Rank Comix for June 2012

Rank Comix by Adam Martin

In response to reports that Olivier De Schutter, the United Nations Special Rapporteur on the Right to Food, is telling Canada that it needs “to drop its ‘self-righteous’ attitude’” and start dealing with the issue of food insecurity. De Schutter took 11 days to uncover Canada’s dirty little secret, journeying to the county’s poor urban areas and remote Aboriginal communities.

He said people in the inner-city told him they can’t afford to feed their children, and Aboriginal people are living in “very desperate conditions” and “extremely dire straits. This was De Schutter’s first report on a developed country and the federal government was none too pleased to have him traipsing about the place.

He was snubbed by Cabinet for the most part, except for Health Minister Leona Aglukkaq, who spoke in the House of Commons about her meeting with the special rapporteur. She told the House that Indigenous people in Canada don’t face food security issues because “they hunt every day” and she dismissed De Schutter’s report, saying he was an “ill-informed academic.” But Assembly of First Nations National Chief Shawn A-in-chut Atleo said he was grateful for the light shed on the problem of food security for First Nations people.

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