Tuesday, February 24, 2009

Canada's Worst Driver makes Moncton casting call

Help to Make Moncton Roads Safer!

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Toronto, Ontario (March 2, 2009) - The record-breaking Discovery Channel series Canada’s Worst Driver is on a mission to make Moncton streets less dangerous by rehabilitating the worst drivers in the city. But finding these drivers isn’t easy, so Proper Television, the company behind the show, is enlisting the help of Moncton residents. People in the area are being asked to put forth their Canada’s Worst Driver nomination for the fifth season of the hit show.

To submit a nomination, email driver@propertelevision.com or call 1-866-598-2591.

Every single nomination from the Moncton area will be reviewed immediately. Producers have scheduled a trip to Moncton early in April to meet with the worst of the worst. Final selections for the program will take place shortly after. Drivers bad enough to make the cut will earn a coveted spot at the nation’s most intense training hub, the Driver’s Rehabilitation Centre.

The idea of the program is to resolve the serious and dangerous behaviour of these drivers through a series of challenges based on core driving skills. As each driver shows improvement, they graduate back onto real roads. At the end, one of the eight candidates will be crowned with the dubious title of Canada’s Worst Driver.

“At the end of the show, someone will be given the title of ‘Canada’s Worst Driver’ but more importantly, a handful of the country’s worst drivers will be exposed to skills that they can use in everyday situations,” says Andrew Younghusband, host and writer.

Why would anyone want to put themselves forward for such a title? The training is unlike any driver’s training in the world. The challenges and courses have been designed to improve the driver’s core driving skills by mimicking real life situations on a grand scale.

“The training is truly extraordinary, especially when it comes to helping those who need a more than just a refresher course behind the wheel,” says Guy O’Sullivan, Executive Producer of Canada’s Worst Driver. “Whether it’s a relative, neighbour, colleague or friend, we have the resources to help.“

To give the bad driver in your life an opportunity to learn from the country’s best at a state of the art driver’s rehabilitation centre, email driver@propertelevision.com or call 1-866-598-2591. Filming is slated for June 2009.

For more information and to view past episodes of Canada’s Worst Driver, you can visit www.worstdriver.ca.

Interviews and high resolution stills available upon request

Canada’s Worst Driver is produced by Proper Television, a Toronto based indie headed up by ex-BBC director Guy O’Sullivan. Proper specializes in factual entertainment and specialist factual programming, and has been named among the Realscreen Global 100 indies for 2008.

Media Contact – high resolution stills, information and interviews:

Meredith Veats, Proper Television Inc.
Telephone 416-598-2500 x224 Fax 416-598-2550 Email meredith@propertelevision.com

Wednesday, February 11, 2009

Feb. 12 is Food Freedom Day

On Feb. 12, the average Canadian will have enough income to pay his or her individual grocery bill for the entire year.

In observing Food Freedom Day, farmers across the country will celebrate their role in providing consumers with one of the safest and most affordable food supplies in the world.

Food Freedom Day is occurring slightly later in 2009 due to the recent rise in the price of food. This bucks the trend of recent years, where the disposable income of Canadians rose significantly faster than the cost of food. However, thanks to farmers, Canadians still get the best deal in the western world for their food dollar.

In many parts of the world, the cost of food is significantly higher. Member countries within the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), on average, spend 8.3 per cent more of their disposable income on food than Canadians. Australians spend 12.7 per cent more, the Japanese spend 35.7 per cent more and Mexicans spend over 125 per cent more of their disposable income on food than Canadians.

In 2008, while prices in some agriculture commodities soared, Canadian farmers continued to take only a very small percentage of the consumers' food dollar at the grocery store.

In 2005, a grain farmer received $0.07 for the corn in a box of Kellogg's Corn Flakes and $0.11 for the wheat in a loaf of bread. Even with a doubling in the price of commodities, those costs would then become 14 cents and 22 cents, certainly not justifying the significant retail mark-ups which many consumers complained about.

Given the processed nature of many consumer foods, it is far more likely that an increase in the cost of energy played a much larger role in the retail price increase.

Canadians continued to receive high quality food produced at the highest food safety and environmental standards. To ensure that consumers are able to identify Canadian food products and support our agriculture sector, the Canadian Federation of Agriculture will continue to advocate for effective ingredient-based 'Product of Canada' guidelines that are both informative to the consumer and practical to the agri-food industry.

For more information Food Freedom Day calculations is here

More Food Freedom Day facts are here .