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Evan Fraser sees a flaw in the Canadian food system that he can’t figure out how to fix. The problem, for the head of the University of Guelph’s Arrell Food Institute in Ontario, has to do with migrant workers and food banks. The two are, in a way, tangled together and he can’t see a way to fix one issue without making the other worse.
“I actually stay up at night worrying about this one,” said Fraser, who also serves as Canada Research Chair in global food security. “I don’t have an answer to it.”
For all the cracks in the Canadian food chain exposed by the pandemic, none have been more glaring than the conditions facing migrant farm workers, three of whom have died and hundreds of others have tested positive for COVID-19 during outbreaks on farms, primarily in Ontario.
Addressing that situation in any meaningful way, Fraser said, would involve paying the “full societal and environmental cost of food,” which would mean higher wages and improving the housing provided to seasonal workers who travel to Canada annually under the federal government’s Temporary Foreign Worker Program.
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