A Response to Ontario’s Food Security Strategy
May 31, 2017
The Honourable Chris Ballard, Minister of Housing
Minister responsible for the Ontario Food Security Strategy
Community Food Centres Canada (CFCC) is encouraged that the government has embarked on
a food security strategy for Ontario. With 8.2% of the province’s population experiencing food
insecurity, and 335,944 accessing food banks in March 2016, action on this front is urgent. CFCC
is eager to contribute to a comprehensive plan that will ensure our community members have
the means, skills and access to healthy nutritious food 365 days a year.
Community Food Centres see the consequences of food insecurity play out every day when
community members arrive for meals and participate in our healthy food skill building
programs. We see the positive impact our programming has on their lives, and we know that
more programming and more Community Food Centres could bring the same good results to
more Ontarians. But as much as we encourage further investments in these areas, the evidence
also points to the need for meaningful income support investments that work alongside
community based food solutions.
Income Enhancements
A lack of healthy affordable food is an issue for far too many Ontario households. This growing
problem of food insecurity exists because people simply don’t have the income necessary to
purchase the food they need to thrive. According to the research coming out of PROOF at the
University of Toronto, 60% of social assistance recipient households are dealing with food
insecurity. The only effective way to move the dial on this issue is by increasing welfare rates.
Newfoundland and Labrador’s poverty reduction strategy, with its cascade of policy reforms
including an increase in social assistance rates, indexing rates to inflation, lifting earnings
exemptions and low-income tax thresholds and increasing liquid asset limits, offers an excellent
example of how quickly things can turn around with the right adjustments and investments.
Within a year of introducing these changes, Newfoundland and Labrador’s food insecurity rates
dropped from 16% to 10%.
We are encouraged that the Ontario Food Security Strategy clearly identifies the role policy
levers play in reducing hunger and improving health outcomes. We are also encouraged by the
Ontario basic income pilot and hope that it will soon replace inadequate benefits for all social
assistance recipients. But in the meantime, 60% of social recipient households are food
insecure, and this situation requires an immediate policy response. CFCC supports an
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immediate substantial increase in social assistance rates to help remedy the vast gap that exists
between the cost of a healthy diet, housing, personal needs and the amount that people
receive on OW and ODSP.
When it comes to food insecurity we also know that the majority of people struggling to put
food on their table are employed or recently employed. PROOF’s data tells us that 62% of food
insecure households are engaged in the labour market. As concerns this research, which is
based on data collected by provinces and territories via the food security portion of the
Canadian Community Health Survey, we have learned that Ontario has decided to opt out from
this data collection in the next round. We would like to see this decision reversed, given that if
you wish to advance a food security agenda, you minimally need to have the data to
understand the problem.
On a positive note, we are happy to see that the provincial government is moving forward with
increasing the minimum wage to $14 effective January 2018 and $15 in January 2019 alongside
of the other employment laws that support the rights of low-income earners. These income
enhancements will go a long way toward helping low-income working age adults afford healthy,
nutritious foods.
Community Food Solutions
Also covered in the policy discussion paper are a variety of other issues and programs related to
food security that are intended to address alternative food distribution as a way to close up
some of the gaps left by the market, which primarily treats food as a commodity in our current
system. Much of the work that CFCC, our partner Community Food Centres and affiliated Good
Food Organizations do falls into this category. This work is creative, diverse and offers bottomup innovations that create solutions that are often cost-effective and have multi-faceted
impacts -- from improving physical access to food to building community around food to
supporting the skills and knowledge necessary to ensure that people value and can grow,
choose and prepare their own food. We support the creation of funding supports for this
valuable work and for creating metrics that demonstrate its value -- though the support cannot
be too weighted toward the latter. Indicator frameworks provided by the Ministry need to be
appropriate and viable, however, as well as expanded to include food security to accompany
funding directed specifically to this area.
CFCC supports the many health and education programs helping Ontarians understand the
value and benefits of high-quality and nutritious foods, such as Ontario’s Healthy Kids Strategy,
the Student Nutrition Program, Fresh from the Farm and the Aboriginal Healthy Living Program,
to name a few, and encourages continued investments in these areas, particularly programs
that evaluate and measure impact. Working to deepen, improve and expand the initiatives
directed at Indigenous food security (governed by a food sovereignty lens) is also vital and
urgent work.
Our own work at CFCC is oriented toward building organizations and supporting the capacity of
the food sector to build community food security via food knowledge, social inclusion and
empowerment within low-income communities. We have made a proposal to the Ministry of
Health, with the support of the Association of Ontario Health Centres, to resource three new
Community Food Centres, each to be collaboratively operated by a Community Health Centre
or an Aboriginal Health Access Centre. Investments in three new CFCs being served by
CHCs/AHACs will allow for a proven synergy to expand between the two models of care that
support improved social and health outcomes for individuals, families and communities,
particularly as it relates to food insecurity. We would request your support of this proposal
across ministries, as the learning and examples can help to advance the goals of this ministry
and strategy. Helping to leverage support via the physical infrastructure required to create
community food centres and hubs would be helpful both to our initiative and others.
As well, we are putting forward a proposal to this year’s Poverty Reduction Fund under the food
security stream related to fruit and vegetable incentives for low-income populations. Based on
the evaluation research from south of the border, subsidies have proven to significantly
increase consumption of fruits and vegetables anywhere from 24% to 69% while decreasing
BMI by 47%. CFCC strongly believes that many Ontarians would benefit from subsidy
mechanisms that help low-income Canadians access fresh fruits and vegetables. We need to
start looking at how to implement and measure impact of homegrown models, and we would
request that you consider our proposal carefully as one that can have implications for impact
and replication far beyond the scope of the proposed pilots. A properly designed model will
have impacts across the domains of food access, health and local food production and will be
both scalable and cost-effective.
As Ontario embarks on its Ontario Food Security Strategy, CFCC hopes that it will place the
connection between low-income and food insecurity at the forefront. We also hope the
government will continue to support and expand evidence-based community driven solutions
that focus on improving access to affordable and nutritious food, especially for those who
experience the most barriers.
Sincerely,
Community Food Centres Canada