Political rhetoric from Canada can inform healthy public policy argumentation

Transcription

1 Health Promotion International, 2016, 1 10 doi: /heapro/daw019 Political rhetoric from Canada can inform healthy public policy argumentation Patrick B. Patterson 1, Lynn McIntyre 1, *, Laura C. Anderson 1, and Catherine L. Mah 2 1 Department of Community Health Sciences, Cumming School of Medicine, University of Calgary, Calgary, AB, Canada, and 2 Division of Community Health and Humanities, Faculty of Medicine, Memorial University, St John s, NL, Canada *Corresponding author. lmcintyr@ucalgary.ca Summary 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. Key words: food, poverty, healthy public policy, Canada, politics INTRODUCTION Household food insecurity (HFI) occurs when a household has insufficient income and related resources to obtain adequate food through socially acceptable means (Anderson, 1990). Recent national survey data indicate that in 2012, 12.6% of Canadian households reported that they had experienced HFI within the previous year; similar data suggest that HFI prevalence is also increasing in most provinces (Tarasuk et al., 2014b). HFI is also The Author Published by Oxford University Press. All rights reserved. For Permissions, please journals.permissions@oup.com

2 2 P. B. Patterson et al. increasing among Organisation of economic cooperation and development (OECD) countries amid economic dislocation as illustrated by increased reliance on food provision charities in the UK, Australia, New Zealand and Europe (Stuckler and Basu, 2013; Lambie-Mumford and Dowler, 2014; Santini and Cavacchi, 2014). Ample evidence demonstrates that HFI is associated with adverse health consequences (Seligman et al., 2010; Galesloot et al., 2012; Tarasuk et al., 2015). The Alma Ata Declaration (World Health Organization, 1978), the Ottawa Charter for Health Promotion (World Health Organization, 1986),theRomeDeclarationonFoodSecurity(FAO, 1996), and most recently, the World Health Organization s Commission on the Social Determinants of Health (World Health Organization, 2008) each identify the need for equitable access to material and social prerequisites for health, including food. The Rome Declaration, in particular, was intended to represent commitment on the part of signatory countries, including Canada, to the right to food for all people (FAO, 1996). Both the Ottawa Charter and the WHO Commission point out that government policy is important for setting the structural conditions for health (World Health Organization, 1986; World Health Organization, 2008). It is, therefore, important to interrogate how government-level policy-making dynamics relate to this problem, and to consider how healthy public policy advocates 1 might utilize such information to catalyse change. In Canada, community mobilization around HFI has been evident but the political response has been limited (Mah et al., 2014). Despite government recognition of the need for adequate income for food to maintain public health, indicated by signing the Rome Declaration (FAO, 1996) and the development of a Nutrition Plan of Action for which regular reports were filed for a decade, policies to address HFI have failed to curtail its increase (Mah et al., 2014). Studying variations in political argumentation along the political spectrum in specific jurisdictions can produce insights to inform healthy public policy advocates messaging strategies. Within the Canadian political system, the leader of the party holding the most seats is invited by the Queen s representative to form the government and becomes the head of the executive branch as Premier (provincial) or Prime Minister (federal). As such, members of governing parties, particularly those in a majority government, have much greater opportunities to substantively develop policy. The countries that make up the OECD use varied democratic multi-party systems of government. Although 1 We define healthy public policy advocates as those seeking actions that will improve population health and reduce health inequities. caution must be exercised in terms of the generalizability of findings among different political systems, our analysis may be applicable to other OECD countries where the problem of HFI is rapidly growing. Political parties in many OECD governments are distributed along a comparable left right spectrum to Canada, typically according to class-political alignments (Navarro, 1999). Government political orientation in OECD countries impacts health policies and health outcomes (Navarro, 1999; Navarro and Shi, 2001; Bambra et al., 2005; Stuckler and Basu, 2013). The objective of this article is to inform healthy public policy advocacy efforts around poverty in general, and HFI specifically, through a critical analysis of political rhetoric about HFI across the political spectrum in the Hansard records of four Canadian jurisdictions from 1995 to Health promoters and others concerned with advocating for healthy public policies often target a somewhat elusive political will as a critical step towards policy change (Blas et al., 2008). Public statements by legislators can be analysed critically as a barometer of political will and agenda-setting (Penner et al. 