THE STANDING SENATE COMMITTEE ON AGRICULTURE AND FORESTRY
EVIDENCE
OTTAWA, Thursday, November 20, 2025
The Standing Senate Committee on Agriculture and Forestry met this day at 8:01 a.m. [ET] to examine and report on the role of the agriculture and agri-food sector with regard to food security in Canada.
Senator John McNair (Deputy Chair) in the chair.
[English]
The Deputy Chair: Honourable senators, I call to order this meeting of the Standing Senate Committee on Agriculture and Forestry. My name is John McNair, and I am the deputy chair of this committee. Welcome to the members of the committee, our witnesses today and those watching this meeting on the web.
I would like to start by acknowledging that the land on which we gather is on the unceded traditional territory of the Algonquin Anishinaabe Nation.
Before we hear from our witnesses today, I would like to ask the senators around the table to introduce themselves.
Senator Burey: Good morning. Sharon Burey, Ontario.
Senator Varone: Toni Varone, Ontario.
Senator Robinson: Good morning. Mary Robinson, Prince Edward Island.
Senator Sorensen: Karen Sorensen, Alberta.
Senator Muggli: Tracy Muggli, Treaty 6 territory, Saskatchewan.
The Deputy Chair: I want to remind us of some best practices to prevent acoustic incidents. I ask all senators to consult the cards on the table for guidelines to prevent audio feedback incidents. I would also like to remind all those participating to refrain from switching languages mid-sentence and to not speak too quickly. Clear audio supports accurate interpretation, transcription and captioning of our meetings.
Today, the committee is continuing its study on the role of the agriculture and agri-food sector with regard to food security in Canada.
For our first panel, we have the pleasure of welcoming Corey Ellis, Chief Executive Officer and co-founder of Growcer. The other witness was not able to join us today.
Thank you, Corey, for accepting the invitation and appearing before the committee. You will have five minutes for your opening remarks. They will be followed by questions from the senators.
Corey Ellis, Chief Executive Officer and Co-Founder, Growcer: Thank you, senator. Thank you all for the opportunity to speak today.
[Translation]
I’d like to thank the committee members for the opportunity to speak today.
[English]
The work you’re doing on examining the role of agriculture within food security in Canada is very important, so I’m glad that this committee is looking at this and studying this work.
We started our business here in Ottawa 10 years ago with the express goal of addressing acute food insecurity in Canada’s North. We started by launching about a dozen farms in Canada’s Arctic, which are still operating today, with the first being in Churchill, Manitoba. Today, we have 1,000 farms operating globally in 35 countries, of which 125 are in Canada.
We build purpose-built modular food solutions and are best known for our modular indoor vertical farm. It’s the size of four parking spaces, and within that space we grow enough vegetables year-round to feed 500 people per day.
Even in winter — and, of course, in Churchill, Manitoba, where we first started, the winter is certainly pronounced — we use four homes’ worth of power to feed 200 to 300 homes. It can be located locally within a community centre or a small institution, which cuts down on transportation costs and emissions while creating local jobs. We also use 90% less water than conventional agriculture.
We have also since branched out to other types of climate-controlled food solutions, including food storage, root cellars and community freezers. All are still modular to give us the economies of sale to pass those savings on to customers.
At the moment, Growcer systems feed about 50,000 Canadians every day and about 500,000 people around the world.
As I mentioned, we started focusing on food security in Canada’s North, but now we are seeing food insecurity in all parts of the country in ways that we have never seen before. Between COVID, tariffs and supply chain challenges, we see demand for products like this growing daily.
Food insecurity touches every corner of our country, from urban centres to small, rural communities and even military communities on bases across our country. One in four Canadians — over 11 million people — now live in a food-insecure household. The ingredients of the average Canadian meal, meanwhile, travel over 2,000 kilometres to get here, and we depend on increasingly unreliable trading partners for most of the food that Canada eats. This makes us highly vulnerable to climate shocks, uncertain supplies, long shipping routes and inflation. We need to be thinking more and harder about moving away from Band-Aid solutions and more into structural investments to reduce Canada’s dependency in this way.
But the good news is Growcer’s model has proven that it’s ready and able to work, and I would say that Canada’s agriculture and agri-food industry is at the ready to help address this problem together with government.
Today, Indigenous nations, food banks and local institutions across Canada are building real food sovereignty and reducing Canada’s dependency on these imported products. I will give a few examples.
Altario School in Altario, Alberta, is a small, rural school. They are teaching agriculture with their farm and selling food to the entire community. Witset First Nation in B.C. is now growing food for their community food pantry, creating local jobs and showcasing innovation. Here in Ottawa, the Ottawa Mission uses our farms to supplement 1 million meals a year for their clients in need. We’ve been able to grow food to completely eliminate their need for food imports.
The government can step in to continue to accelerate the work we’re doing. We’re already well under way, but there are certain barriers that are preventing the agri-food sector from addressing this problem at greater scale. At a municipal level, municipal zoning doesn’t consider agriculture within urban limits as a zoning type, so in many cities across the country, we face zoning challenges that slow down projects and restrict investments. At a provincial level, there are hydro policies that prevent connecting power to installations like this, so hydro policies could accelerate deployments and make investment easier. At the federal level, of course, continued investment into food production infrastructure and making sure the investment climate is suitable for this type of technology needs to be a continued priority.
I point out programs like the Local Food Infrastructure Fund at Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada that has proven over the past five years significant investment with significant matching funds and a strong return on government investment.
I would also add, in a climate where we’re investing heavily in our military infrastructure, that we consider dual-use infrastructure to feed our troops as well on bases across the country.
The last point about the military, and perhaps the new federal budget that was announced a few weeks ago, I also want to highlight is this: In Budget 2025, there was an announcement about $280 billion in new infrastructure for Canada. I’m hopeful that this committee can also, as part of its study, look at how much of that infrastructure can be food infrastructure to make Canada more resilient and food secure.
It’s critical at a time of these food supply chain disruptions, climate disasters and rising costs that repeatedly threaten Canada’s access to food that we make historic investments in agriculture to make ourselves more secure. We hope that the terms and conditions of these programs that are stemming from Budget 2025 will include food infrastructure as a key consideration. We see the demand at the community level for these solutions, and we need government policy to meet that demand, support it and certainly not constrain it.
Local controlled-environment agriculture creates jobs, reduces the price of food, increases sustainability and improves food security for all.
I hope that my testimony to this committee today is helpful to help you frame your study, and I remain available if you have any questions or follow-up.
The Deputy Chair: Thank you, Mr. Ellis, for your opening statement. Senators, we’ll proceed to questions from senators around the table. You know that you have five minutes for your question, and that includes the answer.
Senator Sorensen: As I mentioned when you came in, I was really pleased to read about the success you’ve had with rural community partnerships in Alberta, including in remote and Indigenous communities.
Among your partnerships with First Nations local organizations, which models or approaches have been most effective in improving local food access? Actually, I’m giving you an opportunity to tell us a few more stories about where you’ve seen success. Also, if there is time, how cost-competitive is our model relative to traditional food supply chains in remote areas, particularly around transportation and spoilage?
Mr. Ellis: I’ll start with your second question first. As far as cost competitiveness in an urban area, we’re now cost competitive. In a place like Ottawa, we grow food at the same price as imported food; it’s just more stable and doesn’t increase the way imported food does every year. In a remote community, we significantly reduce the price of food.
In Churchill, Manitoba, the year the rail line flooded, they installed a Growcer farm and immediately reduced the price of food by 40% from one day to the next. The grocery store started buying from the local farm because they could get it cheaper from the farm at the Churchill Northern Studies Centre than flying it up. That is a small example. In remote communities, the economics are clear. In urban centres, the economics are at parity, and I suspect that over the next 5 to 10 years, the economics will get only better as our technology and our industry’s technology get better.
As far as other examples of models, I would say there are three big buckets I would put them in. Altario School is an example. I’ll talk about KLO middle school in Kelowna as well. They have a farm. They integrate this with their curriculum. The farm feeds the school meal program and becomes part of the column curriculum, and in every level from K to 12, we have a fully integrated curriculum that comes with the farm, so it’s teaching youth where their food comes from. Youth that grow food also eat healthier and eat the veggies they grow. We have institutional food services. We want food incumbents, like grocery stores and cafeterias and large food services to supply more domestically and locally. Some of the world’s largest food services use our farms. For example, university college cafeterias in Nova Scotia — Acadia University’s entire cafeteria salad bar is fed by our farms thanks to a partnership with Chartwells. I could also include the Ottawa Mission, as I mentioned, and co-op retailers. For example, we have New Horizon Co-op in Alberta, which has our farm in the parking lot. They then walk the produce 50 feet to the produce shelf, and the produce is fresh for a month. Not only is the price competitive, but the quality is unsurpassed.
And the third category is commercial farmers and commercial growers that we’re seeing increased demands for. Of course, the institutional bucket also includes about 50 First Nations that Growcer works with today.
Senator Sorensen: That’s fantastic. I know you said this at the beginning, but when did you start this?
Mr. Ellis: Just down the road, about 10 years ago. We were just a few blocks from this building.
Senator Sorensen: Congratulations. That is so interesting.
Mr. Ellis: Thank you.
Senator Sorensen: Maybe just a little more elaboration, if you would not mind. You did a good job around Budget 2025. I heard the infrastructure part and agree that would be great. Other than that, where is the federal government supporting you now?
