Introduction
Canada is facing a multi-faceted crisis that requires the federal government to use and expand its capacity to defend Canada’s sovereignty. Food sovereignty is essential to our political and economic independence from the United States.
Canadians have shown immense determination to resist American aggression, with concerns that go beyond economics. The American administration has turned to authoritarianism, racism, violence and lawlessness, and seems to thrive on cruelty and destruction. Canada’s mounting inequality heightens uncertainty, social unrest, fear and alienation – and increases our vulnerability to American political domination. Severe cuts to the federal government’s operational budgets and regulations, if implemented, will weaken government capacity at the very moment it is most needed to reduce inequality, improve service to rural, remote and marginalized people, and solve big problems that require a focus on the public interest.
Canada must create a more just economy for ourselves by building public-sector capacity, putting limits on self-interested corporate behavior, and establishing alternatives to the trajectory that has brought us to this point. This is how we will avoid further integration with the US market and avoid providing material resources and political legitimacy to its rogue government.
Nation-building in today’s context cannot succeed without the strong foundation of food sovereignty. Food sovereignty is the right of peoples and nations to define their own food systems, prioritizing economic dignity for farmers and farm workers, good food for our population, ecological sustainability, and community well-being. It counters inequality and allows us to build up the true wealth of our nation: our people. The upcoming federal budget can make agriculture a source of stability, security, resilience and community prosperity by shifting away from American hegemony.
Action Plan
Since the 1989 Free Trade Agreement, Canada has become more dependent on imported high-value processed food and fresh produce from the USA. Draconian cuts to American regulators, including its Food and Drug Administration and the Center for Disease Control, endangers food safety and public health. The USA’s mass imprisonment, intimidation and deportation of immigrants and undocumented residents is a human rights crisis that also creates labour shortages in food processing and farm labour. Food imports from the USA are becoming less safe and less available.
Regulations are not merely “red tape” but are necessary limits on private actors to promote fairness and safeguard the rights of others. Regulatory independence from the USA is a key trade-diversification strategy. The power to regulate is an essential component of our democracy, and effective enforcement needs to be adequately funded.
We recommend a minimum 25% budget increase for all food and agriculture regulators, including the CFIA, the Pest Management Regulatory Agency, the CGC, and Health Canada, to ensure these authorities are free from regulatory capture and have the mandate and capacity to enforce public interest regulations effectively and fairly.
We recommend increased funding for the Canadian Border Services for enforcing Canadian regulations for food, plants and animals entering the country.
Agriculture is the sector most exposed to worsening climate conditions. Addressing both economy-wide mitigation (reducing GHGs) and adaptation specifically for agriculture (dealing with impacts) is necessary to help stabilize the climate, safeguard our food supply, and provide economic dignity for farmers and farm workers. Farmers consistently identify climate change as a top concern.
The oil and gas industry and agro-chemical sector fund campaigns to undermine climate action. We need a publicly funded, public interest-focused, participatory institution to create new knowledge and counter the false and dangerous messages that bombard farmers via social media, advertising, and corporate PR campaigns. Access to and involvement in research towards more climate resilient agriculture will support on-farm production changes that will reduce both GHG emissions and losses from climate impacts. AI tools cannot substitute for human problem solving, especially when the rapid changes in our climate makes creativity and real-time observation essential.
We recommend establishing a federal research and agricultural extension institution where farmers, scientists and agronomists together identify and solve climate change mitigation and adaptation-related problems and share the resulting knowledge through multiple channels, including in-person consultations and field days.
Rebuilding and expanding local and regional food production, processing, storage and distribution infrastructure is needed for reliable, long-term capacity to feed our population. This will increase domestic capacity for food production, reduce supply chain disruption risk and minimize agriculture-related GHG emissions.
Business Risk Management programs (BRMs) – AgriStability, AgriInvest, AgriRecovery and AgriInsurance (crop insurance) – are biased against smaller and diversified farms that have a key role in expanding domestic food production capacity and revitalizing rural communities. Existing BRMs also include some perverse incentives, and are applied inconsistently by provinces. Replacing these programs with a suite based on an agricultural multifunctionality framework would enhance environmental practices, food availability, knowledge-transfer, food security, and farmers’ economic dignity as inter-linked core values in policy and program design, features that provide both private and public benefits.
We recommend funding a participatory task force in 2026-27 to design new programs to be implemented when the current Agriculture Policy Framework cycle ends in 2028. This new framework will:
- increase Canada’s capacity to produce, process, store and distribute food for domestic consumption in order to ensure a reliable supply of nutritious, high-quality food for residents of Canada;
- safeguard farmers’ incomes;
- advance GHG mitigation and support adaptation to climate change impacts on farms and agricultural infrastructure;
- enhance biodiversity, water quality/conservation and toxicity reduction;
- promote social inclusion and diversity of farmers and food sector workers;
- promote successful establishment of young and new farmers; and
- enhance rural community vibrancy and rural quality of life.
We recommend the federal government partner with provincial and municipal governments to establish a national local food purchasing procurement framework modeled after Brazil’s Programa de Aquisição de Alimentos for schools, hospitals, prisons and other public facilities.