2006). Specifically, an analysis of how elected legislators talk about problems and solutions to public policy issues (i.e. political rhetoric) lends itself to critical analysis. Canada and other Commonwealth countries archive near-verbatim transcriptions of statements made by legislators during legislative sessions in systematically collected Hansard records. This is a valuable data source for studying public statements by legislators through which we can interpret political positions around policy (Penner et al., 2006; Quinlan, 2012). Other countries, including the USA, also produce a permanent legislative record in document form (United States Congress, 2015). METHOD The findings presented here extend our descriptive analysis of legislators statements about HFI in Canadian Hansard records from 1995 until 2012 ([McIntyre et al., 2016]). In that study, one topic we identified for further exploration was the extent to which legislators use of rhetoric might be influenced by whether or not their party was in government or in opposition, and to what extent positions on HFI varied between party positions on the political spectrum. Our data set was compiled to provide a broad representation of HFI talk in Canada. We included the federal Hansard as a representation of the overall discussion across the country. We selected three provinces for their divergent approaches to food insecurity-related policy. Ontario has a large population with the largest absolute

3 Political rhetoric from Canada 3 numbers of food insecure households in the country (Tarasuk et al., 2014b), and has seen political shifts over time which have been at the forefront of social services cuts which have worsened HFI within the time period under study (Matthews, 2004; Lankin and Sheikh, 2012). Nova Scotia represents a small province where the government has been concerned with social protections in the form of poverty reduction, as a response to the relatively weak economy (Atlantic Health Promotion Research Centre, Nova Scotia Nutrition Council and Collaborating Family Resource Centres/Projects, 2006; Province of Nova Scotia, 2009). Finally, British Columbia has consistently engaged with intersections between food insecurity and public health as part of a larger consideration of food systems issues (Provincial Health Officer of British Columbia, 2006; Ostry, 2010). Using Quinlan s (2012) approach to searching Hansard records, we composed a set of search terms designed to capture statements related to HFI, which we operationalized as statements in which legislators talked about people having insufficient financial resources to access food, regardless of whether they used the specific phrase HFI. The set of Hansard search terms was designed to locate statements from legislative debates and committee sessions (Canadian Parliament-House of Commons, 1989) that related to food consumption (e.g. food, meal and grocery), food actions (e.g. feed and eat) and the HFI construct 2 (e.g. hunger, food banks 3, hungry children, poverty and household budget). We excluded statements that did not correspond to household-level food insecurity, such as discussions of community-level interventions, agri-food policy and supply chains, food insecurity in non-canadian contexts, and in contexts within Canada where food access is highly compromised for additional structural, non-income reasons, such as on-reserve indigenous populations and populations in remote northern regions. We incorporated minor adjustments to Hansard searches to accommodate each jurisdiction s archiving systems, while retaining the same set of search terms. So that we could infer context, each extract had to be at least three sentences long to be included. Most extracts consisted of 1 5 paragraphs and were 200 words. 2 Radimer et al. s (Radimer et al., 1990) conceptualization of food insecurity s four dimensions quantitative, qualitative, psychological and social has been widely validated. These four dimensions are captured in the Household Food Security Survey Module, which is used in national monitoring of food insecurity in Canada and the USA. 3 In Canada, the term food bank is used to mean a place where recipients obtain donated food items directly from a charitable organization for preparation and consumption elsewhere. The search yielded 1895 extracts of statements by legislators. Extracts were imported to the NVivo 10 data management software to facilitate coding. Because the data in our study comprised only publicly accessible records, ethics review and approval was not necessary. Twocodersusedanopencoding(Benaquisto, 2008) and a conventional qualitative content analysis method (Hsieh and Shannon, 2005; Morse and Field, 1995) to identify Canadian legislators problem definitions around HFI and the policy solutions they proposed ([McIntyre, et al., 2016]). All extracts were stratified along party lines and according to government or opposition status 4. The coded data were then examined using an approach informed by interpretivist theories of policy (Dewulf, et al., 2009; Wagenaar, 2011). Such theory suggests that talk around policy is socially conditioned and that policy arguments are also intended to be persuasive, as actors use language to make sense of