Political rhetoric from Canada can inform healthy public policy argumentation

Abstract

Household food insecurity (HFI), insufficient income to obtain adequate food, is a growing problem in Canada and other Organisation of economic cooperation and development (OECD) countries. Government political orientations impact health policies and outcomes. We critically examined Canadian political rhetoric around HFI from 1995 to 2012 as a means to support effective healthy public policy argumentation. We analysed a data set comprised of Hansard extracts on HFI from the legislative debates of the Canadian federal and three provincial governments, using thematic coding guided by interpretivist theories of policy. Extracts were examined for content, jurisdiction, the political affiliation of the legislator speaking and governing status. Members of non-governing, or 'opposition' parties, dominated the rhetoric. A central hunger-as-poverty theme was used by legislators across the political spectrum, both in government and in opposition. Legislators differed in terms of policy approach around how income should flow to citizens facing HFI: income intervention on the left, pragmatism in the centre, reliance on markets on the right. This analysis is a case-example from Canada and caution must be exercised in terms of the generalizability of findings across jurisdictions. Despite this limitation, our findings can help healthy public policy advocates in designing and communicating HFI policy interventions in OECD countries with a similar left-right spectrum. First, even with a divisive health policy issue such as actions to address HFI, core themes around poverty are widely understood. Secondly, the non-polarizing centrist, pragmatist, approach may be strategically valuable. Thirdly, it is important to treat the rhetoric of opposition members differently from that of government members.

The political construction of public health nutrition problems: a framing analysis of parliamentary debates on junk-food marketing to children in Australia

“…When in opposition, they were more likely to support legislative action against junk-food marketing. This finding suggests that those in power are less likely to respond to (or use) framing that recommends government intervention, consistent with findings from Patterson et al (41) . Possible explanations for this juxtaposition include government's fear of 'rocking the boat' prior to an election and losing voters or increased pressure from lobby groups to minimise legislative restrictions on industry activities once in power (45,79) .…”

“…Despite their influence, few studies internationally have explored how parliamentarians frame PHN issues. A small number of studies on the political framing of food insecurity in Canada demonstrate that although a diversity of opposing causes and solutions frames are deployed by parliamentarians, the framing of some key issues (including poverty) is universal and uncontested (41)(42)(43) . However, these studies also show that conflicting frames and opposing symbolic devices deployed by opposing parties contributes to the intractability of PHN problems, thereby resulting in a lack of political commitment for legislative change (44) .…”

Rising use of “food aid” in the United Kingdom

“…The "crises" appear, in some cases, to build on on-going, underpinning circumstances which mean people struggle to obtain sufficient food; for example, continual low income or indebtedness (Lambie-Mumford et al, 2014, p. viii). The in-depth narrative interviews conducted for Dowler and Lambie-Mumford (2014) supported these findings, identifying two key sets of triggers for food aid uptake for those interviewed: first, where people were highly vulnerable and with precarious housing circumstances; and second, where people were experiencing financial difficulty as a result of changes to their social security benefits, which involved either their experiencing a complete absence of income (because of sanctions [2] or errors), or sudden increased outgoings as a result of changes to housing benefit and council tax benefit. Indebtedness was another key factor in people's struggles to balance their budgets more generally; interviewees described juggling rent and council tax arrears and their need to take out short terms loans from so-called "loan sharks" or "payday lenders" [3].…”

How does the self-sufficiency rate affect international price volatility transmissions in the wheat sector? Evidence from wheat-exporting countries

“…However, food poverty and food insecurity are also prevalent in food-exporting countries (Dowler and O'Connor, 2012). High Food Insecurity (HFI) increased in agricultural exporting nations during the economic recession, as delineated by extended reliance on food foundation charities in the UK, Australia and New Zealand (Lambie-Mumford and Dowler, 2014;Patterson et al, 2017;Santini and Cavicchi, 2014;Stuckler and Basu, 2013).…”