The loss of farmers in Canada – 23% of 2001 farms gone by 2021 – is a looming economic and social crisis that cannot be solved by automation and digital technology. Expanding domestic market capacity and building a more resilient and robust food and agriculture system requires a larger workforce where all farm and food industry workers have full labour rights, including open work permits and a pathway to citizenship for migrant workers and work permit extensions to provide status to migrant workers while permanent residency applications are processed.
Canada’s agricultural labour strategy must recognize seasonality by providing access to livable incomes year-round income opportunities for resident seasonal farm workers through a combination of extended Employment Insurance options and counter-seasonal employment opportunities as needed.
We recommend revisions to Canada’s Temporary Migrant Worker programs, and to Immigration law and regulations to support full labour rights and a reliable pathway to permanent residency.
We recommend revisions to Canada’s Employment Insurance program to make it accessible to seasonal farm workers who are residents of Canada.
Canada must uphold and strengthen Supply Management. Increasing access to quota for young and new farmers, and supporting opportunities to develop alternative production systems within the scope of Supply Management will promote renewal and resilience, prevent volatility and disruption, and enable long-term food security and independence from the US market for dairy, chicken, eggs and turkey.
We recommend funding to enhance marketing boards’ capacity to expand new entrant programs and alternative production/processing opportunities.
Public plant breeding is an essential element of Canada’s agricultural success. 2025 was the 100th anniversary of Dominion Rust Laboratory, established to study the plant disease (stem rust) and breed resistant varieties following disastrous yield loss caused by outbreaks. Today, climate change affects growing conditions, pests and plant diseases and mitigation demands varieties that perform well with reduced inputs. Private breeding focuses on returns to the investors, resulting in higher seed and input costs for the farmers, and neglect of crops with smaller acreages or less frequent seed purchases. To develop seed that serves farmers and Canada’s need for successful, diverse cropping systems as our climate changes, a full commitment to public plant breeding to the finished variety level must be restored.
We recommend a 15% increase in total funding to public plant breeding, including taking promising germplasm to the finished variety level for all crop kinds, including low-input varieties, to be distributed royalty-free.
We recommend AAFC commit to hiring early and mid-career plant breeders and plant breeding technical staff to retain and rebuild public plant breeding capacity.
Across Canada, returns from farming cannot cover the rising cost of farmland. As farmland is increasingly financialized, it becomes inaccessible for aspiring young and new farmers without taking on massive debt. Total farm debt increased by 20 billion dollars between 2023 and 2024, much of it land debt. Investment companies and private equity firms buy up farmland for speculation, rent income and a safe place to put their money during turbulent times. Passive investors and financial institutions capitalize on farmers’ needs by maximizing rents and land prices. When farmers must pay excessive rents and mortgages they have less for other spending, making it harder for local businesses to survive.
Disincentives for passive investment in farmland would help restore the relationship between farmland prices and its productive value and free up more income for local prosperity, promoting long-term food security and rural livelihoods, and prevent our best farmland from becoming urban sprawl or highways.
We recommend amending the Canada Business Corporations Act (CBCA) to create a national public registry disclosing beneficial ownership of all farmland- those individuals who ultimately own or control these investments.
We recommend amending the Income Tax Act to eliminate flow-through treatment of all private equity firm investments in farmland, eliminate capital gains exemptions for private equity firm farmland investments and require foreign owners to pay a 100% surtax on all dividends from private equity funds with farmland holdings.
Agriculture is adopting many digital and cloud-based tools including AI faster than they can be evaluated. Generative AI “training” is non-transparently biased, making it difficult to assess its outputs. In 2024, Policy Horizons Canada named AI as a high probability, high impact societal disruptor with synergistic impacts”.
We recommend the federal government take a precautionary approach to AI use by the government itself, and develop a strong AI regulatory and governance framework for Canada with funding for monitoring, research and enforcement capacity to act when potential for harmful impacts are detected.
We recommend the federal government establish a digital governance framework that allows farmers to benefit from data generated on their farms and limit how agricultural big data may be collected and/or used by large agribusinesses, agricultural employers and ag-tech companies.
We recommend a publicly-funded cloud service built and operated as a public utility by the federal government to counter tech company monopoly power, provide choice and uphold Canadian economic and political sovereignty.
Summary of Recommendations:
– Increase federal operational and regulatory capacity to address multiple crises, including American threats to Canadian sovereignty.
– Increase funds for food and agriculture regulators, ensure they are free from regulatory capture and have the mandate and capacity to properly enforce public interest regulations.
– Establish a federal research and agricultural extension institution for farmers, scientists and agronomists to jointly identify and solve climate change mitigation and adaptation-related problems.
– Design a new suite of support programs to support food sovereignty based on the multifunctionality of agriculture.
– Establish a national local food purchasing procurement framework in partnership with provincial and municipal governments.
– Develop an agricultural workforce strategy to address domestic food production and support economic dignity of resident and migrant workers.
– Enhance Supply Management marketing boards’ capacity to add new entrants and alternative production/processing opportunities.
– Increase funds for public plant breeding.
– Create a public registry of beneficial ownership of all farmland.
– Create tax disincentives to reduce farmland inflation.
– Regulate Artificial Intelligence (AI) and develop a legal framework for agricultural data governance.