issues and promote their own policy goals (Wagenaar, 2011, p. 187). Researchers using interpretive approaches assume that meaning formation involves ambiguity and they emphasize arriving at understanding through empirically grounded analytic induction (Hammersley, 2006: 146; Wagenaar, 2011: 242, 261). Since the early 1990s, political parties in Canada have aligned along a left right political spectrum (Cross and Young, 2002). Party discipline is typically strong in Canada (Penner et al., 2006) and in this analysis we treated party affiliation as an overall reflection of legislators positions along the political spectrum, while recognizing that individual stances might diverge somewhat. Two extracts from federal independent Members of Parliament, without declared positions on the political spectrum, were excluded. We also elected to exclude 223 federal Hansard extracts by members from the Quebec-only, sovereigntist Bloc Québécois party because these legislators represent narrower interests in their region. Extracts within each position were examined to identify which themes (Hammersley and Atkinson, 2007) 4 The federal and provincial branches of the New Democratic Party (NDP) were viewed as leftist. The federal, Nova Scotia and Ontario Liberal Parties (LIB) were viewed as centrist. British Columbia is virtually a two-party province (NDP and BC/LIB), and the BC Liberal Party was treated as positioned on the right. Following a federal right-wing schism in the late 1980s, a federal Reform Party and later, Canadian Alliance party emerged; a right-wing merger in 2003 with the Progressive Conservative (PC) party yielded today s federal Conservative Party of Canada (CPC). The Reform Party, Canadian Alliance, Conservative Party of Canada and federal and provincial Progressive Conservative parties are all treated as rightist.

4 4 P. B. Patterson et al. legislators emphasized. We noted several themes that were characteristic of legislators in similar positions on the political spectrum, and we also identified a set of points that legislators across the political spectrum used in their rhetoric around HFI. The data analysed in this study were entirely from archived public documents. As a consequence, the main challenge in achieving trustworthiness (Lincoln and Guba, 1985: 290) involved maintaining a consistent reading of the records during analysis. Research team members frequently debriefed to discuss coding and interpretations and arrive at an intersubjective understanding of the data (Lincoln and Guba, 1985: 294; Wagenaar, 2011: 241). An audit trail was maintained (Lincoln and Guba, 1985: 319), including memos, notes documenting stages of the analysis and feedback from team members. FINDINGS The study data set consisted of 1670 extracts. We found that members of minority, or opposition, parties made 84.4% of statements in discussions about HFI-related topics compared to 15.6% by governing parties. The proportion is most marked in the extracts from parties on the left, who rarely formed the government; however, centrist and rightist members also spoke more often about HFI when in opposition 5. Leftist legislators also made a much larger proportion (52.6%) of the statements about hunger (the preferred word for food insecurity in the Hansards [McIntyre et al., 2016]) and food insecurity than did centrist (25.8%) or rightist (21.6%) legislators. We identified some common themes across the political spectrum. Several other themes aligned closely with political party affiliation. Common themes in HFI talk The central theme that emerged across the spectrum was what we termed financial determinism : recognition that people who are hungry are poor, and that the state of hunger is external to human will although views on the circumstances leading to its causes (such as the root causes of poverty) may not be. Although legislators rarely used the 5 In the jurisdictions studied, parties from the left won majorities to form governments only twice: in British Columbia from 1991 until 2001 and in Nova Scotia from 2009 until Parties from the centre governed in Nova Scotia (study start until 1999), federally (study start until 2006) and in Ontario (2003 to study end). Rightist parties governed federally (2006 to study end), in Nova Scotia ( ), in British Columbia (2001 to study end) and in Ontario (1995 until 2003). term HFI, individuals referred to inadequate finances as the cause of hunger or referred to behaviours that link poverty with hunger, such as obtaining food from food banks. For example: For nine years we have seen a growing issue of poverty in this province families struggling to make it from payday to payday and a brand-new categorization of poverty called the working poor where even when two family members are out working in the workforce, a family is still forced to go to a food bank for the last week of the month to make it from payday to payday. (Karagianis, NDP-Opposition, British Columbia Hansard, 2010) Legislators in the political centre made similar comments, often referring to the public s vulnerability to poverty and hunger, while legislators on the political right attributed hunger to the high cost of living and argued for the need for citizen tax relief. This hunger-as-poverty