Mr. Ellis: The federal government supports our First Nation clients and food banks, for example, in investing in technology. So it’s a lot around de-risking projects, so funding things like feasibility studies or the groundwork. Getting a site ready to accommodate a farm like this is a key consideration. And then when a board of directors of a food bank, like we’re doing in the Canmore area, says, “We’re interested in doing this,” government can provide a small amount of initial capital to de-risk the entire project.
Senator Sorensen: Through a grant application?
Mr. Ellis: There is an existing program called the Local Food Infrastructure Fund that is funded through to the next fiscal year that we hope to see increased or made permanent. It’s currently not a permanent program. So it is at the whim of every budget cycle, but the return on investment we have been able to show, not only in job creation, et cetera, but we return the government investment three times over within the first five years of the investment because we’re onshoring domestic jobs, creating increased revenue for local businesses, et cetera, and then, of course, reducing the dependency. So a food bank will reduce its operating costs by investing in this.
Senator Sorensen: And do you think the government is aware of the ROI?
The Deputy Chair: Senator Sorensen, can we put you on second round? Thank you.
Senator Burey: Mr. Ellis, thank you so much. I like stories. I’m going to go with Senator Sorensen. I’m a pediatrician, and what propelled me — or maybe “compelled” is a better word — to come into this is, of course, my patients who were living in poverty and supply chains. COVID, of course, accentuated that. When I came, I said, “We have to tackle the totality of this food security issue,” because food security, as you know, is a national security imperative not just for Canada, but across the world. I want to know your story. I want to know how it is a young man, Corey Ellis, decided to get into this?
Mr. Ellis: Thank you for all the compliments. I was studying business at the University of Ottawa, and the specific type of business I was interested in was social enterprise. So I was really interested during my studies about how can we use capitalism and for-profit enterprise to accelerate social change and environmental impact. Because I felt like our economic system is the best to scale impact, and if you have a business that does both, does good while doing well, it’s the best way to have the largest possible impact in the world. I think the place we have brought our business is a testament to that. The impetus for this business was really a few trips to Nunavut while I was in university. I actually spent every reading week there in second-, third-, and fourth-year university, on a volunteer basis. It was really meeting community members and understanding what the structural challenges were. Why did we experience food insecurity at a 70% rate in the North? Why was this okay in a G7 country? I was asking a lot of questions and being curious and ultimately landed on this, which first started as a summer project and quickly became managing full-time employees while trying to finish my studies. To me, it really was the shock of seeing how expensive food was and how many people were going hungry. I just felt compelled — to use your word — to do something about it.
Senator Burey: You spoke about how far food comes, especially food that comes from abroad, internationally. It comes 2,000 kilometres, I heard. How do you think that this helps Canada to meet its climate solution and its climate targets? Do you have any numbers?
Mr. Ellis: There are two parts to that. The biggest emissions from produce are actually on the produce that never makes it to people’s fridges and doesn’t ever get consumed. Yes, we will reduce CO2 emissions from taking trucks off the road, that’s a portion of our emissions reductions, but maybe to start with the number I know: We, in aggregate, reduce GHG equivalents by 75% compared to conventional produce that’s imported. Some of that, as I said, comes from taking trucks off the road. Most of that comes from reducing methane, which is much more potent than CO2. Methane is what gets released when food decomposes. Because our produce is fresh for four weeks in the fridge, it is much more likely that someone will eat it before it goes bad. Globally, we produce more than enough food to feed every single person on the planet. Nobody should be going hungry. We don’t have a production problem; we have a distribution problem. The food doesn’t make it to people’s plates or get consumed in time, and that’s because of these long supply chains. On average, food that makes it the store shelf is already 11 days old because it goes through three hands, it goes on different trucks and gets aggregated into pallets and into the store. Then we buy it and it’s already 11 days old. It doesn’t have much more of a shelf life after that. That’s why within five days of buying a bag of spinach, it will go bad in your fridge. All of the resources that are put into that produce are lost and wasted.
Senator Muggli: It’s so wonderful to hear your story. We have a pediatrician. I’m a social worker, so food insecurity has been a part of my entire career and with folks I work with. I didn’t realize until I put the pieces together and you said the word “Churchill” that I saw the operation in Churchill this summer along with Senator McNair.
Was anybody else in the room on that too? Just the two of us. So that was very cool.
I’m interested in a couple of things. For the record, can you tell us about the diversity of products available through your operations?
Mr. Ellis: We’ve grown about 150 different types of vegetables and fruit, and communities have also grown their own types. We even have some First Nations that are growing traditional medicines on their farms. The restriction is anything that grows under the soil, so I think root vegetables are not currently possible economically on our farms. We have a root cellar for that solution.
Senator Muggli: Can you say more about the root cellar solution?
Mr. Ellis: Sure. Communities can produce a lot of root vegetables. Production is not the problem; it’s keeping it fresh all winter long to feed the community over time. We’re giving communities the ability to have affordable infrastructure to store that produce.
We also do community freezers for meat and fish. We do community kitchens and all of that. It’s all about how we prepare communities and give them the infrastructure so they can store, process and feed their local community.
Senator Muggli: For the record, because our report will make recommendations, can you expand or be as specific as you can on regulatory barriers so that when it comes time and we are making recommendations, we can be very specific about what needs to change in terms of regulatory issues?
Mr. Ellis: At the National Building Code level, there are limitations to how the code interprets something like this. It just doesn’t foresee the possibility of having an agriculture building that is not on agriculture land. Normally, the Canadian Farm Building Code applies. Because we’re unique, we fit in the National Building Code. So the code needs to speak to situations like this.
We’ve experienced times when there is a two-year delay to getting a building permit. This is a prefab building that is already certified. We need, in the code, provisions. For example, we have a CSA program called — I’ll get a little technical for a second — CSA A277. It is a pre-certification. It should fly through approvals. In my view, the National Building Code needs to be more directive and prescriptive on when something has this certification, make sure it goes through a fast track so it’s not held up. That cools investment appetite in farms like this.
The second is the Local Food Infrastructure Fund that I mentioned, making that permanent or even increasing that program given the significant ROI that we’ve already demonstrated.
Third would be procurement, so making it a priority to procure through public institutions in procuring local vegetables. The United States has really strong local farm procurement programs that we don’t in Canada directing every institution, from hospitals to even Parliament and so on. Anybody who orders catering and orders food should be supporting local farmers as much as possible, because those dollars staying in the local community is much better than them being sent toward imports.
Those would be three quick recommendations off the top.
Senator Muggli: Did you say anything about access to power?
Mr. Ellis: Yes. At a provincial level, power is a challenge. Quebec and Ontario have programs to incentivize the installation of LEDs, for example. Those are programs to emulate across the country in other provinces.
I would finally add the tax regime currently. We have investors who buy our modular farms and make them available to local communities. They’re currently taxed at about twice the rate as if they did the same thing within the real estate sector, so looking at the tax regime, things like flow-through shares or accelerated depreciation. That was actually in Budget 2025.
My understanding is that would not apply to an agriculture building, only to a machine, but this is more of a building than a machine. So looking at things like that so that when private capital flows to a project like this, it is not penalized because it is an agriculture building; it is treated as an imperative.
Policies like that can cost the government very little money and attract a lot of private capital toward these kinds of investments.
Senator Muggli: Thank you. I appreciate it.
Senator Varone: I’m fascinated by this space. As a bit of a preamble for my colleagues, I was introduced to this space about 15 years ago. My nephew, who went to the University of Guelph, is landscape architecture. I was a builder/developer to a certain extent — I bought a derelict building in south Etobicoke. He looked at it, came with me one weekend and said, “Oh, I have an idea.” And he wrote his thesis on vertical farms using Dickson Despommier’s book on urban farming, and I was absolutely fascinated by it.
I’m going to take you to the comment you made about municipalities not understanding zoning codes and Toronto Hydro not understanding the power requirements.
I went through it. He did extremely well on his thesis. He wrote a whole thesis on the vertical farm. I almost jumped into it, but then, when the City of Toronto told me I would need an OP zoning change and a site plan, and that they don’t have enough power on the grid to support this, things changed.
I understand what you’re telling us in terms of a recommendation. There is no zoning line item or category for an urban farm. When you take a look at all these derelict buildings that developers are looking at and want to reposition and refit or knock down and rebuild and there is a purpose like a vertical farm in an urban centre, yes, we need changes and to highlight what those changes are.
Do you have any other experience with respect to confronting zoning changes in municipalities or hydro grids and not having enough power to supply this type of enterprise?
Mr. Ellis: I’ll give you a good example, and I’ll give you some examples where there is still work to be done.
A great example is that Vancouver City Council requires three food assets to be added to any high-rise development. That directly incentivizes developers and says they must invest in a food pantry and a vertical farm and something else, a rooftop garden, in order to even have their zoning approved. As part of their development charges negotiation, they must demonstrate they have three food assets per property. That is a policy that I think other cities could emulate.
In Ottawa, they have added urban agriculture in every zoning class. That was part of a zoning bylaw review. They said, “Let’s make sure urban agriculture is in everything. Let’s not restrict it. It is a good thing.” It brings people together, and it’s good for the environment. It doesn’t create noise or anything that would bother neighbours. They want to allow this writ large in every part of the city.
We’re working with Mayor Sutcliffe on a plan to add 20 farms to the city of Ottawa because we see that the policy environment is favourable for vertical farms. That will feed mostly food banks and charities across the city.
Senator Varone: How do you replicate that as a model for the city of Toronto and the city of Montreal?
