Who Will Be Canada’s Next Top Minister of Food?

All the pre-inauguration hype of Obama and his magical, unicorn-riding Cabinet of Hope has got the chattering classes aflutter at all the change and possibilities. The first of presumably many disappointments was when foodies, expecting the appointment of a bold, reforming, worldly, and artisan cheese-eating Secretary of Agriculture were instead saddled with Iowa governor and ethanol and corn subsidy-loving Tom Vilsack.

For a short post-election time, New York Times columnist Nicholas D. Kristof (and food lovers) were thinking of reform in this department. Americans. the hope went, would get a ‘Secretary of Food’, and maybe an organic braised short rib on everyone’s plate. “A Department of Agriculture made sense 100 years ago when 35 percent of Americans engaged in farming.” wrote Kristof. “But today, fewer than 2 percent are farmers. In contrast, 100 percent of Americans eat [...] Renaming the department would signal that Mr. Obama seeks to move away from a bankrupt structure of factory farming that squanders energy, exacerbates climate change and makes Americans unhealthy — all while costing taxpayers billions of dollars.”

Maybe it was just that Michelle Obama once told ABC’s “The View” during the campaign that she and the incoming president were “bacon people”, but whatever it was, it got me to thinking along similar lines. Does Canada need a new “food” cabinet position? A Minister of Food, to be exact?

Just like in the United States, our agriculture economy isn’t what it used to be. It now employs only one in eight jobs in the country and accounts for just 8% of our GDP. Yet the Canadian government currently spends roughly $8.4 billion a year on it.

More telling are the 100% of Canadians who are eaters, even the vegetarians (who are really only half-eaters, since they just eat veggies). Whether Whole Foods organic shoppers or not, we spend $60 billion a year in food stores. From Clucks and Fries at Red Robin to inspired dishes doused with truffle oil, we also spend about $30 billion a year in restaurants. On average, each Canadian spends nearly $3,000 a year on food, and yet we only have a Minister of Agriculture and Agri-Food. That’s wrong (and I can’t think of anything more unappetizing than that title. It’s wrong, too).

I mean no disrespect to our fun-loving Minister of Agriculture and Agri-Food, Garry Ritz. He once owned a farm, was a contractor, and ran a small newspaper (he has a moustache as well, which is pretty cool). He also presided over – and made jokes during – the Listeria outbreak that killed 19, and still hasn’t provided a single serving of government action. They can’t even keep food safe.

And just like America and Obama’s pick, the agriculture business in Canada is every bit as manipulated by the murky intersection of oil and crops. Don’t get me wrong, ideologically I have no problem if our gasoline was mandated to include 5% ethanol. Hell, it could be 10% for all I care, but I’d rather not subsidize the growth of that bio-fuel to the tune of $2 billion per annum.

So I think we need a Ministry of Food, and maybe a reality show to find the next Minister of Food. Certainly it would be more entertaining that the new crop (no pun intended) of CBC shows that have just started. We’d need the Canadian version of Top Chef for this, preferably with Padma Lakshmi, Tom Colicchio, and Anthony Bourdain to help judge and eliminate the deadbeat would-be Ministers.

I mean, if we can have Olympic skier Nancy Green and talking head Mike Duffy trotted out as Senators, then we should be able to get Vikram Vij as our national food czar (he can still serve up tasty treats on the side if he likes). The only question for me personally would be if organic, food-loving voters would go with Harper and the Conservatives on such a move. Either way, it would be change that I could believe in, or at least shovel down my pie hole with a nice local Pinot.

- Photo by Michelle Sproule | Vikram Vij at the 2008 Spot Prawn Festival

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Jackson Murphy is the editor of The Vancouverite, a blog of Vancouver news, events, and gossip established in 2005. He’s been writing about politics and pop culture since 1998, and blogging on the interwebs since 2001. He’s currently working on interactive creative projects with his day job on the salt mines inside the underbelly of the advertising world.

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3 Politicians Walk Into a Bar…

And I thought the most embarrassing thing in politics between Canadian Thanksgiving and American Thanksgiving would have been Sarah Palin’s interview in front of the turkey getting slaughtered. But surprise, surprise, it might be the Amy Winehouse-ian train wreck that is currently underway in Ottawa right now.

Barely six weeks after an election that voters yawned over, that put nails in the political coffin of at least two party leaders (presumably), and didn’t change a single thing, politics is back. Only this time it is a sequel directed by Michael Bay and full of awesome political explosions.