theme underpinned much of the discussion related to HFI throughout the Hansard records in all of the jurisdictions. Within the hunger-as-poverty theme, legislators often described inadequate financial resources to obtain food as a problem that could and should be corrected in Canada, a wealthy country. For example, in a country as wealthy and innovative as ours we need to ensure that all Canadians live with a decent level of income so they can have decent shelter and food and their children who go to school can have a healthier diet and function in school (Herron, PC-Opposition, Federal Hansard, 1999). Legislators from across the political spectrum tacitly, and often explicitly, echoed MP Herron s justification of HFI amelioration on the grounds that increasing health would allow children and adult citizens to be more productive and would reduce health system costs. Additionally, legislators who referred to national or provincial wealth emphasized moral failure and shame of allowing inadequate financial resources for food to continue. The failure and shame aspect of the hunger-as-poverty theme was expressed by legislators from the political left. For example: Mr. Speaker, the social safety net should include the preservation of dignity for everyone. Our children should not have to go to school hungry. Yet schools now find it necessary to run breakfast programs, nutritional snack programs and lunch programs and while schools and teachers should be commended and congratulated for these efforts, governments should hang their heads in shame. (MacDonald, NDP-Opposition, Nova Scotia Hansard, 1999) Leftist legislators in other jurisdictions made similar comments when their parties were in opposition. In those extracts, they described Canada or their province

5 Political rhetoric from Canada 5 as possessing resources and argued that it was a moral failure that people in those jurisdictions relied on food banks or sought meal-provisioning programs. Opposition legislators in the political centre and right also argued that governments have the capacity to alleviate inadequate access to food and that it is shameful when they fail to do so. Although legislators in Canada from across the political spectrum described it as shameful that people had to rely on food banks, within the hunger-as-poverty theme, they described food charity workers in a consistently positive way. Legislators in both the government and in opposition praised food charity workers. For example: Mr. Speaker, I rise today to recognize National Hunger Awareness Day 6 and applaud the efforts of those all across the country who work tirelessly to reduce hunger among children, youth and families. In a country that is as prosperous as ours, this year s HungerCount 7 report, produced by the Canadian Association of Food Banks, paints a shocking picture of hunger in Canada... On behalf of all my colleagues in the House, I commend the efforts of all of Canada s food banks and their supporters and volunteers. With all Canadians working together, we can significantly reduce the number of Canadians who go to bed hungry on a daily basis. (Dhalla, LIB-Opposition, Federal Hansard, 2008) In this type of statement, legislators from across the political spectrum refer to the efforts of volunteers and charitable organizations, and voluntarism in general, in highly positive and sometimes heroic terms. Specificfoodcharities or individual volunteers were often identified. In some cases, the legislators proposed formal resolutions to congratulate charitable organizations that provide food. Divergences in HFI talk along the political spectrum Canadian legislators were divided along the political spectrum in their talk around how income should flow to citizens. We found three distinctive rhetorical themes associated with HFI-related positions across the political spectrum. 6 National Hunger Awareness Day was established in 2006 by the Canadian Association of Food Banks (later renamed Food Banks Canada) to bring attention to the problem of inadequate access to food. It was later expanded as National Hunger Awareness Week. A small number of legislators (8 federal, 1 Nova Scotia) made reference to the initiatives in their extracts in the Hansard records. 7 Since 1989, Food Banks Canada has produced an annual national survey of food bank use, which is the longest standing, albeit indirect, measure of household food insecurity in Canada. PROTECT THE VULNERABLE (LEFTIST) We uncovered an interventionist theme in extracts from legislators on the Canadian political left. This meant that they proposed addressing the problem of HFI in terms of government provision of financial aid. Members of political parties on the left in all four jurisdictions described their own party and actions in terms of being active spokespersons and protectors of the vulnerable within society. For example, an Ontario NDP legislator said, We in the New Democratic Party are not calling for a raise in the minimum wage so much as asking for back wages owed to our poorest citizens (DiNovo, NDP-Opposition, Ontario Hansard, 2006). When in opposition, legislators on the left described the policies of other parties as ignoring, denying or delaying action on problems generated by