Mr. Ellis: Unfortunately, it’s the grunt work of going city to city and sharing this message or going to organizations like the Federation of Canadian Municipalities, where all the councillors and mayors convene, and imparting the importance of a policy change like that. It’s very simple. It’s part of their zoning code review. They can, with a stroke of a pen, make urban agriculture permissible everywhere in their city.
Senator Varone: What about the power grid?
Mr. Ellis: We’ve not faced issues of lack of connection to the power grid due to the small size of our farms. We only use two homes’ worth of power to feed 300 to 400 homes.
Senator Varone: So 400-amp service.
Mr. Ellis: Yes, less: 150. It’s quite small. Where we’ve seen challenges with hydro is more so the inspection process. Again, back to the same thing with the National Building Code, the national Electrical Code doesn’t have provisions for a greenhouse that’s not a greenhouse; it’s a building. Some inspectors don’t deem this to be a greenhouse and treat it as if it’s an office building with all the restrictions.
Senator Varone: It’s the definitions?
Mr. Ellis: It’s the definitions, yes. Of course, an office building doesn’t anticipate there being plants in that office building produced wall to wall.
Senator Varone: Not edible ones.
Mr. Ellis: Edible plants, exactly. And the amount of water we use and all of that, it is confusing to an inspector and the policies there.
What Quebec and Ontario have done with LED rebates incentivizes growers, including conventional farmers, to invest in this because they get a rebate for every high-efficiency LED fixture they install. That can save a farmer 5% on capital costs. That is significant. Every little bit helps.
There are cities that shall remain nameless where the zoning policy says that this is an industrial manufacturing operation, so it cannot be in the parking lot of a grocery store.
Senator Varone: So more parking spots and not a greenhouse.
Mr. Ellis: So those are the types of policies that we need to change.
Senator Robinson: It’s really fascinating, and I appreciate when you say that we don’t have a production problem; we have a distribution problem. That is so true. And I love on your site seeing the little leaves in the North and in remote areas.
When you go to the grocery store, you look at your leafy greens and they come from California, you think if only you knew the story this little plastic container of spinach could tell.
The food waste issue is enormous, and when we look at GHGs and how we reduce those in food production, I think it’s important to highlight the value of what you’re doing for reducing food waste, because methane is certainly a nasty thing. What you’re doing is an incredible complement to conventional agriculture. I’m interested to understand — Senator Muggli asked about what you are producing, and I appreciate that this is just another tool in the tool box as to how we feed people and you’re producing primarily leafy greens. I had done some reading and see strawberries and the potential for cucumbers. What have you actually produced on the fruit and vegetable side?
Mr. Ellis: We’ve done a lot of tomatoes; those do really well, especially cherry tomatoes, which are prolific. Strawberries are on their way. I would say in the 5 five to 10 years, as Growcer continues to scale, more and more types of crops will make sense in indoor farming, especially as outdoor farming becomes more at risk. Most of our fruit and vegetables come from areas that are drought-ridden and at significant risk due to climate change, and we’ll be forced inevitably to grow more of our food domestically here in Canada. The policy environment can just accelerate that change.
Senator Robinson: So you will not be putting Senator Muggli’s province, the breadbasket of Canada, out of business. You’re not going to be producing acres and acres of wheat or canola or potatoes — you mentioned root vegetables. Can you talk a little about how you pack your product and how you liaise with CFIA on that?
Mr. Ellis: The good news is because we don’t cross provincial boundaries, we follow CanadaGAP, but we’re not required to be inspected by the Canadian Food Inspection Agency, or CFIA.
Senator Robinson: You might want to explain what CanadaGAP is.
Mr. Ellis: “Good Agricultural Practices” — it’s a certification program for farms that operate primarily cross-provincially and internationally. It mandates them to be inspected, which is a significant cost to a small farming operation. CFIA guidelines are to get a public health unit, say, Ottawa Public Health, to inspect this as they would a restaurant. They ensure employees are cleaning their hands, there are clean washroom facilities, the system is in clean shape and employees are trained on safe food handling. That is the regulatory regime we ensure we comply with to ensure that the food is at the highest possible standard of safety and cleanliness.
Sorry, what was the first part of your question again, senator?
Senator Robinson: It was with respect to packing facilities.
Mr. Ellis: We encourage customers to use fully compostable packaging wherever possible, and more and more we’re seeing customers use fully reusable packaging. In smaller communities, like Prince Rupert, B.C., there are now two farms installed there. They have a member organization that has 50 subscribers every week, and those subscribers get a little zipper bag full of produce every single week. They bring back last week’s bag, it’s sanitized, and it has their name on it, so the produce actually has no plastic or any sort of packaging. It’s a one-time use. So increasingly, we’re seeing that pick up steam across the country.
Senator Robinson: Have you faced any concerns or challenges or need for food traceability? What is your food traceability?
Mr. Ellis: We do trace every produce item from seed to package through our software that automates our farm.
Senator Robinson: So if you are using reusable packages, how are you able to track that right to the table?
Mr. Ellis: If you’re a subscriber, your name is on the package and that’s your package. The produce item that gets placed in that is traced all the way to that package, so we know if this lettuce was given to this family, we know when it was put in and where the seed came from, all the way up the supply chain.
Senator Robinson: So when a customer comes back with a reusable container and you fill it, it’s always from one batch and there’s no potential of additional batches complicating food traceability?
Mr. Ellis: Exactly.
Senator Robinson: And regarding the actual packaging, I’ve seen your modules with the growing, so where is your physical packaging?
Mr. Ellis: There’s a packaging station, if you just have the grow module, right at the front door. You put things in clamshells, like I said, corn-based compostable packaging. We also have what’s called the hub unit, which is a commercial kitchen environment — like LEGO blocks, they all connect together — so one hub unit can connect four growing units, root cellars, freezers, et cetera. That’s where there’s a proper hand-washing sink, a three-part commercial sanitization sink, et cetera. That is for larger operations that have more staff and require more time for packaging.
The Deputy Chair: It’s clear, senators, we don’t have enough time today for this panel. We could be here all day talking about this subject; it’s fascinating. We’re into the second round.
Senator Burey: I wanted to talk about the barriers, and you spoke to some of them eloquently already. Is there anything else you left out? We talked about the infrastructure, the zoning, water and electricity. Are there any other barriers — such as going to a municipal council and so on — that you’ve encountered?
Mr. Ellis: I’ll maybe double-click on the tax side because it was toward the end of my remarks earlier. Specifically, if you’re an investor who buys a modular farm and you’re not the farmer, you’re taxed as if it is a passive income opportunity. If you were to buy a home and rent it to someone, you’re taxed as an active business. It’s a 2X difference in income tax. That means, if I am investor who is deciding where I should place my capital, I will ask if I should buy a modular farm and help my community grow more food or just buy another home to rent it to others. More times than not, unless they’re charitable in their decision, purely looking at the economics, a home would be a far better investment.
So my comment is only to say, as part of looking at the Income Tax Act, making sure that that someone who invests in an agricultural building or an agricultural technology like this doesn’t get penalized in that way, and at least on par. Some of the solutions that have been proposed in the most recent budget were around accelerated expensing or depreciation for equipment. Our understanding is that only applies to equipment, not to the building as a whole, so just due to the format of our farm, where the whole thing comes as a package, our understanding is we wouldn’t be able to benefit from that.
So that’s something that we want looked at. For example, in the U.S., when our customers buy a farm for US$180,000, they get an immediate $60,000 tax deduction in year one on their income tax, so that makes American investors very interested in investing in domestic food production in the U.S., as they should. We need a similar policy here in Canada.
Senator Burey: I’m going to move to food security. For example, in Toronto, you have marginalized communities and Black communities. You may know more about this, the Black food security initiative, but how does your operation interact with something like that?
Mr. Ellis: We would more often than not partner with an existing community organization that serves those communities, and we would augment their capabilities. I’ll use the Ottawa Mission example, because I know it well. They were spending $12,000 a month on vegetables to serve their marginalized community members. That’s a lot of money for a charity to spend on just vegetables. By investing in this farm, they’ve cut that budget significantly.
For example, we would work with one of the local grassroots organizations on the ground. That might be providing food hampers or providing food skills training, anything like that, say, a soup kitchen or a community kitchen, and we would help them raise the funding, whether it’s through grants, donations, investment to acquire one of these assets, produce their own food, and then reduce their dependency and eliminate their food procurement budget.
Senator Burey: How about the National School Food Program? I have to applaud the government on that as it’s now permanent; they’re going to continue the funding. How do you interact with that? Can you describe that a little bit more?
Mr. Ellis: That ties into my earlier comment on prioritizing local procurement, so currently there’s not much distinction in the way the school food program is currently written.
We would love to see more onus put on the schools that receive that funding to allocate a certain percentage to local farmers, to buy from local farms and have a mandate to buy from local farms, because the economic multiplier to every dollar that goes back to the farmers, that money is recycled in the community multiple times over.
The way we would interact with the National School Food Program is our customers would sell locally to the school board or to each individual school so that the school can have their school meal program be local food. We’d love to see that written into the program and augmented over time. The U.S. Department of Agriculture, or USDA, has, until recently, had a long-standing program that does exactly that.
Senator Burey: For local farmers, as Senator Robinson said, complementary to traditional farms, so the dollars stay within the country and within the community.
Mr. Ellis: Exactly. Writ large, it should support any local farmer who has product that is healthy for children to eat, but it specifically says that if you receive federal money to your school to buy food, a certain percentage of that should be from local farmers. You must procure locally with a certain amount of your budget.
Senator Burey: Thank you.
