Sylvain Charlebois is Canada's 'Food Professor.' His take on food prices is helping shape our climate policy debate

When it comes to food in Canada, it is nearly impossible to miss Sylvain Charlebois. The "Food Professor," as he calls himself on X, is a business professor at Dalhousie University researching food distribution, security and safety. A self-described public person, Charlebois' voice is everywhere: radio shows, news articles and X threads. A regular in Ottawa, his public prominence routinely earns him speaking engagements across the country.

In 2024 alone, Charlebois has clocked over 90 articles in Postmedia, at least 12 appearances online or on air with CBC, about 35 articles in Quebec newspaper La Presse and his resume states he has published over 1,000 articles since 2018. About 42,900 people follow his X feed. His podcast is ranked 4.3 out of 5 on Spotify.

For over a year, his commentary has woven between two of Canada's hottest political issues: food prices and the carbon tax. 

Since early 2023, the Food Professor has criticized the government and the Bank of Canada over Canada's carbon tax, arguing the tax is  "very difficult to assess" and could be contributing to higher food prices by making the country's food supply chain less competitive. He believes it should be paused until its full impact has been assessed. 

His argument has been amplified by the federal Conservative party who wrote in an early February Tweet that the Food Professor is "right to say we must pause the Liberal carbon tax." Right-wing news outlets like the National Post also carry his commentary, while conservative social media users routinely cite his work – like this July 2024 post by right-wing social media page West Coast Proud which says that "BC has more carbon tax than the rest of the country."

While Charlebois says he is "pro-carbon tax," sees climate change as an existential threat and told Canada's National Observer he has no political agenda, some observers say the Food Professor's criticism bolsters conservative attacks on carbon pricing. And with nearly one-in-five Canadian families struggling to afford food, they say his critique of the tax has made it easier for Canadians to draw a false link between their pricey grocery bills and the carbon tax.  

"He has lent great credibility to the anti-tax movement to include food pricing" as a problem caused by the carbon tax, said Katrina Miller, executive director of Canadians for Tax Fairness, an organization that advocates for progressive taxation. "He's basically given (conservatives) validity to put that as the list of things that are less affordable because of the carbon tax, whether or not it's actually true."

Thomas Green, the David Suzuki Foundation's senior climate policy advisor, agrees. Charlebois "is prolific in his interventions and his X handle – the 'Food Professor' – sounds authoritative," he said. "The problem is a simple Tweet, or statement in a news story, or op-ed can do a lot of damage…by validating these other positions that are being harnessed by politicians who are just looking to rip up climate policy."

An official with Environment and Climate Change Canada who said he is unauthorized to speak publicly, said the ministry is "certainly aware" of Charlebois because he is such a "prolific commentator" whose "angles often conveniently compliment Conservative party narratives."

Farming, food distribution, food waste and fertilizers made from fossil fuels are collectively responsible for about a third of planet-heating global greenhouse gas emissions. Federal carbon pricing is designed to reduce some of these emissions by encouraging farmers, food processors, grocers and transportation companies to burn fewer fossil fuels and adopt more climate-friendly farming practices, though gasoline and diesel used on farms are exempted. 

Many experts dismiss conservative claims that the carbon tax alone is fueling high food prices. According to Statistics Canada, B.C.'s carbon tax has increased the province's average price of food by a mere 0.33 percent, and researchers say the situation is similar nation-wide. Moreover, in 2021 the tax gave all Canadians who paid it an average rebate of $804 – about $250 more than they paid. 

However, Charlebois says the federal government and central bank have failed to consider how the carbon tax might increase costs throughout the supply chain, making Canadian companies less competitive and potentially increasing the price consumers pay for food. 

And he criticizes researchers who dismiss the idea that the carbon tax's impact on food prices is large enough to justify a pause, calling them the "intellectual C-tax mob." He has also claimed that "vengeance fuels….the political left, and that's problem for all of us" and accused the "woke movement of influencing food policies."

Charlebois has also taken a run at other federal climate and environmental policies, for example, the government's voluntary fertilizer emissions reduction plan and its plastic pollution reduction policies designed to reduce pollution and planet-heating fossil fuel emissions arising from the production and use of both products. 