market forces. They also accused other parties of relying on markets to solve social problems. For example: Because the government took away meaningful rent control, the average rent in Toronto has skyrocketed so more and more people are nervous. They re having to choose between providing their children with food and paying the rent... The government says they don t want to provide housing, that the private sector will do it... We told them at the time that the private sector wouldn tsupply affordable housing. There s nothing in it for them. (Churley, NDP-Opposition, Ontario Hansard, 2000) Housing, pharmaceutical prices, fuel prices and food costs were all examples of on-going debates where legislators from the left attributed inability to afford food to the failure of markets. Within the interventionist theme on the political left legislators described policies emerging from centrist and rightist parties as an abdication of government s responsibility to alleviate the suffering of citizens. For example: The only thing that keeps the system afloat in Nova Scotia is the extensive use of food banks. So, essentially, because the government has abdicated its responsibility to do the right thing in our province, those of us who are fortunate enough to be able to make donations to charity are supporting a system that ought not to exist and in doing so we are supporting a system which is the only thing that makes life even close to supportable for those people who are in receipt of social assistance. This is a disgrace. (Epstein, Nova Scotia, NDP-Opposition, 2000) Legislators on the left instead proposed approaches to address HFI that were centred upon welfare-state provisioning, including establishing government programs or increasing public funding for existing social services. In 2011, the NDP Premier of Nova Scotia said:

6 6 P. B. Patterson et al. The reality is that this is a government that is focused on making sure that the people, especially those vulnerable people in our society, are protected. We brought in the Affordability Living Tax Credit; we brought in the Disability Tax Credit; we took the HST off of home energy; we took it off of children s clothing, shoes - all of theseweredesignedtotryandhelpthosepeoplewho have the most difficulty trying to make ends meet. This is a government that is sensitive to the fact that every time there is an increase in the consumer prices, it affects those at the lowest end of the income scale most profoundly. (Dexter, NDP-Government, Nova Scotia Hansard) Leftist legislators consistently based their interventionist arguments on a duty of governments to protect citizens, including protecting them from consequences of having inadequate financial resources, such as HFI. BE PRACTICAL (CENTRIST) Members of centrist political parties typically focused on the complexity of policy issues surrounding HFI and on the pragmatic concerns of managing government efficiently and effectively. For example, a federal Liberal legislator suggested: We need to invest in affordable housing so that Canadians do not have to decide between paying the rent and feeding their families. We need to modernize employment insurance to better support older workers who have lost permanent jobs. We can no longer pretend that all is well. We need a national poverty reduction strategy, as suggested by both the Senate and a House study last year. (Casey, LIB-Opposition, Federal Hansard, 2011) When centrist parties formed the government, their legislators justified policies in terms of the need to take action and implement plans. For example: 600,000 students are getting healthy breakfasts and snacks in school, thanks to our student nutrition program, and that s working out to 68 million snacks and meals last year... Reducing poverty isn t about politics or partisanship. It s about having a plan. It s about executing that plan and working together to provide the opportunity for people to meet their full potential. (Broten, LIB-Government, Ontario Hansard, 2011) This emphasis on practical aspects of governing was evident when legislators spoke about the need for respecting jurisdictions and obtaining agreement between levels of government when making policy. When in opposition, members of centrist parties criticized governing legislators from the left on the grounds that their policies increased costs for members of the public or for government. For example, I think the government - that s the NDP Government - needs to step up, look squarely at the affordability that s facing Nova Scotians, and recognize that it s driving more people to food banks, more people into poverty, and that we have to make this province a more attractive place to live (Whalen, LIB-Opposition, Nova Scotia Hansard, 2011). In turn, when parties from the political right formed the government, legislators from centrist parties characterized their policies as arrogant, uncaring, vindictive or harmful to the public. For example, I d suggest to you that there is no need to review what your cuts are doing. There is ample evidence that those cutbacks have led to more hunger, that they have led to more homelessness and that they have now forced two families to give their children up for adoption. Your policies are