End food waste in Canada!

Recent signers:
Navdeep Kaur and 19 others have signed recently.

The Issue

French | English

Every year, $31 billion of food ends up in a landfill in Canada alone. This isn't just stale bread and mouldy produce. This is good to eat food of all sorts. Produce, dairy, grain, protein, and everything outside of those.

Yet, nearly one million Canadians rely on food banks each month, and about four million Canadians are "food insecure", of which 1.5 million are children.

In 2015, the French government passed a law forbidding supermarkets from wasting and deliberately destroying food that can still be eaten. Instead, supermarkets have since been required to donate all unsold food products to charity such as food banks.

A similar anti-food waste law can and should be implemented in Canada, nationwide. As it is, Quebec has a programme to recuperate unsold food from supermarkets, although it is not yet required for big surface stores to establish partnerships with organizations for redistribution. Having a programme on a federal scale that takes this program a step further is not inconceivable. It is doable, and it is already being done in communities worldwide.

In addition to the people who would be positively affected, food waste contributes greatly to climate change. Reducing food waste would benefit our environment.

This petition urges the Government of Canada through the Hon. Marie Claude Bibeau, Minister of Agriculture, to create a federal program to combat food waste. The program will:

  • Bar supermarkets from intentionally destroying and wasting unsold, still edible food
  • Require Canadian supermarkets to give unsold, still edible food to Canadian food banks
  • Require Canadian supermarkets to give wrongfully packaged or damaged, still edible food to Canadian food banks

The law passed in France began with a simple petition not much different from this, on this very website. That petition received over 200,000 signatures. Our goal is to obtain 100,000 and to gain national attention to this very real issue. With your support, we can make a difference, and we can show our government what matters to us. 

We need you. We need your voice. We need your support. Please sign and share this petition to bring change and to bring this law into Canada!

Use the #WhyWasteFood and #FoodDeservesBetter when sharing or discussing this campaign on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter!

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Learn more:

434,936

Recent signers:
Navdeep Kaur and 19 others have signed recently.

The Issue

French | English

Every year, $31 billion of food ends up in a landfill in Canada alone. This isn't just stale bread and mouldy produce. This is good to eat food of all sorts. Produce, dairy, grain, protein, and everything outside of those.

Yet, nearly one million Canadians rely on food banks each month, and about four million Canadians are "food insecure", of which 1.5 million are children.

In 2015, the French government passed a law forbidding supermarkets from wasting and deliberately destroying food that can still be eaten. Instead, supermarkets have since been required to donate all unsold food products to charity such as food banks.

A similar anti-food waste law can and should be implemented in Canada, nationwide. As it is, Quebec has a programme to recuperate unsold food from supermarkets, although it is not yet required for big surface stores to establish partnerships with organizations for redistribution. Having a programme on a federal scale that takes this program a step further is not inconceivable. It is doable, and it is already being done in communities worldwide.

In addition to the people who would be positively affected, food waste contributes greatly to climate change. Reducing food waste would benefit our environment.

This petition urges the Government of Canada through the Hon. Marie Claude Bibeau, Minister of Agriculture, to create a federal program to combat food waste. The program will:

  • Bar supermarkets from intentionally destroying and wasting unsold, still edible food
  • Require Canadian supermarkets to give unsold, still edible food to Canadian food banks
  • Require Canadian supermarkets to give wrongfully packaged or damaged, still edible food to Canadian food banks

The law passed in France began with a simple petition not much different from this, on this very website. That petition received over 200,000 signatures. Our goal is to obtain 100,000 and to gain national attention to this very real issue. With your support, we can make a difference, and we can show our government what matters to us. 

We need you. We need your voice. We need your support. Please sign and share this petition to bring change and to bring this law into Canada!

Use the #WhyWasteFood and #FoodDeservesBetter when sharing or discussing this campaign on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter!

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Learn more:

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434,936


The Decision Makers

Ruth Ellen Brosseau
Member of Parliament for Berthier—Maskinongé
Responded
Thank you for signing this Change.org petition to end food waste in Canada. I am proud to support this petition on ending food waste, an issue that I have been fighting for since I am in politics. In 2016, I introduced in the House, bill C-231, to establish a National Food Waste Awareness Day and to provide the tools for the development of a national strategy to reduce food waste in Canada. Unfortunately, the bill was defeated at the second reading. Food waste has become a priority in the development of a food policy for Canada. Wasting food has major social, economic and environmental impacts. In Canada, we estimated that over $31 billion in food is wasted in each year. I believe the federal government has a role to play in reducing food waste and in fostering more sustainable food-production methods. Ensuring that Canadians have healthy, affordable food is a priority for me and New Democrats. I truly believe that each of us can do our part to reduce food waste. Identifying the causes of food waste and developing solutions require looking at the entire value chain, not just sectors in isolation of one another. The Canadian government should create a food waste strategy that benefits producers, processors, and consumers because a rich country like ours should not be wasting so much food. Thank you, Ruth Ellen Brosseau, Member of Parliament for Berthier-Maskinongé NPD House Leader and Deputy Critic for Agriculture and Agri-Food
Marie-Claude Bibeau
Minister of International Development/Ministre du Développement international

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Petition created on January 16, 2018