Senator Sorensen: How long does it typically take — maybe the answer is variable — for a community to become operationally self-sufficient? I’m also curious to know about the maintenance of the operation. What happens after a few years? Is there a refresh?
Mr. Ellis: It’s about a month to produce the farm and six weeks from the time it’s delivered to when they’re producing. It’s less than three months, all in.
Senator Sorensen: Wow.
Mr. Ellis: In practice, we generally see communities ramp up over a six-month period, just get their feet under them, start slow and build up once they’re successful. I’ll say six months, conservatively.
Your second question was around maintenance, correct?
Senator Sorensen: You haven’t been doing it that long, but what happens with this infrastructure in terms of maintaining it?
Mr. Ellis: The building is rated to last 30 years, and we have a warranty that backs that up. The equipment inside is refreshed as it reaches the end of its warranty. We have quite long warranties on the equipment. They’re quite robust pieces of equipment.
We are also now offering communities the option to go through what we call called a Growcer Fund. Instead of a typical grocery farm, which is a quarter of a million dollars up front, we now offer that at zero dollars up front and $4,000 a month. It’s a rent-to-own model where we take care of 100% of the maintenance.
The maintenance cost is about a 5% provision of their total operating cost toward a rainy-day fund, and that’s been more than sufficient for all our farms. Churchill is now 9 or 10 years old, something like that, and their maintenance bill is a few thousand dollars — in the low thousands. For a farm worth a quarter million, that’s pretty good.
Senator Sorensen: You have no bad answers. They’re all really good answers.
I don’t think I’ve heard you talk about collaborating with colleges or agricultural education. Are there partnerships with any universities or colleges across the country?
Mr. Ellis: There are. About 12 agriculture colleges and universities have our farms and are doing research with our farms and training students.
Senator Sorensen: Again, really good answer.
Mr. Ellis: We work a lot with the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada, or NSERC, and MyTax in training master’s students and undergraduates who want to learn about this field. We are getting them hands-on experience. Increasingly, more colleges and universities are making this investment because they want new capabilities, for example, Olds College in Alberta.
Senator Sorensen: I want to get up there, meaning up there from Banff. It’s not that far up, but it’s up.
Could you send a list of where all the farms are in Canada? To your point, we could stumble upon one and not even know it. As I said, I’m going to get up to Olds. I was just at the University of Guelph. I would be curious to know where you are so that when we’re doing whatever we’re doing out there in Canada, we can see them.
Mr. Ellis: That sounds good. If it interests this committee, we have two farms in Ottawa. You can always visit the one that feeds the Ottawa Mission.
Senator Sorensen: Yes, we could take a field trip. Thank you.
The Deputy Chair: On that point, Mr. Ellis, you have farms in every province and every territory except New Brunswick.
Mr. Ellis: Exactly. We need to work on that.
The Deputy Chair: You are working to deal with both of those.
Mr. Ellis: Yes.
Senator Robinson: I want to talk a little more about your customers, the entities that are purchasing the modular farms. Specifically, do you have anyone who has invested, who has expanded, who has taken their initial investment, seen the return and wanted to make it bigger?
Mr. Ellis: There are many. We get repeat customers every month. I’ll give you two examples. Montana First Nation, which is in Maskwacis, Alberta, they started with a few farms. They now have eight modules plugged together and feed their First Nation school district, nearby communities and grocery stores.
The opportunity is there if communities have the ambition to scale. Not all communities want or need that, but for those who wish to make it a true commercial opportunity and have the gumption to put a plan in place and follow through with it, it is a great opportunity to scale.
Another example is in Huntsville, Ontario, in cottage country. The co-op we work with there is a local grocery store co-op called Muskoka North Good Food Co-op. It started with one and expanded to two and a hub kitchen with the help of either FedDev or FedNor. I forget which one. Their local regional development agency, and the Northern Ontario Heritage Fund Corporation, or NOHFC, as well in that area, helped them secure investment to expand.
We have many who start small and scale over time.
Senator Robinson: You used the term “feeds an entire community,” and I want to be clear on that. I have to keep reminding myself we’re feeding them leafy greens and some fruits and vegetables, but we’re not feeding them entirely. When I walk through the grocery store, in my mind, I think that you could replace this or that, but I need the rest of the grocery store still.
Mr. Ellis: With the exception of when we have root cellars, the meat freezer, the fish freezer and fridges. In a remote community, where storage is a challenge and it makes sense to bring it up on the ice road or on barges in the winter in bulk — especially fly-in communities — they can buy in bulk and save money per pound for meat. For ground beef, they can buy in bulk and freeze it.
Senator Robinson: But not producing it.
Mr. Ellis: Not producing it, but saving money and reducing the price.
Senator Robinson: Yes, again, the storage and distribution challenge.
I’m not seeing any hands up at the end of the table. When I think of leafy greens and food production, I think of E. coli and recalls. In your production models, have you faced any challenges with diseases, pests or agronomics? With respect to your answer to Senator Sorensen on Olds College, you’re obviously working with many smart people on the production side, but what are the challenges you might face in that realm in production?
Mr. Ellis: We did early on, and we’ve mitigated that. We now have an integrated pest management program. What that means is that we ensure the water quality is good coming into the farm. We then manage the water quality and test it as it circulates in our farm, and we use beneficial bacteria to protect the root of the plant from any plant diseases that might be introduced by human error. But you keep the entire farm like a lab-grade, food-grade level of sanitation. You’re cleaning every time you’re in there and ensuring that everything is really clean. The results show up. When you keep your farm in good condition, your crops look incredible.
We did see early on in our journey some issues with plant-borne diseases, and we’ve been able to fully mitigate those now.
Senator Robinson: I want to ask about your root cellars. Can you explain how those work?
Mr. Ellis: With roots cellars, the key is cool and dry temperatures. One of our core competencies is when it’s -40 and you’re trying to grow plants, you get good at managing temperature and environment in an energy-efficient way. We leverage that core capability to keep a certain environment and set it to that environment and do it without spending a lot of money on energy. We basically have a climate control system. It ensures good airflow and that the air is dry and cool so that things such as potatoes, onions and carrots are nice and happy all through the winter.
Senator Robinson: My experience with potatoes, onions and carrots is that carrots like dry and potatoes like moist.
Mr. Ellis: Yes. When you palletize them and skid them, you can also package them. I’m not familiar with the intricate details, but I know some of them are packed in different boxes and different materials. Some allow the airflow through, and some seal it. Within the root cellar, each skid has a different environment inside the box. The environment and the air are the same.
Senator Varone: When I’m fascinated by subject matter, my ADHD kicks in, and I start wandering all over the map. I found this article. Notwithstanding your success, where does Canada rank in the G7 landscape in this field? One of the articles that I found was on hydroponic potato production in wood fibre for food security. I was fascinated by it, so I read right through it. It was a study done by the Norwegian Institute of Bioeconomy Research, sponsored by the Beijing fund.
So that tells you where everybody else is going, and this is replacing the root farms that you talked about, because they’re growing this. Do we have enough money in R&D to support the advancement of what it is that you started 10 years ago?
Mr. Ellis: I would argue we have sufficient R&D investment. We’re great at research in Canada but not great at commercializing that research. Canada, if you were to ask me where we are in the landscape, we are the breadbasket of the world, one of the top producers of food, but we primarily grow food for export. We’ve moved from many market gardens two generations ago to producing a lot of food that we then export globally. So the amount of food we grow for ourselves domestically is not very significant, aside from some commodities like potatoes and some meat products from Alberta —
Senator Varone: That’s where I was headed, because this article talked about the successes of hydroponically growing root vegetables and potatoes. Are we there?
Mr. Ellis: I don’t think so. Our sector is still very nascent, and in my opinion, the economics of, say, potatoes are not currently competitive. It’s important to recognize where there’s research that’s interesting and where it’s going to be advanced, but it’s always a matter of time before the price per pound makes sense for a consumer to afford that potato, let’s say. In my estimation, we’re not quite there yet. With lettuce, leafy greens and spinach, we absolutely are there already. Strawberries and tomatoes are very close; they are currently slightly more premium, but we’re working to get them to a more average price that Canadians are used to paying; and then more and more crops.
If we make investments now into not just research, but commercializing that research, give it 10 or 20 years and we’ll be able to produce quite a lot more foodstuffs within a controlled environment.
Senator Varone: I have one final question: If you had three recommendations you could table for the federal government, what would they be?
Mr. Ellis: Again, I would go back to a favourable tax environment to increase investment; programs like the Local Food Infrastructure Fund, or LFIF, being made permanent; and helping through the government-to-government channels with the provinces, and in turn the municipalities helping on the hydro policy and the zoning policy. Those are the three big things that would significantly accelerate domestic food production.
Senator Varone: Thank you.
Senator McBean: Mr. Ellis, I’m sorry for being late today. I was looking forward to you being here. I’m Marnie McBean, senator from Ontario. What is the ideal community size for a Growcer farm?
Mr. Ellis: Anything bigger than 400 people — that is, permanent, year-round residents. Anything smaller is not really where we focus our energy, but 400 and up. Churchill being a great example, with a population of about 800 or 900 people. We have one farm that feeds the entire community’s vegetable needs.
