The Agenda with Steve Paikin (Audio) - The Week in Review: Is Canada's Food System Dominated by Monopoly?

Episode Date: November 23, 2024

The Agenda's week in review explores how Canada's food system is affected by monopoly power, whether President-elect Donald Trump can end the war in Ukraine, why school boards in Ontario have massive deficits, and the risk head injuries pose for young athletes.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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Exciting, isn't it? Visit tvo.org slash Giving Tuesday to make your donation today and discover your 2-Point TVO. KELTON, LET'S JUST GET YOU STARTED RIGHT AWAY PLEASE. WHY DO YOU THINK THE ANTI-MONOPOLY PROJECT ON THIS ISSUE IS SUCH A BIG DEAL? Well, you know, I think a big part of why we wrote the report and why the organization exists is the fact that while some of these issues can be very front of mind, you know, at the grocery aisle, they actually run much deeper in our economy. So what we wanted to do with this report is to recognize that, yes, there are competition issues at the grocery store, but those are also the byproduct of consolidation that runs

much further up the chain that we need to take seriously. So Van, can you give us a sense of how much consolidation there actually is in the food system in our country today? Well, there's been lots across the food chain from farm gate to plate. And in fact, all nodes of the supply chain have actually consolidated more because the other nodes have consolidated. But when you look at the grocery business in Canada the last 30-40 years, it's interesting that now we're asking for more competition when in actuality it was really an American invasion back in the 90s or 80s 90s that actually led to the infrastructure

we have today. So Walmart and Costco obviously have actually entered the Canadian market quite successfully and that really pushed other players to consolidate which is why we have just a few Canadian players now, Loblaw, Sobeys and Metro because all three players have actually adjusted to a much more competitive landscape as a result. Jennifer, I don't have to tell you and I think anybody who's been following this story will know that well, grocery store CEOs have been called to Parliament Hill to testify over hide food prices. Some people have advocated boycotting various

stores because of the consolidation. Where in the chain as you look at it does consolidation really begin? Well, consolidation, as was already mentioned, is all through the agri-food supply chains. And it really begins in agricultural inputs, which are the seeds, the chemicals, the farm machinery, the fertilizers that farmers use in their fields and their agricultural operations. And that consolidation tracks through from that production level all the way through to the grain and commodity handling level, all the way through to food processing and finally at retail. How in your view have the Ukrainian people withstood so much bloodshed.

Great to be with you. Thank you for having me. Well, as you can might have guessed by the visual, I'm sitting in the dark as are probably millions of Ukrainians at the moment because of the heavy pounding from Russian strikes on critical infrastructure in Ukraine. Odessa is a world port city, should be seen that way by the global community. Many countries, as you know, rely on the food that comes out of Odessa ports. But yet, a small group of men in the Kremlin have been given free rein to decide what comes

in and out of the port and how much Ukrainian grain feeds the world. And they're also reported to be constraining trade in the Red Sea through the Iranian-backed Houthi rebels. So, you know, I think a lot of people here, it's fair to say, on this 1000th day, a lot of people in Ukraine are saying, where is the global outrage? Where is the outrage when the Russians stop food going from Modesto, when they're pounding people into the dark ages, literally? So having said all that, especially Odessa, which is historically an entrepreneurial city built by many different nationalities, there is what I've always called an irrepressible

resilience. People go on no matter what, whether it's in terms of fighting or in terms of volunteer work, in terms of keeping their businesses going. But there is a weariness, a tiredness happening, and in a way that's going to put pressure on those landscape administration to find some way to end the war. And kind of to wrap up, I mean, no one here that I've met feels that any territory should be given up. They want everything to go back to 1991 lines. Whether that would happen at the negotiating table, we don't know.

But it is fair to say also that a lot of worry what will happen the next hours and days, now that attack camps are being used, what kind of response will that bring from the Russian side? In which case, Maria, let me follow up with this. Is Ukraine, in your judgment, more vulnerable now than at any time since the war began? And if so, why do you believe so? Yes, it's probably more vulnerable in part because we have the Trump administration coming in about eight, 10 weeks. And Trump, as you mentioned in the intro, has promised to settle this in a day. Now, he will find out that it is very, very difficult to settle this. First, because Putin has really not shown any realistic signs that he is ready to back off from the very

maximalist gains, very maximalist goals that Russia has in this war, which is taking Ukrainian sovereignty. So, we do speak a lot about what territory may be on the negotiating table, but I think we really need to remember that Russia is fighting this war not for territory, but to take Ukraine's sovereignty. And we're in a dangerous moment because it's not clear that the Trump administration understands that. Timothy, how would you gauge Ukraine's vulnerability at this moment?