So, who is the "Food Professor"?

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Charlebois was raised on a farm in rural Quebec. In a December 2023 interview with Canada's National Observer about his influence on public food policy and carbon pricing discussions in Canada, he said that growing up in the province, he saw Canada as a "big thing" bustling with so much noise and activity it seemed difficult for a francophone to gain nation-wide influence.

That didn't stop him from trying. Soon after graduating with a commerce degree from Canada's Royal Military College, he signed on as a lobbyist with a group representing Quebec retailers. The job honed his political acuity and media skills but was an awkward political fit. His boss was a Quebec separatist and the young Charlebois was a federalist who believed the province should remain part of Canada.

The political differences eventually became fraught and he quit, heading back to graduate school in Quebec where he earned a PhD in business administration, focused on food distribution. Degree in hand and by his telling "poor at the time," he headed west, landing a teaching gig in Saskatchewan in 2004.

Like all academics, Charlebois began to teach and publish in academic journals. But speaking with Canada's National Observer, he said he was also "really into communicating to the public" about his research and continued to nurture the media savvy he built while lobbying. His research and public profile rose in the 2000s, a time before food production and supply chains were mainstream political issues. Charlebois framed his work in terms of a then-nascent discipline: food systems, or the study of how economic, political, ecological and social systems shape food. 

Food systems research tends to lean politically left, often highlighting the harmful impact of free market economics on climate change and other environmental and social ills. In this environment, Charlebois' pro-business perspective stood out as unusual and sometimes controversial, he told Canada's National Observer. 

"I always will give business the benefit of the doubt, " he said. "In academia, that's very rare."

Haroon Akram-Lodhi, a Trent University economics professor, said that Charlebois's "spark of genius" was couching his "orthodox," business-centric research in the rhetoric of food-systems analysis. With food systems framing his work, Akram-Lodhi said Charlebois used “shrewd marketing" prowess to build his brand as an expert on all aspects of food.

Charlebois eventually moved to Dalhousie University, where he now leads his own agri-food research lab at the university. The lab surveys food consumer priorities and behaviour and is best known for an annual Canada Food Price Report, which is not formally peer-reviewed in an academic journal, detailing predicted food trends and prices for the year ahead that regularly makes it into national news. 

An August 2024 paper by researchers at the University of Guelph that examined 14 Canada Food Price Reports and 39 Statistics Canada reports on food pricing concluded that "most claims made in these reports are scientifically incomplete." They noted the reports from both organizations lack "comprehensiveness" in the claims they make and their analysis, particularly on climate change and the influence of corporations on food prices. 

Charlebois is also one of the directors – alongside his wife, Janèle Vézeau – for the Canadian Agri-Food Foresight Institute, a private consulting company whose website states they offer "to a wide variety of industry and government-mandated projects…that offer agri-food businesses a competitive advantage." It does not list its clients or revenue. 

Charlebois said in his interview with Canada's National Observer that the pandemic cemented him as Canadian media's go-to guy for food-related stories. As reporters scrambled for an expert to contextualize how the crisis could impact food, Charlebois said he was one of few academics comfortable talking with the media. 

The attention Charlebois elicited among colleagues with his market-friendly views and more broadly through his media appearances is heightened by what he described to Canada's National Observer as his public persona, where he does not hesitate to criticize the government, central banks and other scholars.  

"I'm not afraid to hold institutions to the fire, because nobody does," he said of his decision last autumn to question the Bank of Canada over its estimates of the carbon tax's impact on food prices. Speaking with Canada's National Observer, he added that social media and the recent politicization of food pricing and climate policies have made it harder to comment and debate. There is a smaller margin for error, he said, with posts easily misinterpreted by social media users quick to accuse him of bias. 

Akram-Lodhi considers Charlebois' analysis too narrow. He "looks at the pieces of the food system, but not how those pieces interlock with each other," even though food systems research stresses the need to assess those relationships, he said. 

That perspective is at play in Charlebois' criticism of the carbon tax, said Miller, the executive director of Canadians for Tax Fairness. The tax is designed to increase the price of pollution which, in theory, will push businesses to save money by polluting less. The rebate system was added to soften the cost to Canadian consumers. 