Senator McBean: I heard you saying one community has gone up to eight of your vehicles. Does it get to a point where it’s too big? I’m from Toronto. Is this more of an educational opportunity in Toronto, or how does it get to a point where in major urban areas —
Mr. Ellis: Our view is that in urban areas, this can be a neighbourhood-based production project. A good example is Durham College in Ajax. It has a farm that feeds the Ajax community. We have a foundation in the Vaughan area called the Reena Foundation that grows for their population. So we look at it more in an urban setting. The Reena Foundation has had a farm for three years now, supported by the Local Food Infrastructure Fund. They put up about half the capital through donors and half was funded by the LFIF in 2020. These are examples of investments five years ago that are still paying dividends to this day. We think of it more as a postal code-based project. I mentioned the example of the Ottawa Mission. We’re reducing their food budget by growing locally. So it is competitive to do in an urban setting. Our view of how the landscape can shift is rather than large monoculture farms, it is small, community-owned distributed farms, and thousands of them spread across the country.
Senator McBean: You mentioned that the Ottawa Mission was originally spending $12,000 a month on fresh vegetables. Do you know what they have decreased it to?
Mr. Ellis: I don’t know specifically. It’s a relatively new project; we invested about six months ago. My estimation is 10% to 20%. But the key here is it won’t increase over the next 10 years, even though food inflation generally outpaces general inflation. That will lock in the price of their vegetables permanently.
Senator McBean: That is pretty awesome. What is your 5- or 10-year vision for this? Obviously, this is something you’re passionate about, and you’re seeing its benefits. As my colleague said, you don’t have any bad answers. What is your dream and your vision for this in 5 to 10 years?
Mr. Ellis: Global domination. No, I’m just kidding.
Senator McBean: I hear you.
Mr. Ellis: We currently feed about 500,000 people a day globally, in about 35 countries. Our goal is we’d like to get to 10 million people served from our farms every day. That would be a significant drop in the bucket to global food security, and helping more countries move to domestic food production. Number two is what we were just talking about: increasing the basket of produce that makes sense to grow. We want to invest heavily in research. That’s why we have 12 college and university partnerships. We want more types of food to be competitive with imports, and just provide greater nutrition.
Senator McBean: I was late to the question-asking here. You mentioned something to one of my colleagues; you said, “. . . to make it a true commercial opportunity.” How would you define that?
Mr. Ellis: It is when it depends on no outside funding, generates returns and creates local jobs within a community. It is where the goal is to have a project that generates a profit, full stop. We have some projects — many Chiefs and councils bring us into the community and say that their goal is to break even. Their goal is to increase food sovereignty and to have the means of production to feed their population — full stop.
That’s our priority; making money is not a priority. Any surplus will be donated to the Elders’ home or the youth centre. We have no ambition or plans to make any money. To me, that’s perfectly okay. If that is the clear goal, that is how I define a non-commercial project compared to a project where a co-op like New Horizon says, “We need to make a return such that we’ve made our money back in a certain number of years.”
Senator McBean: Thank you very much.
Mr. Ellis: Thank you for your questions.
Senator Muggli: Do you have a relationship with the Global Institute for Food Security in Saskatoon — NRC?
Mr. Ellis: We do. They have a farm in Saskatoon.
Senator Muggli: Yes. I thought I saw that farm there.
Mr. Ellis: It’s a new farm installed at Sask Poly, and it’s owned by the NRC. It was a program called the Build in Canada Innovation Program. It was a procurement vehicle where they purchased a Growcer farm.
Senator Muggli: What is the purpose of that farm there?
Mr. Ellis: Crop research. It ties into how we grow it at lower costs, with more types of crops, et cetera.
Senator Muggli: Good to know. Any stories you want to share with us regarding the educational opportunities for students in elementary or high schools? Any cool impact stories you’d like to share?
Mr. Ellis: Sure. I’ll share two quick ones. We worked with the RBC Foundation to bring about two dozen Elders and Knowledge Keepers together in the Prairies about four years ago. We then worked with them to write a full K-to-12 curriculum that is land-based, ties in traditional knowledge and meshes what the Growcer farm produces with traditional ways of knowing and doing and land-based processes. Now it’s a fully baked, accredited curriculum that is in the school system. I know there are at least a dozen schools on-reserve that have it implemented with their teachers.
I already talked about Altario School a little bit. That’s a small, rural school, but they partner with their 4-H organization locally, and they are really focused on teaching the skills that their youth need to produce food with all sorts of new technology.
I’ll say in general, the idea of kids using an iPad to run the farm, to then eat the veggies — they’re all over that. The Growcer farm being run by an iPad is definitely a bonus to get kids interested.
I’m trying to think of others. We have worked with PC Children’s Charity, for example. We’ve now installed three farms on school grounds funded by donations that everyday Canadians make at the grocery store cash register. Projects like that are incredible. And those are projects that are almost a decade old now and having a really tremendous impact.
Senator Muggli: Thank you.
The Deputy Chair: I understand, Senator Robinson, you have a question you would like to ask and have a written response to.
Senator Robinson: So our colleague Senator Patricia Duncan, who is from Whitehorse, if she were here, she would be asking you if you’re aware of the Circumpolar Agricultural Conference. They just had the twelfth one in Norway. They’re a non-governmental organization concerned with Northern agriculture science practices and policies. I want to make sure you know about them because I think they would be interested in you.
Mr. Ellis: We were not aware of them, so thank you for making me aware of them.
The Deputy Chair: A picture is worth a thousand words. One that you talked about was walking 50 feet from the parking lot to put produce on the grocery shelves. That stayed with me. And just on Churchill, think of a landscape that looks more lunar than any arable land and stepping into one of these farms that is essentially an oasis.
I want to thank you for your participation today. Your testimony and insight are very much appreciated.
Mr. Ellis: Thank you.
The Deputy Chair: Colleagues, for our second panel today, from Employment and Social Development Canada, we welcome Jacqueline Thorne, Director General, Income Security and Social Development Branch, National School Food Program; and Hugues Vaillancourt, Director General, Social Policy Directorate, Strategic and Service Policy Branch. Joining us from Crown-Indigenous Relations and Northern Affairs Canada are Georgina Lloyd, Assistant Deputy Minister, Northern Affairs; and Wayne Walsh, Director General, Northern Strategic Policy Branch. And finally, from Indigenous Services Canada, we welcome Karen Campbell, Director General, Education Branch. We thank you for being here today. We will follow your remarks with questions from the senators.
Jacqueline Thorne, Director General, Income Security and Social Development Branch, National School Food Program, Employment and Social Development Canada: Thank you, Mr. Chair and members of the committee.
[Translation]
I would like to start by acknowledging that the land on which we gather is on the unceded traditional territory of the Algonquin Anishinaabe nation.
[English]
Thank you for the opportunity to discuss the National School Food Program. I will speak to some broader initiatives that part of the federal government’s work to help address food insecurity by making life more affordable for Canadians.
Until last year, Canada was the only G7 country without a nationwide school food program. Prior to the federal investment in 2024, school food programs funded by provincial and territorial governments only reached one in four school-aged children during the 2023-24 school year.
[Translation]
The benefits of food school programs are widely recognized. Studies show that every dollar invested in these programs generates $2 to $6 in educational, health, social, economic and environmental benefits.
[English]
Announced in Budget 2024 and launched in fiscal year 2024-25 with an investment of $1 billion over five years, the National School Food Program is delivered by three federal departments: Employment Social Development Canada, Indigenous Services Canada and Crown-Indigenous Relations and Northern Affairs Canada. Employment and Social Development Canada is responsible for delivering the program through bilateral transfer agreements with the provinces and territories. As of March 2025, we signed three-year bilateral funding agreements with all 13 provinces and territories. Federal funding through the program is supporting school food programs in all jurisdictions across the country this school year. As you know, education falls under provincial and territorial jurisdiction, and all provinces and territories currently provide funding for school meals themselves.
[Translation]
The federal funding provided through the National School Food Program builds on existing provincial and territorial efforts, while giving each jurisdiction the flexibility to invest the money according to its needs and priorities.
[English]
The program aims to provide up to 400,000 children with access to nutritious food at school each year. For a participating family with two children in school, the program can result in annual savings of $800. Shortly after the Budget 2024 announcement, the National School Food Policy was released, which was informed by wide-reaching engagement including with children and youth. The policy sets out long-term vision, principles and objectives to guide the implementation of the National School Food Program.
Within the policy, we recognize the importance of supporting local food systems. This is reflected in the policy’s flexibility principle to ensure that food is locally sourced where possible and reflective of local and regional circumstances. Several jurisdictions are already working to increase local food sourcing. For example, the Government of British Columbia is aiming to increase the use of B.C.-sourced food in public institutions, including schools, through their Feed BC initiative.
[Translation]
Similarly, the Government of New Brunswick earmarked $19 million in its 2025 budget to set up a new school lunch program that will rely on locally sourced food as much as possible.
[English]
Through the bilateral agreements, provinces and territories have agreed to use federal funding to advance shared priorities in line with the National School Food Policy. Under the bilateral agreements, provinces and territories have the flexibility to decide how best to allocate federal school funding, recognizing provincial and territorial jurisdiction and the importance of reflecting local and territorial needs. Additionally, this means that provinces and territories are responsible for the delivery of school food programming, working with food suppliers and processors and engaging local school communities.
Looking ahead, Budget 2025 proposed ongoing funding of $216.6 million per year to make the program permanent. To do so, a national school food prep program act was introduced as part of the Budget 2025 Budget Implementation Act and is now being considered before Parliament.
[Translation]
By making the National School Food Program permanent, we are continuing to work with the provinces and territories to enhance and expand school food programs across the country on a long-term basis.
[English]
The National School Food Program is part of the federal government’s broader work to build a more affordable Canada and complements a variety of measures that address food insecurity directly.
