Honourable senators, I am pleased to rise today to speak to Bill C-281, which is basically about designating the Friday before Thanksgiving as national local food day.

I should mention from the outset that I sometimes get exasperated at the proliferation of bills designating a day to celebrate a specific issue.

However, I am particularly enthusiastic about creating a national local food day since it meets the day-to-day concerns of citizens.

Consumers are increasingly curious about what’s on their plate. There are numerous TV shows, websites and blogs dedicated to teaching consumers about food. We can see that consumers are embracing that knowledge by opting for local food. They recognize the many benefits that local food offers for them and their environment.

Eating local is all about pleasure. Eating local food is, quite simply, a pleasurable experience. If you want to understand why short food supply chains are better, just compare the taste of strawberries grown in Quebec to strawberries imported from California, which are chosen more for their ability to tolerate long-distance transportation than their taste.

It is fascinating to see how interest in heirloom seeds has grown over the past few years, driven by consumers’ eagerness to discover tasty foods and forgotten flavours. When I think of a local food day, I think of the hundreds of artisans patiently working to recreate the flavours of the past.

They include Yves Gagnon from the Jardins du Grand-Portage, the Jardin de Julie in Bic, and the Kamouraska plant society, which are working to promote amazingly delicious varieties that fell out of favour for commercial reasons. Thanks to people like them, we are rediscovering the Montreal melon, garlic from the garden of the Jesuit House, Laurentian rutabaga, Gaspé flint corn, and hundreds of tomato varieties that were once locally renowned.

If not for the hundreds of people working to preserve our heritage in our rural and suburban communities, many pieces of our history would now be lost and our biodiversity much reduced.

Recently, the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations sounded the alarm with respect to the risk of food shortages due to the disturbing reduction in agricultural biodiversity. Allow me to quote an alarming excerpt from the report:

Of 6,000 plant species that have been cultivated for food, 9 account for 66 per cent of total crop production.

Promoting local food helps support the cultivation of more species and ensures greater resilience in response to potential disruptions caused by disease or climate change.

Choosing local food is also healthier. Products destined for local consumption are not shipped long distances and tend to be more nutritious because they are harvested when ripe. We are learning more and more about the negative impact of a global food supply on our health.

For example, the epidemic of diabetes and pre-diabetes affecting 11 million Canadians is probably aggravated by dietary changes. We consume more processed foods and more fructose because fruits are now available in North America all year long. Carbohydrates have now overtaken fats as the main source of energy. In less than a generation, globalization has led to major changes in our diets. We’re starting to understand that our metabolism hasn’t adapted. Our foods are sourced globally, but our bodies remain calibrated to local foods.

The phenomenon I am describing is particularly prevalent among First Nations, who have seen their eating habits turned upside down in a few decades and are now suffering from staggering diabetes rates.

Eating local food has many health benefits and supports the local economy. Having a local food day would remind us all that eating locally supports our farmers and our local economy.

According to Quebec’s agriculture department, if we replaced $30 worth of imported products with $30 worth of local products every week, in Quebec alone, that would add $1 billion to the local economy over five years.

That being said, promoting local food requires better support for existing structures in order to promote local production and marketing. I have three examples to share with you.

We know, for example, that most farmers’ markets in Quebec have a hard time covering their costs. We have to find a way to ensure their viability and create innovative business plans. By the way, I’m proud to say that the farmers’ market we set up in Rimouski in 2008, has been growing; its sales have increased 7 per cent this year. It is a place of business, but more than that it is a central place for our community to learn and socialize.

As far as community sponsored agriculture is concerned, the famous organic baskets have become more popular in Quebec thanks to the Équiterre network of family farms. We have similar networks even in large areas like Gaspé. The Baie des saveurs organization is a group of a dozen or so organic food producers and processors that sells directly to the people of Chaleur Bay.

That said, there is still very little distribution during the winter, although it is entirely possible. Since 2015, an organic vegetable farm called Saveurs Mitis has been offering vegetable baskets made up of preserves during the winter. We need to find ways to replicate this model and develop winter markets.

Lastly, we need to provide greater support for the entire ecosystem, which promotes research and cooperation in the bio-food sector in order to develop products that meet the needs of consumers and create jobs in the regions. I would be remiss if I failed to emphasize the important role in eastern Quebec played by the Table de concertation bioalimentaire du Bas-Saint-Laurent, the Institut de technologie agroalimentaire de La Pocatière and the various stakeholders in the Technopole maritime du Québec.

In closing, supporting local food also means protecting our environment. When you consider the fact that most of the food in our grocery stores has travelled an average of 2,500 kilometres, which is quite far, it does not take long to grasp the environmental cost of our choices in terms of fuel consumption and greenhouse gas emissions.

Reducing the carbon footprint of our food choices will help in the fight against climate change.

Let’s hope that a national local food day supported by education campaigns will remind us that consuming locally grown and seasonal produce is a good way to reduce our ecological footprint.

A national, but local, day. In conclusion, I want to give a little caveat for this bill, which I think is relevant. We must avoid taking a one-size-fits-all approach. As a staunch regionalist, I would like for this day, although national, to reflect our food — local, diverse, rooted in tradition — while still accounting for the realities of each community.