The recent meeting of Canada’s federal, provincial, and territorial agriculture ministers highlighted a wide range of priorities for the sector's future, including competitiveness, innovation, resilience, business risk management, food security, processing and manufacturing capacity, and domestic production.
As work begins on the next agricultural policy framework, writes Lisa Bishop-Spencer, executive director, Canadian Centre for Food Integrity, these priorities will lead to decisions that shape Canada’s food system for years to come. They will influence how the sector responds to pressure, where investments are made, how innovation moves forward, and how Canada strengthens its capacity to produce, process, and deliver food.
An important part of that work will be understanding how those decisions may affect public confidence.
Public trust can influence whether new ideas gain acceptance, whether changes are understood, and whether policies maintain momentum. Even well-designed initiatives can face resistance when Canadians don’t understand why they’re needed, how decisions were made, or whether their concerns were considered. This is why trust needs to be considered early, rather than treated as a communications issue once decisions have already been made. It means understanding where confidence is already strong, where questions or concerns may emerge, and how different groups of Canadians may experience a proposed change. It also means being prepared to communicate openly about the reasons behind decisions, the evidence supporting them, the trade-offs involved, and the progress being made.
Innovation depends, in part, on public confidence in the science, people, and institutions behind it. Food security initiatives need to reflect the concerns Canadians are living with, including affordability, access, and the reliability of the food supply. Regulatory decisions need to be supported by processes people can understand and have confidence in. Resilience matters most when the system is under pressure and Canadians need to see that it can continue to deliver.
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