Food Secure Canada and partners, 2021-2024
The government of Canada signed on to achieve the seventeen United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) by 2030. The goals address social, economic and environmental challenges, offering a global roadmap for better, more sustainable futures for people and the planet. Food Secure Canada (FSC) co-ordinated three years of work about how food systems pathways can help to meet multiple SDGs, with an emphasis on integrating civil society and Indigenous knowledge.
Counting on the leadership and contributions of partners and allies in the food movement, the activities encompassed research, knowledge sharing and the development of policy recommendations. Much of the work focused on three action areas representing major opportunities and priorities in our food system. Two of the work streams were led by FSC partners with deep thematic experience, ensuring local knowledge based in trusting reciprocal relationships. Read about the highlights here:
Equitable access to healthy, sustainable food – led by Food Secure Canada
Healthy school food – led by the Coalition for Healthy School Food
Indigenous food sovereignty – led by Plenty Canada
Additionally, Food Secure Canada co-ordinated important cross-cutting initiatives that brought an SDG lens to food systems policy consultations and opportunities during the period 2012-2024. Highlights included:
- Policy Backgrounders for local communities organising “Eat Think Vote” events for parliamentary candidates from all parties at the 2021 federal election;
- Civil society Town Halls (2023, 2021), convened to inform the renewal of the Food Policy for Canada, and to influence the Canadian Food Policy Advisory Council (CFPAC) and its Working Groups; and
- Contributing to Canada’s National Pathways document for the UN Food Systems Summit.
The work was communicated through a knowledge hub hosted on the FSC website, newsletters, social and mainstream media platforms, and numerous speeches and workshops by invitation at diverse events.
Thanks to this work, FSC has highly-relevant, embedded organisational knowledge and experience of the SDGs, and a network of active partners nationally, regionally, and thematically across different dimensions of the food system and the food movement. FSC warmly thanks all its partners, especially Indigenous leaders and others most impacted by injustices in the food system, for being on this learning and unlearning journey together.
| Acknowledgement: Food Secure Canada has received contribution funding from Employment and Social Development Canada (ESDC), Sustainable Development Goals (SDG) Funding Program. The views expressed in this summary are not necessarily those of ESDC or the Government of Canada. |