What do Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and crickets have in common? Nothing but conspiracy theorists are convinced otherwise.
In 2022, the Trudeau government announced it would invest nearly $9 million in building the world’s largest edible cricket factory in London, Ontario.
The facility is owned by the Aspire Food Group, which farms crickets mainly used in pet foods. With government funding, Aspire is renovating its manufacturing system to improve cricket output.
According to Aspire CEO David Rosenberg, the company needs to pull back production for about seven months to improve its system.
“The company reduced its employee base, mainly in production, while these changes—an updated design of how the crickets live in their habitat—are incorporated,” Rosenberg told AgFunder News.
The company laid off 100 of its 150 employees, to be exact. However, Aspire plans to rehire workers in the summer.
After learning about the layoffs, the federal Conservative Party quickly attacked Trudeau, accusing the Prime Minister of wanting to shove crickets down Canadians’ throats.
In an email to supporters, the Conservative Party wrote, “Justin Trudeau bet $9 million of your money on edible BUGS! He wants Canadians to own nothing, be happy, and eat crickets. Patriotic Canadians will NOT eat bugs.”
“Liberals spend $9 million of your money on an edible bug factory. Now we get ‘crickets’ from them about where the money went,” Conservative Party Leader Pierre Poilievre wrote on X.
The cricket facility was funded through the AgriInnovate program, intended to “increase agricultural and agri-food sector competitiveness and sustainability benefits.”
The program falls under the Sustainable Canadian Agriculture Partnership, which uses cost-sharing to fund projects. The government covers sixty percent of a project’s costs, and the organization involved—in this case, Aspire—covers the remaining 40 percent.
Are Canadians Crazy for Crickets?
The AgriInnovate program provides a maximum of $5,000,000 in funding toward a project. Normally. What makes Aspire worth a $9 million investment?
About a quarter of the world’s population is afraid of insects. What is it about these critters that make our skin crawl? Some people believe that we fear insects because they are so unlike ourselves.
Others think our fear stems from a primordial instinct from our earliest ancestors, who had to protect themselves from threatening insects. Just how big were insects back then?
Today, insects are mostly out of sight, out of mind, unless you live down under. If our province’s grizzly bears are deadly but friend-shaped, then Australia’s huntsman spiders are the complete opposite.
Fun Fact: the average American eats about two pounds of dead insects and insect parts yearly. These bugs are hidden in vegetables, rice, pasta, spinach, and broccoli.
Although billions of people fear creepy crawlies, more people are willing to eat them than you would think. The edible insect market was valued at just under $1.9 billion in 2024.
This market is expected to grow to over $6 billion by 2030, driven mainly by a demand for high-protein, low-fat foods.
Governments worldwide are looking to capitalize on this market. Edible insects, especially crickets, require significantly less water, land, and feed than traditional livestock.
Crickets contain two to three times as much protein as beef on the same weight basis. They are also packed with more iron, vitamins, and fibre.
Crickets are used to make many products, but powders made up over 44 percent of the edible insect market this year.
Cricket powder has the potential to become the next carmine, a red dye made from the cochineal insect and used in many popular makeup and food products, like lipstick and candy.
Cricket powder is already popular in protein powders and baked goods thanks to its fine texture and neutral taste.
A Piece of the Insect Pie
Is Trudeau trying to shove crickets down Canadians’ throats? No. Investing almost $9 million into Aspire is likely an attempt to capitalize on the edible insect market.
When it first opened, Aspire’s facility was expected to house four million crickets and produce 13 million kilograms of the insect each year.
Pumping up this number through investments could allow Canada to control a good chunk of this market.
However, crickets are just one of the concerns outlined in the Conservative Party’s informal petition.
In addition to forcing Canadians to eat crickets, the petition claims the federal government is in cahoots with the World Economic Forum to force people into submissions using climate measures.
Trudeau is allegedly spearheading these efforts with his “woke agenda.”
“Trudeau has a long history of pushing an agenda that is totally disconnected from Canadian reality, including a mandatory digital ID, a central bank digital currency…,” states the petition.
Concerns about a digital ID are warranted, especially when it comes to privacy and security. However, it should be noted that these IDs are entirely optional.
Regarding a digital currency in Canada, the Bank of Canada announced in September that it was shelving the idea in favour of preparing for the evolution of payments in Canada and around the world.
Why is the Conservative Party’s petition claiming otherwise? Ryan Katz-Rosene, a professor of political studies at the University of Ottawa, believes it’s because conspiracy theories are sensational.
“I presume they are using this kind of petition and language because they know it…rallies support more than if they were to use more neutral and objective language in a petition like this,” Katz-Rosene told the National Observer.
“I don’t know how many Conservative MPs and or Party staffers/strategists really ‘believe’ much of this conspiracy stuff. I’m assuming it’s only a small share who are really down the rabbit hole as it were,” he continued.
No one is going to force you to eat crickets, but cricket-based products will likely become commonplace not just in Canada, but around the world soon.