The main question is: Did Stephen Harper lay a trap so big, so savvy, so long term, and so many chess moves ahead that he might actually bring himself down as well? Or did the Conservative Bobby Fisher make one too many moves that has caused The Liberals, NDP, and the Bloc to somehow think it is a good idea to bring the government down, leaving us with the amusing trifecta of Stephane Dion as Prime Minister, Jack Layton as Finance Minister, and Gilles Duceppe as Minister of Foreign Affairs?

That last sentence had me waking up in a cold sweat that felt like a cross between Bobby Ewing after that dream season on Dallas and Han Solo after he was frozen in carbonite.

Let’s be clear. Harper started this by proposing to take away some federal (read: taxpayer) money, $28 million to be exact, for the down on their luck political parties. This set the wheels in motion for a possible vote of no confidence. Now the so called ‘Coalition of the Credulous‘ claim it is because the government didn’t push through a fiscal stimulus goody bag package that won’t do much to stimulate much of anything. You know, because every other nation has thrown millions into stimulus packages, we need one too.

“I’m not a big fan of short-term stimulus packages,” said Don Drummond, chief economist at TD Bank. “They don’t really generate very much short-term stimulus and they very quickly become long-term structural problems.”

But wait, there’s more. The Tories record NDP conference calls, and the NDP has a secret deal with the Bloc long before last week’s economic update. And potential Liberal leader Michael Ignatieff apparently thought the whole thing was a mess, until he brokered his own deal to be Prime Minister upon any successful coup.

And maybe this was his game plan all along. Harper and Co. have already pulled the plug on the plan and have started floating spending ideas willy-nilly, while leaving the three opposition leaders out in the wilderness still pushing to bring down the government. Is it a total turkey shoot? Is it an Ashton Kutcher-led punking that has the separatists sleeping with the establishment Grits and the socialists? Clearly it seems to be working, as it has lured some political vampires back from the dead.

“They’ve pulled (former Liberal prime minister Jean) Chrétien and (former NDP leader Ed) Broadbent out of the political crypt to try and give (Liberal leader Stephane) Dion the chair he couldn’t make during the election,” says Thornhill MP Peter Kent.

The irony is that under the minority environment scenario, all of this is how the game is played. It proves that the system actually works. The Government drops a bomb, the opposition calls for war, the government changes its mind, and then everything goes back to normal. At least that is how it is supposed to go. And Harper has either blinked or hoodwinked the opposition. It’s too soon to tell which.

The United States got Obama and change and we get the almost hilarious “Coalition For Canada”. It must be the start of a joke. I’m sure of it.

Dion, Layton, and Duceppe walk into a bar…

Fun with the Vancouver Voter’s Guide

Some of us in Vancouver are about ready to hit the polls for the third time in a month. Now I know how the Greeks felt. I’m honestly trying to find a reason to vote, any reason, and any candidate to vote for. Looking through the Voters Guide in my mailbox, it would seem to be clear that the tides of change haven’t exactly made it to Vancouver yet. I’m also looking forward to registering again, since the two other times it was like I was lost in the system.

Now, before we get to candidates, can I digress with a few points on the new NPA website? I thought Jack Layton and the NDP’s orange website was an unbelievably crass rip off of Barack Obama’s (not to mention that it didn’t work), but seeing the NPA rip it off so clumsily for the civic elections really takes the cake. Something must have been lost in the HTML translation as “Yes We Can” clearly getting garbled into a compelling “No We Can’t”. I’ll be enjoying watching these copycat sites for years.

I suppose even that is better than Gregor Robertson’s ad on the cover 24 Hours this morning – Angry enough to vote for change this Saturday? Really? Did he learn nothing from Obama? Brooding anger is not the change we’re looking for. And interestingly enough, Gregor, I don’t even know what cutting the Homeless Action Plan is or what it would have done, so you lost me at Ladner.

I tried to get behind The Nude Garden Party. Pretty sure it sounded like a lot of fun in theory. But as Homer Simpson once said, “In theory, Communism works. In theory.” In fact it wasn’t even conceptually what I thought it was going to be anyway. What a burn.

Still, running for mayor on this platform is Pat Britten. In the Voters Guide (really? A Guide?) he says, “Vancouver, iterations of providence and practical integrated living design. Co-operative materialization of habitat social ideals, where appropriate will illuminate provincial [using pine beetle logs?] and national solutions.” Oh my. Now that does sound good.

Other mayoral candidates caught my interest briefly. Golok Z. Buday, who enlightened us on why he didn’t run for mayor in 1999 (he was sick apparently), was a little too liberal with the information, don’t you think? Perhaps our hope will lie with N Bur Maxwell, who leads his platform off with a warm and fuzzy, “No Gay Parade. No IOC. Legalize prostitutions. Large Business close Sunday.” Do candidates like this make you even consider someone like Marc Emery instead? At least he wears a suit.