I think in a way, it's a mistake for us to define it as Ukraine's vulnerability. Because what's happened in the last three years or so is that Ukraine has taken all of our vulnerabilities upon itself. We forget that. We define Ukraine as a problem, when in fact, Ukraine has been a solution.

It's the Ukrainians who have been defending a rules-based world order. It's the Ukrainians who have been showing that nuclear blackmail doesn't have to work, and in that sense, deterring nuclear proliferation. It's the Ukrainians who have been showing the Chinese how difficult offensive operations are and thereby deterring them.

It's the Ukrainians who have been fulfilling essentially the entire NATO mission all by themselves with a certain amount of assistance from their allies. All of those are things that the Ukrainians have done. ["The Red Cross"] Chris, you first. We need the background here. that Ukrainians have done. Chris, you first. We need the background here. 31 school boards, 200 million in the red. How?

Well, you'll hear the Ontario government say that funding is at historically high levels, which technically is true, but the funding has not kept up with inflation. And I think that's where school boards are really struggling right now. For some school boards, they pay higher wages to teachers than the average. So, you know, that kind of deficit's already baked in for them. They've also seen some mandatory increases to Canada pension, employment insurance. Like, these are things I have to pay and they haven't been properly funded for. So, you know, combined with the affordability crisis, which families are feeling the pinch,

school boards are too. It's more expensive to heat schools and electricity and whatnot. So I think that's really why you're seeing a lot of boards this year in particular running into trouble. Kathleen, you represent all the school boards across the province, so you got a good sense of what it looks like out there. What's going on? I'm going to defer to what Chris just said. Funding has just not kept pace with our costs. We are like households. We are trying to pay for things and services that we have to pay for, and we are not being

funded enough and it's a gap that has grown over time and it's chronic. Chronic? Yeah. Didn't start today? It did not start today. So this goes back? Yes. Gotcha. Okay let's get to Neethan Shan on this one because you represent one of the largest school boards on the whole continent. What's the situation in Toronto? Well, it's it's the situation that is same, but, you know, amplified because of the needs within city of Toronto. As you can see, you know, OPSPA, Ontario Public School Board Association, has calculated about $800

per student underfunding and some of the other organizations, including Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives, that have gotten it almost twice that amount. So even if you take the $800 per student, you're looking at a population of 235,000 students within City of Toronto with 42,000 staff and 580 schools. So it's the large school board and so we are facing the issue at a larger scale. But also City of Toronto, recently Social Planning Toronto released a report scale, but also City of Toronto recently, Social Planning Toronto released a report on child poverty within City of Toronto. So in addition to the regular flaws in the funding formula, we are also not being acknowledged for a city

that is very complex and has a lot of socioeconomic needs and much more work to do. So over the years, as Kathleen mentioned, the chronic underfunding, each year we feel like we're cutting on a little bit, but over two decades, we've cut so much that we cannot recognize our schools when we go in. I'm going back to the schools

I've been a youth worker in 20 years ago. I was a student and going back and seeing the kind of underfunding and what it means to a school. Like when you cut at a micro level, it's taking away a teacher makes a big impact in the school. Taking away caretaking hours makes a big impact in the school. Like when you cut at a micro level, it's taking away a teacher makes a big impact in the school. Taking away caretaking hours makes a big impact in the school. So the money that's being

cut may not be seen as proportionally high when we do it, but when we go into a grassroot level at a school level, it is impacting. So it is something that we need to fix quickly and it's a fix that the province can do. What makes concussions different from other kinds of injuries? Well, it's an invisible injury. Because a lot of other brain injuries you could see if you did some imaging. But concussions, we don't see. We have no way of making a diagnosis. It's a clinical diagnosis.

And so you basically need a person to tell you something happened to them. And then they tell you about all the symptoms. And so you could imagine that that could be missed. Sometimes people don't wanna tell you or they don't realize how significant it is and don't report it. And there's also this idea that maybe

these repetitive head injuries that don't actually give you all the concussion symptoms might also be something that we need to think about. So there's a lot of unknowns about concussion. Tim, you played how many years in the CFL? Ten years. Ten seasons. How many blows to the head do you estimate you took? Well, I think the data for football players shows that you take

somewhere between 300 and a thousand hits a year and when you think I was a soccer player as a kid I played hockey I played rugby year-round so it's very rare that I speak to anybody that's had less cumulative exposures than I did that's the bad news the good news is that so far I've been asymptomatic. And so that's one of the things that we're trying to figure out is why are there former teammates of mine, friends of mine who are in our brain bank

that had a tenth of the cumulative exposures that I did.