government what consumers really want.
The last and perhaps only time when consumers mattered was almost 40 years ago when food prices were rising and a panicked prime minister Pierre Trudeau appointed former CAC president Beryl Plumptre to head a Food Prices Review Board.
By 1977, the food price issue had cooled and with talk of a new food policy, consumer affairs minister Warren Allmand suggested he co-parent it with agriculture minister Eugene Whelan.
Consumers yawned, Trudeau had moved on and with support from Whelan, farm leaders booed Allmand off the stage (not literally).
Now, almost no one in Ottawa remembers that there once was a consumer affairs minister.