hurting children (McLeod, LIB-Opposition, Ontario Hansard, 1996). SUPPORT HARDWORKING CITIZENS (RIGHTIST) Talk on the political right was characterized by a rhetorical theme focused on the market economy, which emphasized the importance of private industry, employment and reduced taxation as solutions to social problems. Addressing HFI was, in essence, about supporting hardworking citizens and legislators from the right described work as dignified access to food. For example, in 2005 and 2006, prior to the onset of the global recession, legislators in the BC Liberal government in British Columbia described the government s role in reducing reliance on food banks as assisting people back into the workforce (Richmond, LIB-Government, British Columbia Hansard, 2005). Both when in opposition and when governing, legislators on the political right argued that government is inherently a burden on citizens. Rightist legislators argued that this burden manifested through taxation and government spending, and that government intervention is the root cause of suffering, including HFI. For example: This [NDP] government has expensive policies and they know that. People can t afford them, and they know that too. Once again we are seeing the devastating impacts of their policies. People not being able to afford food should not be up for debate but here we are... Our province is behind on economic growth. We have devastating job numbers and the second lowest wage growth in the country but where we come out on top is with our high taxes and the number of families we force to food banks. (Bain, PC-Opposition, Nova Scotia Hansard, 2012) Rightist legislators argued that governments should let citizens keep their income, and that their own parties

7 Political rhetoric from Canada 7 would reduce the burdens on citizens through fiscally conservative measures. For example, a federal Canadian Alliance MP suggested, let us leave that [tax] money in people s pockets. Let us show people the respect they deserve. Let us allow them to maintain the dignity that goes with being able to feed our own families, (Solberg, Canadian Alliance-Opposition, Federal Hansard, 2000). Legislators on the right also emphasized taking effective measures to increase future prosperity in their jurisdictions. For example: Although 45 percent of food banks have reported an increase in food bank use, food bank usage has decreased for the province as a whole. Eight thousand fewer people in the province visited a food bank this year compared to last. It shows that B.C. s strong economy is helping more people find good jobs and build brighter futures for themselves and their families (Richmond, BC LIB-Government, British Columbia Hansard, 2006) As part of the emphasis on effective action, some legislators on the right described themselves as reformers correcting the mistakes of previous governing parties. For example, after coming to power in Ontario in June 1995, Progressive Conservative Premier Mike Harris said, the game plan and the motive is to abandon the failed policies of the last 10 years that have abandoned the poor, that have contributed to the number of homeless, to the need for food banks, to the numbers of people on welfare -- and that we would move in a new direction to create jobs and hope and prosperity and opportunity (Ontario Hansard, 1995). Rightist legislators, both when in government and in opposition, criticized other parties for not delivering on promises or dealing with reality. For example: The Liberals continue to spend more than they take in... The reality for Canadians is that they are working harder and harder to see less and less take home pay to care for their own families. There is less money for mortgage payments and rent, less money for clothes for their kids, less money to put food on the table, less money for them to spend wisely in the areas they deem most important for themselves and the well-being of their families. (McNally, Reform-Opposition, Federal Hansard, 1998) Rightist legislators proposed private control of financial resources to address HFI, including private charities. For example, legislators in the Progressive Conservative government in Ontario up to 2001 made repeated calls for prosperous citizens and charities to provide a hand up (in contrast to a handout ) to people who were accessing food banks. Legislators on the right extended that logic to policy proposals in which government would work with charitable and community organizations in food provisioning efforts. For example, the Progressive Conservative Premier of Ontario, Mike Harris, said: This morning I was proud to gather with representatives of GIFT and the Canadian Living Foundation to congratulate and thank cereal manufacturers for their donation of more than four million servings of breakfast cereal.... I ve often said that Ontarians working together can do far more than government will ever do by itself and I ll continue to provide everyone with a periodic update on the program as we collectively work towards ensuring that each child in Ontario has the nutrition that he or she needs to be a good learner. (Ontario Hansard, 1996) DISCUSSION AND IMPLICATIONS Although strongly ideological politics is relatively new