Our exceptional guest on this episode is Kirstin Beardsley, CEO at Food Banks Canada, who discusses food insecurity in Canada and the great work done by food banks across Canada to help bridge the gap for an increasingly large and changing nature of the population.Sylvain and I discuss the horror and murder in Israel and the impacts on food or commodity prices. We talk about Sylvain's upcoming testimony in Ottawa (well, in Halifax, really), for the 18th time in his career with the Department of Finance, pre-budget consultations, the Federal government's Thanksgiving press conference and their own response, or lack thereof, to food affordability in Canada. We also highlight the significance of addressing sales taxes on various food products and tackling the issue of "shrink-inflation." The episode also delves into the triggering of the "exceptional circumstance mechanism" by the Canadian Federation of Independent Grocers as they try to prevent an increase in dairy prices and the relative cost delta between Canada and the U.S. in the industrial cost of dairy. Lastly, we talk about the short and long-run issues of significant weight loss in society thanks to semaglutide injections, also known as Wegovy or Ozempic and Sylvain's  8th book, out this week, "La part du gâteau" i.e. Our piece of the pie: today's food geopolitics."About KristinKirstin Beardsley stepped into the role of Chief Executive Officer of Food Banks Canada on February 1, 2022. Prior to leading the network of over 4,700 food banks and community agencies, Kirstin was Food Banks Canada’s bilingual Chief Network Services Officer and was responsible for leading transformational change in the food banking system in Canada. With a strong and deep understanding of food insecurity in Canada, and of the work of the food banking network, Kirstin has provided leadership to the organization’s strategic plans and task forces over the past 8 years. In her role as Chief Network Services Officer, Kirstin led robust new system wide approaches to learning, government relations, advocacy, research, national funds distribution and a range of programs supporting the ten provincial organizations to improve the effectiveness of local food banks.Kirstin is from Ottawa, Ontario but now calls Toronto home. During her time away from work, Kirstin enjoys spending time with her family. Kirstin is passionate about working towards the Food Banks Canada vision of a Canada where no one goes hungry and is just as passionate about the incredible people in food banking who are making a difference every day in the lives of so many.About UsDr. Sylvain Charlebois is a Professor in food distribution and policy in the Faculties of Management and Agriculture at Dalhousie University in Halifax. He is also the Senior Director of the Agri-food Analytics Lab, also located at Dalhousie University. Before joining Dalhousie, he was affiliated with the University of Guelph’s Arrell Food Institute, which he co-founded. Known as “The Food Professor”, his current research interest lies in the broad area of food distribution, security and safety. Google Scholar ranks him as one of the world's most cited scholars in food supply chain management, food value chains and traceability.He has authored five books on global food systems, his most recent one published in 2017 by Wiley-Blackwell entitled “Food Safety, Risk Intelligence and Benchmarking”. He has also published over 500 peer-reviewed journal articles in several academic publications. Furthermore, his research has been featured in several newspapers and media groups, including The Lancet, The Economist, the New York Times, the Boston Globe, the Wall Street Journal, Washington Post, BBC, NBC, ABC, Fox News, Foreign Affairs, the Globe & Mail, the National Post and the Toronto Star.Dr. Charlebois sits on a few company boards, and supports many organizations as a special advisor, including some publicly traded companies. Charlebois is also a member of the Scientific C