The Road to Zero Hunger: A Case Study of Canada’s Policy Agenda-Setting for Global Food Security

Abstract

The emergence of food security as one of Canada’s top international development priorities in 2009 was an important shift in Canadian foreign aid policy, which begs the question of how the policy came into being and how this change can be explained. This paper will focus on the agenda-setting aspects of Canadian foreign aid policy by using the exemplar case study of the policy agenda-setting process that shaped Canada’s 2009 Food Security Strategy. Agenda-setting is the process of moving a problem to the attention of government so that solutions can be considered. Understanding policy agenda-setting is crucial to steering policy-making and informing decisions in response to ever increasingly complex and interconnected global challenges. Moreover, this case study is based on information obtained from in-depth interviews, official reports and documents obtained through ATIP. John Kingdon’s agenda-setting framework provided the theoretical lens for this research and NVivo was used for the text analysis. This research identified nine key factors, in which problem framing, policy considerations, and politics, as well as the role of evidence, and values relate to power and social change in the context of Canada’s approach to addressing global food insecurity. The case history aims to provide new details and perspectives to those who were paying close attention to the 2007-2009 policy agenda-setting process, while the nine key factors and the opening of the policy window by key actors provide insights to future policy analysis and development.

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