By the time it got to Councilor, and knowing we have to elect an astounding 10 of them, it made me wonder how one really decides. I mean, how can you really sort out 10 candidates? Thank god for political parties! At any rate, I started my narrowing down list trying to figure out who was more attractive (I know, I shouldn’t be allowed to vote in these kinds of elections, but that’s democracy for you). On one hand the NPA’s Kim Capri looked pretty good in her photo, or maybe it was her NPA colleague, 40-year old Korina Houghton. You kind of have to vote for her since she’s like an expectant mother don’t you? I think I settled on Andrea Reimer as the sole councilor babe candidate. No wonder Sarah Palin did so well those first few weeks (she would own this election). I’m sure Tyra would say, “You guys look like the pretty girls walking down the street. Maybe she can model, but ehh…”

By the time I get to pick my Park Commissioners (7) and School Trustees (9) it’s bad that the only two people I could remember are Marty Zlotnik and Thomas Lockhart. Seriously, this guy has amazing signs out everywhere and now I remember Zlotnik. His last name is even fun to say. And Lockhart looks like a rugged cowboy in his picture and he runs a tattoo shop. How can Vancouver go wrong?

After going through the guide I’m not sure I really found that missing reason to vote. If Gregor Robertson or Peter Ladner were old ‘mavericks’, it would make it all so easy. And let me be the first to say it would have been even easier if Sam Sullivan was running again. Now, that would cause me get to the polls.

It Ain’t Easy Being Green

How can you sustain – pardon the pun – the green movement when economies are melting; investments, housing prices, and gas prices are all dropping rapidly; carbon taxes have been shown to be political suicide; and tough, expedient choices are being forced on governments and individuals both here and abroad? Despite making serious inroads in the global conversation, is being green at a crossroads today?

Here are five things that’ve been making me wonder…

The Green Press: Will magazine and newspapers devote ink to Green? Obviously the news cycle can’t turn on a dime over night, as witnessed by the latest issue of Vancouver Magazine, which has a rather untimely cover story and massive feature entitled “The New Green”. Probably won’t see that kind of feature coverage for a while as the top stories all refocus on the economy. We are all hobos now.

Adventures in Green Shifts: During the last election, ‘green’ was already under the gun. Stephane Dion got beat up, badly, on carbon taxes and ‘Green Shifts’, when he wasn’t busy ceding the election to Stephen Harper. And seeing Green Party Deputy Leader Adrian Carr’s campaign call for help from “light-greens, dark-greens, and all greens in-between” should have been a warning sign to a movement that is incapable of a single electoral victory or a coherent political ‘strategery’. Pretty sure people will figure out that voting green isn’t getting them anywhere (though I’m sure people have said that about the Bloc, Reform, and the NDP).

Green Fail: Al Gore and others spent millions creating multimillion-dollar ad campaigns all year, and when was the last time you heard Obama or McCain even talk about the environment? Back in August? The Dow drops below 8,000…$700 billion bailouts…and the most you’ll get is either lip service to a few green jobs or pandering to ‘drill baby, drill.’ If the green movement couldn’t articulate and win at $160 a barrel, how does it stand a chance when its back down at $60, unemployment is up, and housing prices are down? This is exactly what happened in ’73, in ’79 and already we see stocks of alternative energy companies falling hard. Funny how a person’s greenness is directly related to the green in their wallets.

I drink your milkshake: Given this, how good does someone like T. Boone Pickens sound to people who are worried about their pocket books when he spends millions of his own money to plain talk you through his dead simple plan? He’s an oil drilling billionaire cowboy saying he can solve pretty much every problem, including the economy, through wind and natural gas. This is no Daniel Plainview from ‘There Will Be Blood,’ and I’m in. It has nothing to do with green policy and everything to do with that green money. When in doubt, follow the Rich Texan from ‘The Simpsons’.

Green Politics: So what will voters do today in Vancouver’s two by-elections, where some say the largest amount of environmentalists per capita live? Too bad “the three key issues,” according to The Province’s John Bermingham, “are the homeless evictions and rent hikes, and the fate of St. Paul’s Hospital.” Will the environment even end up as top issue by the time we vote, for real again, in 6-months? Maybe. Think Gordon Campbell will run to or from his carbon tax? He’s still running green ads now, but come springtime it will be all government is awesome and spending all the time.

Bottom line: The green movement better find a way to stay relevant pretty quick, or they’ll be in epic fail territory quick.