In addition to the program, ESDC is the policy lead on key social programs and income supports such as the Canada-wide Early Learning and Child Care system, the Canada Child Benefit, the Canada workers benefit, the Old Age Security pension and Guaranteed Income Supplement and the more recent Canada Disability Benefit.
These are federal initiatives that help improve affordability by bringing down costs and increasing household disposable income. They contribute to food security by helping individuals and families purchase essentials, including healthy food. They also play an important role in reducing poverty.
[Translation]
Employment and Social Development Canada, or ESDC, is also responsible for implementing Opportunity for All: Canada’s First Poverty Reduction Strategy, which recognizes that poverty and food security are closely linked.
[English]
The strategy seeks to reduce and remove systemic barriers, including for those who face unique barriers that can make them more vulnerable to poverty and food insecurity, such as lone-parent families with children, unattached adults, persons with disabilities, Indigenous Peoples and racialized communities.
Food insecurity is tracked as a multidimensional indicator of poverty as part of the strategy’s dashboard indicators and reported on annually. The National Advisory Council on Poverty reports on this indicator in their annual report as well.
With that, I conclude our opening remarks today. I trust that this has provided some helpful context. Thank you.
The Deputy Chair: Thank you.
Ms. Lloyd, you now have five minutes for your remarks.
Georgina Lloyd, Assistant Deputy Minister, Northern Affairs, Crown-Indigenous Relations and Northern Affairs Canada: Thank you for the invitation. Good morning. Ulaakut.
I’m pleased that we all have the grand privilege of being situated and having conversations like this on unceded, traditional Algonquin territory.
Thank you all for the opportunity to speak today about an issue that is important to the health and well-being of Canadians: food security.
Food security means having reliable access to enough affordable, nutritious food. In northern and isolated regions of Canada, this is a big challenge. As many here know, living in isolated and northern regions comes with unique challenges, including high transportation costs, harsh weather, remote locations and geography, short growing seasons and limited infrastructure. For many people living in isolated communities, buying fresh fruits, vegetables, milk and meat would be impossible without some frame of support.
Extensive studies and experience show that addressing food security in the Canadian North can really only be achieved through concerted effort and collaboration between governments at different levels, Indigenous partners, and communities at the local level.
One way the Government of Canada is helping increase food security in northern and isolated communities is through the Nutrition North Canada program. I’d like to share some information about this program, how it is adapting through different types of partnerships and how we are working to better support northern food security and food sovereignty.
Nutrition North Canada, or NNC, is the Government of Canada’s main northern food security response. What began as a transport subsidy program in 2011 has evolved into a much broader suite of programs.
Today, the co-developed Harvesters Support Grant and Community Food Programs Fund and the Food Security Research Grant all combine with the updated subsidy program and work together to lower the cost of essential items while increasing access to retail, country and locally grown food.
Since Nutrition North Canada began, the number of communities benefiting from the subsidy program has grown from 79 to 124 across Yukon, the Northwest Territories, Nunavut and northern parts of Alberta, Saskatchewan, Manitoba, Ontario, Quebec and Labrador. A key element of eligibility in the program is communities that lack a year-round road, rail system or marine access.
The uptake and use of the subsidy program are now at an unprecedented level. Subsidy rates have increased by over 50% since 2011, and while the program is lowering the cost of some grocery items by as much as 76%, overall food affordability continues to be a real challenge.
Looking at prices from last summer, in Igloolik as an example, 12 eggs would have cost $9.36 without the subsidy, compared to $4.69 with the subsidy, saving consumers 50% on a key item. In Kinngait, Nunavut, four litres of milk cost $36.29 without the subsidy, compared to $8.89 with the subsidy. Retailers, suppliers, local growers, food producers and charitable organizations all participate in the subsidy and must show these savings provided to consumers’ grocery bills.
To support local and regional efforts, Nutrition North Canada’s Harvesters Support Grant is another way Canada is working with partners to support food security and sovereignty while upholding traditional values. Currently, the grant supports 112 communities for traditional hunting, harvesting and food-sharing activities in isolated communities, helping to reduce food insecurity and reinforce traditional practices and culture. Canada allocated $120 million over three years, starting in 2024-25. The funding has gone directly to Indigenous governments to manage harvesting priorities in a self-determined way.
These investments are paying dividends. Coupled with the Community Food Programs Fund, the grant has supported over 15,000 traditional hunters and harvesters, contributed to more than 700 new food-sharing initiatives and helped over 400 community hunts and harvests take place.
There are some really great examples coming out of the Harvesters Support Grant as the implementation rolls out more broadly.
While progress is being made, more needs to be done. We are committed to continuous improvement. Our teams are working diligently with Indigenous partners, retailers, suppliers and charitable organizations to find ways to evolve the program efficiency across the North.
A Ministerial Special Representative has been identified to bring forward recommendations to improve the efficiency and effectiveness of the study, and this will build on an internal review, lead toward a food security summit in the winter and help inform future recommendations for policy advancement on the program.
As referenced in Budget 2025, this review will be taken seriously, and a commitment remains to co-develop evidence-based food security approaches that better meet the high cost of living and affordability challenges faced by many northerners.
Thank you, and we’re pleased to take questions from the committee.
The Deputy Chair: Thank you.
Ms. Campbell, you now have the floor.
Karen Campbell, Director General, Education Branch, Indigenous Services Canada: Thank you all for the invitation and opportunity to speak to you on the unceded, traditional territory of the Algonquin Anishinaabe Nation. At Indigenous Services Canada, we have a mandate to support Indigenous Peoples and communities to access services, address socio-economic conditions and advance self-determination over their services.
While provinces and territories are responsible for delivering education in their respective jurisdictions, ensuring access to elementary and secondary education for First Nation students residing on-reserve, including those who attend schools off-reserve, is the responsibility of the Government of Canada.
Access to nutritious and culturally relevant food is fundamental to supporting children’s learning, well-being and consistent success. School food programs have consistently demonstrated positive impacts on health and academic outcomes, helping children reach their full potential and strengthening communities as a whole.
As you heard, Employment and Social Development Canada leads the federal government’s work on the National School Food Program, and Indigenous Services Canada plays the role of administering funding to support First Nations communities to deliver school food initiatives for their students living on-reserve.
Consistent with the Government of Canada’s commitment to First Nations control of First Nations education, funding is provided through co-developed funding formulas to ensure provincial comparability as a base with adjustments for unique factors, such as small school size and remoteness, along with national common investments. First Nations have the flexibility to spend this funding according to their unique education-related priorities and in alignment with the local realities of their food systems.
In 2024-25, $38 million in school food funding was provided for almost 117,000 First Nation students. In 2025-26 — and ongoing — this amount is $47.5 million. In this year, funding supported over 120,000 students. We welcome the proposal to make the school food program and funding for First Nations ongoing so these investments can continue into the future.
My remarks were quite short, but I’ll thank you once again for the opportunity. I’m happy to answer questions.
The Deputy Chair: Thank you, Ms. Campbell.
Colleagues, being aware of the time available to us, I suggest that each senator be allowed five minutes, including both the question and the answer.
Senator Burey: Good morning, and thank you for being here. I’m so happy to see you here. I think you were in the first session so I won’t go through that spiel again.
Regarding the general policy direction of the government, does the government, in their policy deliberations, understand these affordability issues and having the National School Food Program — which I applaud; I visited schools in my own community — regard the underpinnings of our democracy in Canada? Do those having these discussions at the table understand that we have to get this right?
Ms. Thorne: Thank you for the question. Canada’s National School Food Program is guided by the National School Food Policy long-term vision, ensuring that every child has access to nutritious meals at school, as well as the principles and objectives toward the long-term goal of universal access.
One of those principles, of course, is that it be accessible. They can participate in schools without stigma or barriers. It promotes healthy practices and connections to the environment, culture and local food systems.
The National School Food Program is not the only investment or a direct measure to support food security. There are other initiatives as well, such as the Canada Child Benefit, targeted social programs and other income supplements. The program is in its very early stages — in its nascency. We don’t yet have complete reporting from provinces and territories. Agreements were just finished and signed this year in March, so we don’t have a full year of reporting yet.
Senator Burey: I just wanted to underpin that we say “food insecurity,” but I think it is a national security imperative for us as a country to be food secure. I’m going to move to the next question.
You also heard Mr. Corey Ellis, who spoke about the other work and the barriers. There are some things that can be done federally, which he talked about, that allow the flexibility that you spoke about in terms of the procurement of local foods. Can you speak to the requirements for the school food program to not just be flexible but also have a mandated percentage of locally grown food, whether it’s traditional or this sort of modular agriculture?
Ms. Thorne: We don’t currently have a mandated percentage. As I mentioned in my opening remarks, provinces and territories have jurisdiction for health and education and are responsible for delivering school food programs in their jurisdictions. Essentially, the Government of Canada is a funder. We provide funding directly to those jurisdictions, who then work with school districts, school bodies and school boards to determine what the priorities and needs are locally.
I was very interested by what the previous witness had said about some of his recommendations, so I note that. I do take that back.
There are some jurisdictions that, in the early discussions when we were signing the agreements, were already doing some work in this area. B.C. has an initiative where they are locally sourcing food, including in institutions, which I had mentioned in my opening remarks as well.
I guess the short answer is that we don’t have anything that’s mandated right now, but I certainly take note of that.
Senator Burey: I know Senator Varone is going to pick up on that, so I’ll leave it there.
Senator Varone: My first question is for you, Ms. Thorne, and thank you for being here. This is just one big learning curve for me, so I need you to take me through what the National School Food Program looks like in a single day. What are we providing? Is it breakfast? Is it lunch? Is it snacks in between? Who curates the nutritional value of the food being presented to the children?
