Led from Food Secure Canada
Food Secure Canada worked with members, partners and allies across the food movement to explore, analyse and make policy recommendations about equitable access, especially towards meeting SDGs 1 and 2, No Poverty and Zero Hunger. FSC’s mandate is to amplify the power of diverse voices. Challenging racism, anti-Black racism, and the continuing impacts of colonialism in food systems are at the heart of this action area.
Research and partnership with communities underpinned the work. The Sustainable Consumption for All (2022) report brought the expertise of community leaders working for food nonprofits and with people experiencing food insecurity, as well industry, government and academic perspectives. Insights on Food Sovereignty for Black Communities in Toronto and Access to Local Food in Francophone Canada were woven in, thanks to partnership with community organisations and scholar activists.
PROOF, the leading Canadian policy research group on food insecurity at the University of Toronto helmed a bilingual policy webinar for more than 400 participants, and advised on the policy briefings on food security for Eat Think Vote (2021) and the renewal of the Food Policy for Canada (2023).
In 2021 FSC partnered with the Broadbent Institute for a roundtable on “Food Systems in a Just Economy” as part of the Ottawa Progress Summit. In 2022 FSC joined the anti-poverty coalition Dignity for All campaign, concluding with an open letter to Minister Freeland that anchored the policy recommendations to Canada’s SDG commitments. In 2023 FSC supported the parliamentary breakfast of the We Go Together coalition, to jointly promote solutions that meet multiple SDGs.
Teaming up with the filmmakers of “Food for the Rest of Us” attracted a different audience to SDG panel discussions, preceded by film screenings. Events were hosted in Montreal and Toronto jointly with Forum SAT, Carrefour Centre Sud, Centre for Social Innovation, Toronto Youth Food Policy Council, Ojibiikaan Indigenous Cultural Network and Toronto Metropolitan University’s Urban Farm. Food Secure Canada provided subtitles for the film to expand screenings to Francophone audiences.
Policy recommendations about equitable access to healthy sustainable food emerged in the written research reports, through the cross-cutting food systems propsals for Eat Think Vote 2021, at the civil society Town Halls, in consultation with allies, and as responses prepared to government consultations, federal mandate letters and budget announcements. Policy makers were reached directly, in writing and in virtual and in-person meetings and briefings.
The concluding analysis and recommendations on equitable access are collected in a synthesis report.