Yet Charlebois' criticism has contained "virtually no acknowledgement of the rebate system" and he hasn't analyzed the "positive benefits that could come with the promotion of a green economy," she said. At the same time, he has "blown out of proportion" the tax's minimal impact on food prices and "never really puts the carbon tax in any sort of landscape of overall food pricing," she said. 

Charlebois has also criticised work by other economists whose research suggests the carbon tax is not having a large enough impact on food prices to justify a pause. For instance, in late December he wrote off a report by two University of Calgary economists about the issue, saying it had "severe limitations" because they used Statistics Canada data. 

In a January follow-up email to his conversation with Canada's National Observer, we asked Charlebois about several of his social media posts, including his criticism of the University of Calgary economists who used Statistics Canada data. We also asked him about a rebuke from the Canadian Women Economists Committee for criticizing Alberta economist Jennifer Winter, one of the University of Calgary professors, and we asked about his choice to describe carbon pricing supporters as a "mob." Our final question addressed his criticisms of economist Jim Stanford.  

Charlebois responded to Canada's National Observer by email, asking to retract his interview and refused to engage further. Regarding his posts on X, he said "it's important to clarify that all the individuals mentioned, including myself, have at various times engaged in attacking and criticizing others. It's a two-way street, and it's worth noting that both [of the University of Calgary economists] faced harassment complaints stemming from their actions on X and subsequent interactions with numerous other universities against me. Since they don’t have a Wikipedia page to vandalize, [it is] hard to know." 

"Bottom line, Tombe, Winter, and Stanford are misleading the Canadian public, full stop, and believe that I can criticize their work and credentials freely. [The Canadian Women Economists Committee] complained because I displayed Winter’s very public academic record on X," he wrote. 

In March, Canada's National Observer wrote back to Charlebois to state that we would not retract his interview or refrain from publishing because of the public interest associated with reporting on the carbon tax and food price debate; the influence he wields as a public figure; and because he was informed and consented to an interview with Canada's National Observer for a profile focused on his influence over public debate and was told the story could expand beyond that subject. 

He did not immediately respond. However, a day earlier he posted on X that Canada's National Observer "appears to be a dangerous propaganda machine for environmental zealots. I was invited to give an interview on a topic based on false pretenses. It's an unethical, crooked publication." 

In addition, as part of the reporting process Canada's National Observer sought to speak with academics who have collaborated with Charlebois and Conservative agriculture critics John Barlow, who has cited Charlebois in his criticism of the carbon tax. None agreed to an interview and in March Charlebois wrote to Canada's National Observer to say he was "advising everyone not to respond to your request, telling them that your publication is highly biased and unethical."

In his initial December 2023 interview with Canada's National Observer, Charlebois says he supports the carbon tax and sees his job as pushing policy makers to craft good policies while helping "the person who goes to the grocery store and doesn't have time to really appreciate the complexity of the food industry," he said. "At the end of the day, I want our agri-food economy to grow."

In response to criticism that his commentary is politically biased, he told Canada's National Observer he is "not for a party or another…I just look at policy. That is a good idea. That's not a good idea. Here are the reasons why." 

His position as Canada's food guy at a time when food and carbon pricing have become a hot political topic has taken a personal toll, he said in the interview with Canada's National Observer. When he spoke to Canada's National Observer in December, Charlebois seemed relieved that 2023 was nearing an end. The year had "probably been the hardest" of his career as a public figure, he said. After years of being ignored, food had suddenly become political and Canada's self-professed "Food Professor" was deep in the fray. 

"It was tough. It was tough on my team, tough on my family," he said. Strangers were calling his house to criticise him and people "vandalised" his Wikipedia page. Even his X/Twitter account was hacked, twice. "It was things I never expected. This year was not fun."

Despite the pushback, the Food Professor appears to have no plans to vanish from public view or social media frays. He still Tweets daily, publishes regular columns and op-eds in national media and recently reiterated his position that Canada should "pause the carbon tax for all companies related to the food industry overall, because we don't know exactly how the carbon tax will impact the industry's competitiveness over time" in testimony to the parliamentary committee on agriculture.

As for the keyboard warriors and online criticism, he told Canada's National Observer it is something he has come to accept as "sometimes it's beyond your control."