Ms. Thorne: That’s a great question. There is no one-size-fits-all approach. Depending on the jurisdiction you’re in, it can look different.
Senator Varone: Are we giving them chips and chocolate bars or are we giving them —
Ms. Thorne: No.
Senator Varone: Because that’s what I would want as a kid.
Ms. Thorne: Yes, exactly. One of the principles of the National School Food Program is that it promotes health and is consistent with healthy eating recommendations from Canada’s Food Guide. Children are supported in developing healthy food behaviours, food literacy and food attitudes, as well as food knowledge, language and skills.
Senator Varone: The person who curates that are local?
Ms. Thorne: That’s right. They are at the school board level in schools.
Senator Varone: Are they subject to national guidelines?
Ms. Thorne: Our National School Food Policy guides the National School Food Program. We just started rolling the money out this year, so we will be able to have a more complete picture when we get annual reports in from provinces and territories this fall and early next year.
Senator Varone: Thank you.
Ms. Thorne: You’re welcome.
Senator Varone: My second question is for Ms. Lloyd. I’m very curious about Nutrition North Canada. We’re talking about accessing very remote communities. Can you describe for the committee the size, what the smallest-size community looks like versus what a larger community looks like? How many people are we dealing with in terms of that bandwidth? Given the individual bandwidth, the delivery system becomes increasingly more important, so take us through what a community looks like, small to large.
Ms. Lloyd: Yes. The Nutrition North Canada program is available to 134 communities, and their eligibility is based on a level of isolation. The community has to be inaccessible by road, rail or sea throughout the year. That would make it eligible for the Nutrition North Canada program. There are four different components. One that is most influential at the community level is the subsidy, which is about 75% of the investment we make throughout the program. That subsidizes at high, medium and low levels different varieties of food items and other items, and it’s provided to retailers based on the weight of those items that are shipped. Once that is validated, the subsidy would be provided to retailers. Retailers need to provide that subsidy on to consumers, and consumers need to be able to see that at the point of purchase.
If I think about the question about the smallest to the largest community, I would look at a community like Arctic Bay in Nunavut, which is very small, probably about 400 people and fly-in only. It maybe receives a sea lift once per year, and everything else is flown in. The items high on the subsidy list would be most common in a community like that. It’s why you would get, for example, milk that without the subsidy would cost $38 now costing $8. Then it goes all the way to communities in the Northwest Territories, for example, where sometimes there’s a winter road and sometimes there’s not. So the subsidy level may fluctuate throughout the year.
Senator Varone: Thank you.
Senator Muggli: My first question is for Ms. Thorne. You talked about provinces having a lot of flexibility in the delivery. Are there any non-negotiable terms for the funding?
Ms. Thorne: What do you mean by that?
Senator Muggli: Are there any terms attached to the funding that the provinces must deliver?
Ms. Thorne: They have the flexibility to spend the money within the school food space, so it can be spent on school food costs, of course, staffing, logistics, equipment — for example, fridges to store food where they maybe didn’t have them before — or infrastructure where then didn’t have any food prep or kitchens, so that they will be able to have school food programs.
Senator Muggli: So the only piece that is mandatory is that you must deliver a food program?
Ms. Thorne: Or work toward that, yes. Our role is to be a funder providing funding to expand or enhance existing programs.
Senator Muggli: So there’s no requirement to deliver a program that aligns with the Canada Food Guide, for example.
Ms. Thorne: One of the principles is that food is served consistent with the Canada Food Guide. Some provinces and territories also have their own guidelines when it comes to the delivery of school food programming as well.
Senator Muggli: That’s interesting.
My other question is for Ms. Campbell or Ms. Lloyd. There have been food programs over the years in schools. Have you seen any correlation to health status? Are there metrics that you look at? Are there fewer health system interventions for children? Are there shorter lists for pediatricians?
Ms. Campbell: My short answer is no, but I’m going to qualify that. Our relationship with First Nations and their education program is that they determine their priorities in how they deliver the funding and support education for their students. As much as possible, we work with them on the co-developed performance framework. So there are different elements that we work on collecting around school attendance, for instance, and graduation rates. We’ve recently started to provide investments on school food, and we’re working with partners right now on ensuring that we understand the number of students that are reached through that.
We have not asked for additional metrics or additional measurement on the provision of school food. That doesn’t mean that communities are not going to be looking at that and won’t be sharing that with us, but that’s not something the Government of Canada requires.
Senator Muggli: Health status indicators are critical when it comes to food security. I appreciate it’s not easy to have a baseline in collecting data from health organizations and interventions. It’s not easy, but it’s an important metric. Ms. Lloyd, did you want to respond?
Ms. Lloyd: We don’t work with the education system through our program, but the programs that we do have work at the community level, so it’s driven by the priorities for Indigenous governments when it comes to the Harvester Support Grant and the Community Food Programs Fund by local producers. We’ve had conversations with Indigenous partners who want to enhance the uptake of traditional harvest and food services within their communities, and so that’s a great example of what health means and how they want to enable it for their communities.
Senator Muggli: Maybe we’ll have witnesses at a more local level who can help us understand what differences they’ve seen. Thank you.
Senator McBean: Ms. Lloyd, did you hear the presentation before? Part of that regarded modular buildings, and in response to how much energy one of these modular agriculture farms would take, it was two homes’ worth. This might be a very naive question, but what is access to electricity like in some of the Nutrition North Canada communities? With a place like Arctic Bay, I’m assuming it’s not on the grid. I’m not trying to be naive here; I’m just trying to get it on the record. What is it for us to say, “It’s simply like the electricity cost of two homes”? What’s that like in a community in the North?
Ms. Lloyd: That’s a great question. Another part of my mandate is with regard to energy supplies across the North. This is less about isolation and more about the northern regions. There are 74 energy systems that are all individual grids serving Canada’s North. From an energy perspective, they’re all disconnected from the southern grid system, so they’re all volatile and have very little redundancy built in, and the vast majority of them run off diesel. The cost to ship diesel into a community like Arctic Bay by fly-in only is exorbitantly high.
Senator McBean: Are they reliable? Would residents anticipate power outages at times if you have a crop of green growing? It might not be so terrible in the wintertime if your freezer turns off because you might just open the door and it’s colder, but if you have a crop growing and the power goes out, then you’re losing your crops in these environments.
Ms. Lloyd: There’s very little redundancy in the system, particularly in Nunavut. You might have seen the announcement to invest in the Iqaluit hydro system in the past couple weeks, because these types of investments in core energy needs across the North are foundational to everything else being able to develop in any other way. Your statement is absolutely true: There is not a lot of reliability in the energy system, and there’s no redundancy.
Senator McBean: I wanted that on the record, so we don’t just say, “Plug this in up there and the problems are solved.” Thank you, Ms. Campbell.
How is the ISC supporting infrastructure such as energy, water, and transportation, which are essential for local food production?
Ms. Campbell: That’s outside of my area of responsibility expertise, but I’m happy to give you something in writing.
Senator McBean: Thank you very much.
Senator Varone: I read in our notes that the Minister of Northern Affairs announced that a Ministerial Special Representative is going to conduct an external review of the program. My question is to you Ms. Lloyd. I don’t know if it’s because something went wrong that they’re reviewing or because they’re addressing a cry for help. Could you shed some light on what is going on with that review?
Ms. Lloyd: Sure. We’re pleased to have Ms. Aluki Kotierk from Nunavut leading, as the Ministerial Special Representative, the external review, and her report is anticipated by the end of this fiscal year, by March 2026. It is following what has been under way, which is also an internal review. We have a five-year evaluation cycle within the department, and an internal review has been launched. Part of what we had heard in the public discourse around food security was that food insecurity rates are growing despite increased investments. So is there a way to enhance the effectiveness of the investments —
Senator Varone: It’s more to address a cry for help, as opposed to, “Something went wrong. We need to investigate.”
Ms. Lloyd: What we hear most are questions about how the subsidy functions and how it could be reframed or reformed to better serve the effectiveness of the program.
The effectiveness of the suite of programming is being assessed, and there were calls by the public, but also by the advisory board and others, that an internal evaluation might not be sufficient, and to augment that. That’s why we’ve brought on an external reviewer as well.
Senator Varone: Thank you. Going back to what Senator McBean was talking about in terms of the grid — Arctic Bay, that little community, how many hours of sunlight do they have in the winter versus hours of sunlight in the summer?
Ms. Lloyd: That would be a good trivia question.
Mr. Walsh: I would say probably 0% to 100%.
Senator Varone: So in the winter, you’re dark.
Mr. Walsh: That’s right.
Senator Varone: So a photovoltaic system wouldn’t work.
Mr. Walsh: That’s right.
Ms. Lloyd: Not consistently.
Mr. Walsh: They work great in the summer. What could also work is wind turbines, if we were to go renewable.
Senator Varone: Is there enough money for you to research that, in terms of finding that renewable energy? Obviously, they do studies before they install these types of plants. Can you access that kind of money to conduct the study?
Ms. Lloyd: One of my other responsibilities is northern energy. We have a suite of five programs that invest in energy sources, and augmenting energy and climate programs across the North and for all Indigenous communities across Canada. The one I would reference in this case is Northern REACHE, which is a program that has funded over 140 locally driven energy-based programs to assess feasibility. So it really is about when communities have an interest in looking for different types of energy sources and how they might be able to onboard them. They could do feasibility studies. They could do a number of research studies. It really is up to the communities to decide where they want to take that. This is a program that is a source of funding to help seed that type of thinking, and then how you move that into the broader implementation would be a separate stream.