in Canada, the preference on the left for government intervention, on the right for unimpeded markets, and in the centre for pragmatic brokerage on issues is long established (Cross and Young 2002). Within that context, it comes as no surprise that legislators diverge along the political spectrum in how they propose income should flow to citizens or that in their role as protectors of the vulnerable, legislators from the left have the most to say on poverty-related topics, including HFI. We contend that the more striking finding from our analysis of Canadian legislators rhetoric is that legislators from parties in the centre and right do not simply deny the issue. On the contrary, the Hansard records reveal a widespread understanding and agreement across the political spectrum that insufficient income causes HFI. Moreover, there is a concordance that, at least to some extent, HFI represents a situation that is not how the world/canada/this province should be, which should be corrected by improving household-level income. The agreed-upon positions on HFI constitute a core critique of existing policies that allow inadequate incomes to continue. In legislative debates, such as those captured in Hansard records, there is strong pressure to ensure that the questions asked serve partisan ends; opposition legislators typically project responsibility for problems onto governing parties (Fenton-Smith, 2008: ). Widely accepted critiques, such as those around HFI, come to constitute part of political common sense and are difficult to argue against (Wagenaar, 2011). As such those topics are strategically useful to opposition parties in any position on the spectrum. Indeed, we found that legislators in governing parties made only 15.6% of statements related to HFI, despite having a larger number of seats in each jurisdiction and having greater control over debate agendas under Canadian parliamentary rules (Canadian Parliament- House of Commons, 1989). Legislators from across the

8 8 P. B. Patterson et al. political spectrum mobilize HFI mainly when they are in opposition, linking it with moral failure and shame, and for all their talk about HFI, legislators who were in nongoverning party positions could do little more than make symbolic statements. Legislators in opposition parties sometimes cited government or academic reports, or more often, drew on reports by civil society groups, such as the annual HungerCount surveys by Food Banks Canada (Food Banks Canada, 2015) to support their arguments. However, legislators in opposition parties also often made sweeping challenges to governing party authority without reference to specific evidence. That suggests that for members of opposition parties the rhetorical value of mobilizing the issue of HFI was sufficient in and of itself, and not intended to substantiate proposed policy options based on evidence of effectiveness. For governing parties, the low level of engagement of legislators with HFI suggests that they perceived few incentives to address the topic. Even in the leftist NDP governments formed in British Columbia from 1991 to 2001 and in Nova Scotia from 2009 to 2012, which claimed to protect economically vulnerable citizens, governing party legislators made relatively few mentions of HFI (7 of 58 extracts, or 12.1%, in British Columbia, and 21 of 113, or 18.6%, in Nova Scotia). The implication is that the close association of HFI with criticism of existing policies makes the topic uncomfortable for governing parties unless mistakes can be attributed to a previous ruling party, as the Ontario Progressive Conservatives did early in their term as government. Our finding, that the vast majority of references to HFI in the Hansards arose from legislators in opposition, suggests a need for caution when examining political talk around HFI and possibly other health promotion policy topics. Focusing on rhetoric alone could lead to a misguided conclusion that HFI is of widespread importance to legislators. Although legislators in the left and centre of the political spectrum engaged with HFI more often than legislators from the right, overall, Canadian legislators engagement with HFI was driven more by the topic s symbolic political utility to opposition members than as a substantive policy problem requiring a solution. Analysis of such discussion is meaningful, nevertheless, for understanding how policy arguments are formed. Of note is the cross-political spectrum and crossjurisdictional agreement on the good work done by food banks and food charity volunteers. Scholars have argued that this broad agreement and support leads to entrenchment of the food bank response to HFI, which as an emergency response could never adequately address it (Riches, 2002; Lorenz, 2012; Tarasuk et al., 2014a; Tarasuk et al., 2015). Health promoters who regard food banks as strengthening communities vis-a-vis the Ottawa Charter are often challenged to advocate for structural solutions to address HFI, such as income security policies, while not criticizing well-intended communitybased action (Power et al., 2014). We would caution that this could easily be misconstrued, within the context of rightist talk, as an argument that supports the private provision of