Good agricultural policy can still fail without public trust

There’s a need in this sector to improve efficiency and accelerate access to new tools, but if Canadians suspect this is being achieved by reducing oversight or weakening safeguards, trust will decline quickly. 

Opinion │by Lisa Bishop-Spencer

Originally published in The Hill Times on July 27

Federal, provincial, and territorial governments are beginning to shape the next agricultural policy framework on priorities such as competitiveness, innovation, resilience, food security, processing capacity, labour, trade, and business risk management. Public trust needs to run through all of them.

Advancing technology, modernizing regulation, strengthening sustainability, and building infrastructure depend on public understanding and confidence.

The consequences of weak public trust are significant. Sound policies become harder to implement, governments become more cautious, and the sector loses the room it needs to adapt. New technologies face resistance or delayed adoption. Regulatory changes become politically more difficult, even when they’re evidence-based. Infrastructure projects encounter opposition. Public investments are questioned, and necessary reforms lose momentum.

Over time, weak trust can limit innovation, slow growth, and reduce Canada’s ability to respond quickly to emerging risks, disruptions, and opportunities.

Consider innovation. Canada’s food system is always developing new technologies to improve productivity, address labour shortages, manage risk, strengthen sustainability, and compete internationally. But our research shows that innovation itself ranks dead last among the attributes Canadians value most in their food system. Affordability, health, safety, and reliability rank much higher.

That doesn’t mean Canadians oppose innovation. It means they need to understand what it will deliver for them. The framework must consider the public confidence needed to support the introduction and use of new technologies by connecting innovation to the outcomes people already value. Waiting until concern or opposition emerges leaves governments and the sector defending innovation rather than creating the conditions for it to succeed.

The same goes for red-tape reduction. Absolutely, there’s a need in this sector to reduce duplication, improve efficiency, and accelerate access to new tools. Still, if Canadians even suspect that this is being achieved by reducing oversight or weakening safeguards, trust will decline quickly.

Food security is another example. It’s often discussed in terms of production, processing capacity, transportation, infrastructure, and supply chain resilience. But Canadians experience it through affordability, availability, access, and confidence that the food system will continue to function during disruption. Policy that doesn’t connect these priorities to the concerns Canadians experience in their daily lives will struggle to build support.

Governments should be asking where questions are likely to arise, what information people will need, who should be part of the conversation, and how trade-offs, limitations, and outcomes will be understood and trusted by Canadians.

Lisa Bishop-Spencer is the executive director of the Canadian Centre for Food Integrity, a national organization dedicated to strengthening public trust in Canada’s food system. She has more than two decades of experience in agriculture, food policy, communications, and reputation management.