Senator Robinson: I had the pleasure, a number of years ago, of being a member of the Canadian Food Policy Advisory Council. From that, eventually what came was Canada’s National School Food Program. It was the top recommendation out of that council. Along with championing the National School Food Program and all related programming, the next recommendation was establishing targets and baselines for monitoring, reporting and ensuring accountability across food policy.
I understand the program is fairly volunteer dependent when we look at how it’s delivered on the ground in schools. I’m wondering what mechanism you have for feedback to your department and to the decision makers as far as the limitations or the funding constraints that volunteers might be facing. Is there a decent two-way conversation there? Is this kind of a living, breathing experience, where volunteers, if we were to ask them, would say they feel they’re being heard?
Ms. Thorne: Our three-year agreements with provinces and territories require them to submit action plans.
Senator Robinson: Who is required?
Ms. Thorne: The provinces and territories.
Senator Robinson: Okay, so the territories and provinces themselves have to submit action plans to you.
Ms. Thorne: Right. And that includes information on how the federal investment is rolling out, as well as data and reporting that they will collect.
Right now, we have common indicators: number of children and number of schools by program type. They would deliver that to us through annual reports and audited financial statements so that we can see where progress is being made as well as the impact of federal investments.
Senator Robinson: I think I heard recently in the news some volunteers expressing frustration about the delay in the rollout of the funding. At what point in the whole chain of communication do you think it would be reasonable for volunteers to be giving that input to someone who can actually action change, understanding that there’s only so much information you can look at? Is there some kind of mechanism you could put in place that would make the provinces and territories give you guarantees that they’re actually listening to volunteers and taking that information into account?
I was a volunteer within my children’s food program, and certainly, at that point, a lot of it wasn’t funded, but we did get funding eventually. In our province, Prince Edward Island, we were one of the earliest adopters — if not the earliest — of feeding kids in school, and doing that at the provincial level, with some funding from other businesses in the community. So I felt the frustration, and I’m wondering what we can do to ensure that those volunteers don’t get turned off from the program and that we’re really delivering food to children, which is so incredibly important as they learn.
Ms. Thorne: That’s a really good point. As I had said earlier, the provinces and territories deliver those programs directly. We do not have direct, on-the-ground contact with school boards and volunteers.
Senator Robinson: Do you ask them to be accountable to ensure there is a two-way mechanism for communication within the deliverers of the food?
Ms. Thorne: We don’t connect directly with them, but we ask the provinces and territories to provide reporting to us in terms of data.
Senator Robinson: How do you feel that data collection is going? Are you getting valuable information? Are there gaps that you’ve identified? Is it changing?
Ms. Thorne: We don’t have data in yet. We will have that in late this fall and early next year, but that is not complete yet.
Senator Robinson: Thank you.
Senator Burey: Thank you so much again. I think what we’re hearing is one size does not fit all, and I think if Senator Duncan were here, she would be saying the same thing.
Just going back to the question that I wanted to get to, on what the federal government can do, we heard from Mr. Ellis on the last panel about the National Building Code and these modular things. Will you be taking that back for your discussions? Because that’s something the federal government can do.
Ms. Thorne: I think once we have some annual reporting back from provinces and territories, we’ll have a better idea of how the National School Food Program is rolling out across the country.
We also know that there are gaps in data across the country, in terms of programs. We have partnerships. For example, we have a partnership with the Canadian Institutes of Health Research to look at priority areas. That’s a very new partnership. So as that work progresses, we will be able to fill in some of those gaps, including the information that provinces and territories provide to us as well.
But as I said, it’s very nascent. We do not have a lot of data. We know it’s different across the country. The long-term goal is to try to move that needle to be able to tell that story.
Senator Burey: How would the reporting go? What should we expect? Would it be a yearly report or something like that?
Ms. Thorne: Yes, exactly. Provinces and territories are required to submit annual reports and audited financial statements in the fall of every year. The ones that signed agreements a little bit later in the fiscal year have a bit more time to do that, given the time of signing. But it would be around late fall. We would be able to then compile those and have a better idea of what the impacts of the investments are.
Senator Burey: Thank you.
Ms. Thorne: You’re welcome.
Senator Sorensen: Thank you. It’s nice to see the three different departments here together. This is just a conversation that I have — it seems constantly — on a government-of-whole approach. So it is nice to see.
My question is this: Does the federal government, as a whole, have a cross-departmental, long-term food security strategy? Do the right hand and the left hand always know what the other is doing? My experience in some of the other conversations I have had is that’s not the case. I guess I’m asking if you feel that there’s a government-of-whole approach on this topic.
That’s an open question. Anybody want to jump in?
Hugues Vaillancourt, Director General, Social Policy Directorate, Strategic and Service Policy Branch, Employment and Social Development Canada: I think you are meeting next week with our colleagues from Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada, who lead on the Food Policy for Canada, and they will be best placed to answer. I suspect part of the answer you will hear is that there are committee structures that support the implementation of the food policy that involve not only these departments today but other departments that have a role to play in regard to the food policy writ large.
Senator Sorensen: It’s kind of a high-level question for this conversation today, but we do constantly hear that immigration, housing, it’s all — and you’re right — flowing to agriculture, which flows into this conversation. I find myself having that conversation a lot — that every minister should be the minister of everything and know what’s going on in all areas, but thank you for that; I will ask that question.
Senator Muggli: I heard you mention CIHR, Ms. Thorne. As we know, no measuring or studying leads to no evidence-based improvements. Are there other research grants out there that are associated with the National School Food Program or plans to ensure that there’s some solid research and matter being done on the program?
Ms. Thorne: I mentioned a partnership with the Canadian Institutes of Health Research to fund school food research on priority school-food-related topics, including how programs affect the well-being and health of children and youth. That’s also informed by public engagement.
I don’t have a lot more details around the grants, but I can certainly submit something and provide more information.
Senator Muggli: That would be great. Thank you.
Ms. Thorne: You’re welcome.
Ms. Lloyd: As part of the Nutrition North Canada program, we have a research arm. We directly fund research that is led by local and Indigenous partners, so —
Senator Muggli: Is that Tri-Council-related or no?
Ms. Lloyd: It’s directly funded from our program model and our department, so it’s not necessarily academically driven. It’s locally driven. Local and Indigenous partners can partner with academic institutions, but it really is to empower partners on the ground who are managing the food security issues to research the issues of most interest to them.
We’ve completed round one, and we had a food security research summit last year. We just launched the call for proposals for phase two, which will close. We’re expecting some announcements of which projects will be selected in January.
Senator Muggli: We should probably get that information for any research that’s been completed for our committee, if that’s possible.
Ms. Lloyd: Sure.
Senator Muggli: Thank you.
Mr. Vaillancourt: My colleague covered the research side, and I was going to supplement on the data side, which I think Ms. Thorne — I usually call her Jackie; we work closely together. There is definitely coming into the conversation and recognizing significant data gaps. One of the ways we’re filling that gap is we’ve developed what I would describe as a module that is a series of questions that are specific to school food that we have inserted into the Canadian Income Survey, which is an annual Statistics Canada survey. It is the same survey that is used for the purpose of poverty statistics, food insecurity statistics and unmet health needs statistics, so we will have annual data that will allow us to conduct analyses that look at the impacts and make the linkages between food insecurity on one end and school food on the other, as well as how that relates to poverty. That rich data set will take a little bit of time to get going. Those are not things that happen overnight.
Statistics Canada went into the field last year for the first time, so that would be done annually. We’ll start providing more insights in terms of understanding what —
Senator Muggli: Do you have a relationship with the Global Institute for Food Security?
Mr. Vaillancourt: I feel as if I should.
Senator Muggli: Yes. Okay, thank you.
Senator Varone: This is rare. This is a third-round question; we never get here.
In our materials that I used to prep, there was an interesting chart about food insecurity by Canadian provinces and territories. Nunavut was the worst at 58.1%, and Quebec was the best at 19%. In between, the second best was Yukon. Not knowing much about the North, you equate Yukon, Nunavut and the Northwest Territories with being in the upper echelon of remote areas, but what is Yukon doing right and what are the Northwest Territories and Nunavut doing wrong in terms of food insecurity?
Ms. Lloyd: I’m not sure if I would characterize it as territories doing something right or wrong, but Yukon has roads that are not consistently present in Northwest Territories or at all in Nunavut. It’s really an isolation and access issue, from our perspective.
Senator Varone: It is around distribution.
Ms. Lloyd: That drives the availability and access to food. I think that’s one huge component: It’s about the lack of fundamental infrastructure, and —
Senator Varone: But that answer was not available to us, and I’m glad to have that on the record — that distribution is the issue. Thank you.
The Deputy Chair: That was a message from the first panel also, so it’s consistent with both panels today. Thank you for that, Senator Varone.
Witnesses, I want to thank you for taking the time to appear before us today. This was an informative session, and we appreciate the contributions to our study. I want to thank you for your collaborative efforts in finding solutions to food security issues. It’s obvious that you work as a team.
I want to thank the committee members for your active participation and thoughtful questions today, and I would also like to take a moment to thank all the staff that support the work of this committee: our clerk, our Library of Parliament analyst, our interpreters, the Debates team transcribing and editing this meeting, the committee room attendant, the multimedia services technician, the broadcasting team, the recording centre, the Information Services Directorate, or ISD, and our page.
(The committee adjourned.)