charity as a form of public good. Our findings reinforce that any policy recommendations on HFI will be assessed in terms of how they relate to existing political positions and that legislators will respond on that basis. Yet linking policy advocacy to an issue with such rhetorical value for opposition parties across the political spectrum may perversely affect governing parties willingness to act, leading to polarization much like that described by Gollust et al. (2009) and Rock et al. (2011) in other health advocacy contexts. These findings parallel Wagenaar s general observation that, there is not and there cannot be acommon ground (reason, truth, rational choice, the market, or democracy ) that can act as a final arbiter in settling political conflict (2011, p. 143). Interpretivist approaches to policy suggest that relationships between parts of symbolic systems, rather than their specific content, are the primary motivators for conflict in policy arenas (DeWulf et al. 2009). Policy action remains possible in the absence of consensus because symbolic systems include ambiguous elements where legislators can work without having to abandon their overall positions (Wagenaar, 2011). In order to utilize ambiguities and move federal or provincial government-level policy makers, we suggest that healthy public policy advocates in this issue area are likely to find it useful to strategically adopt pragmatic approaches. In doing so, they can leave enough ambiguity for legislators to interpret required policy actions in terms of their own rhetoric. In the case of HFI policy advocacy in Canada, government interventions to address HFI by improving access to income appear to have a place in the political rhetoric across the political spectrum. Advocates might, however, consider whether or not an attention to the lack of access to food is the best lens to employ to argue for policies that address the deep poverty that characterizes HFI. Interventions that can be easily interpreted by centrist or rightist governing parties as supporting the better working of the market, reducing taxation and supporting the dignity of working people by allowing them to make their own decisions about income and food, for example, would be important to promote. Some observers have argued that Guaranteed Annual Income, with its associated reduced bureaucracy for administering other types of social services, is an approach

9 Political rhetoric from Canada 9 along these lines that has been demonstrated to be effective in reducing HFI prevalence (Segal, 2008; Emery et al., 2013; Tarasuk et al., 2015). Within a pragmatic rhetoric, depending on the situation, legislators in the centre could just as easily propose direct intervention by government or a multi-pronged approach within which more incremental policy proposals might be entertained. This might include a list of items from the social safety net including changes to minimum-wage legislation, support for persons with disabilities, child care, seniors benefits, so long as they present a practical approach to representing the public interest. Healthy public policy advocates may present a menu of such options to these legislators with success. Finally, structural change through government intervention to reduce or eliminate HFI has appeal to the left. Such interventions are best framed as necessary corrective measures, rather than radical reforms, in order to align with the justifications used in the political rhetoric of leftist legislators. There may be a role for suggesting economic intervention strategies that are not yet strongly associated with any particular position on the political spectrum and could be broadly interpreted as redistributing incomes by the left, or as supporting hardworking citizens by the right. We can expect that as OECD countries pursue austerity policies, and reduce government involvement in sustaining a social safety net for all citizens, that variation in incomes in those countries will become more volatile (Stuckler and Basu, 2013) and that HFI will grow. Our analysis of political rhetoric around HFI reflects political dynamics that may be generalizable to other OECD countries exhibiting a similar political spectrum. In the absence of common ground to settle conflicts, consensus across all political parties is likely to be restricted to symbolic gestures for reasons discussed above. For healthy public policy advocates working in poverty-related areas, of which HFI is only one, system-level interventions will likely require argumentation and approaches that do not rely on consensus. This study reveals key findings that can be applied by healthy public policy advocates in designing and communicating policy interventions and strategies. First, we have identified that even in a divisive policy issue like HFI, we can find core themes, such as hunger-as-poverty, that are widely understood and agreed upon across the political spectrum. Secondly, we have identified that the centrist approach can be strategically useful because it is non-polarizing and pragmatic. Although argumentation may seem diluted using this approach, healthy public policy advocates may actually be more persuasive. 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