THE STANDING SENATE COMMITTEE ON AGRICULTURE AND FORESTRY
EVIDENCE
OTTAWA, Thursday, December 4, 2025
The Standing Senate Committee on Agriculture and Forestry met with videoconference this day at 8 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: Good morning. I am John McNair and I call this meeting to order. Welcome to those in the committee and our witnesses as well as those watching on the web.
I begin by acknowledging that the land on which we gather is on the unceded and traditional territory of the Algonquin Anishinaabe Nation.
Before we hear from our witnesses today, I ask the senators to introduce themselves.
Senator Martin: Yonah Martin, British Columbia.
Senator Burey: Sharon Burey, Ontario.
Senator McBean: Marnie McBean, Ontario.
Senator Ross: Krista Ross, New Brunswick.
Senator Sorensen: Karen Sorensen, Alberta.
Senator Muggli: Tracy Muggli, Treaty 6 territory, Saskatchewan.
The Deputy Chair: I ask all senators to consult the cards on the table for guidelines to prevent audio feedback incidents. I also remind those participating to refrain from switching languages mid-sentence and to not switch too quickly. Clear audio supports accurate interpretation, transcription and captioning.
Today, the committee is continuing its study on the role of agriculture and agri-food sector with regard to food security in Canada. For our first panel, we have the pleasure of welcoming Sarah Stern, Executive Director of the Maple Leaf Centre for Food Security; and Tamara Petresin, PhD Candidate at the University of Guelph.
Thank you both for accepting to appear before our committee. You will have five minutes for your opening remarks, followed by questions from the senators. I will signal that your time is running out by raising one hand when you have one minute left. I will raise both hands when your time is up.
The floor is yours, Ms. Stern.
Sarah Stern, Executive Director, Maple Leaf Centre for Food Security: Good morning, deputy chair and honourable members of the committee. Thank you for the opportunity to appear before you today to discuss the urgent crisis of food insecurity in Canada.
The Maple Leaf Centre for Food Security is a national charity committed to working collaboratively across sectors to reduce food insecurity in Canada. Established as the corporate foundation of Maple Leaf Foods in 2016, we invest in scalable programs, knowledge building, research and public policy advocacy to increase access to good food and to reduce food insecurity across Canada.
Food insecurity is pervasive and significant, and the problem has only worsened since Canada began tracking food insecurity in the early 2000s. The unacceptable fact is that 10 million people in Canada, including one in four adults and one in three children, can’t afford the food they need.
Since 2016, we have learned a lot about what is driving the rising rates of food insecurity in Canada, who is most impacted and what might be done about it. One of the most important things we’ve learned is that food insecurity is not a food problem. Canada does not have a food-shortage problem. The problem is that people do not have the resources to access food that they need. People are faced with impossible choices, such as whether to pay their rent or buy food, whether to pay for medication or buy food, whether to pay for heat or buy food.
Food insecurity is a marker of material deprivation and is tightly linked with low income. Money to buy food is the single greatest leverage point to address food insecurity. Other barriers, such as where people live, whether they live with a disability or even the inability to access the financial benefits to which they are entitled, make getting enough good food even more challenging.
Food insecurity does not impact everyone equally. It disproportionately affects households with children, single parents, working-age singles and those with low educational attainment. One of the biggest disparities can be seen among different racial groups, in particular Black and Indigenous communities, who experience food insecurity rates far higher than the national average. Furthermore, close to 50% of people over the age of 15 living in food-insecure households have a disability.
Food insecurity has been linked to chronic health problems including heart disease, chronic pain, infectious disease, depression and anxiety disorders. The result is that people experiencing food insecurity land in the health care system. Food insecurity is not only an issue of social justice; it’s also impacting our health care costs and our country’s productivity.
To adequately address the food insecurity crisis in Canada, we will need structural policy solutions. Food banks and other charitable organizations do incredibly important work to respond to the immediate needs of some food-insecure people. For many, they are a tourniquet that allows households to stop the bleeding. That said, we cannot continue to look to charity to address this crisis alone. And, really, we live in a country where no one should need to rely on charity to access food.
There are many policy portfolios and government departments that can impact food insecurity and therefore a whole-of-government approach is required. To that end, the centre has been advocating for the establishment of a government target to reduce food insecurity. Targets and commitments drive and align action. Canada’s First Poverty Reduction Strategy has driven considerable progress toward reducing poverty by 50% by 2030. Similarly, setting a target to reduce food insecurity by 50% would effectively mobilize this whole-of-government approach to tackle food insecurity.
This idea has broad support from Canada’s largest leading national food insecurity organizations, private sector actors and among the public. Our most recent public-insight polling demonstrated that almost 80% of Canadians would support setting a target to reduce food insecurity. A target would elevate existing policy initiatives and encourage coordinated program execution across relevant ministries such as Employment and Social Development Canada; Health Canada; Housing, Infrastructure and Communities Canada; Indigenous Services Canada; and Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada, all with the objective of reducing food insecurity.
We have reached a crisis point for food insecurity. There is public will to address the issue, and we are calling on policy‑makers to make bold commitments to do so. It is time to commit to reducing the unacceptable levels of food insecurity in Canada.
Once again, thank you to the members of the committee for the opportunity to speak today. I am happy to answer any questions and follow up with more information.
The Deputy Chair: Thank you, Ms. Stern.
Ms. Petresin, the floor is yours.
Tamara Petresin, PhD Candidate, University of Guelph, as an individual: Good morning. Thank you to the members of the standing committee for this opportunity to speak to you today. I am a researcher on the Food Uniting Neighbours, or f.u.n., study which focuses on community-driven approaches to food access.
Imagine you’re a parent trying to provide healthy food for your children. The cost of food has skyrocketed, you don’t have access to a car to get you to the grocery store and going to the food bank feels dehumanizing. This is what life is like for one in four households in Canada.
There are many factors that contribute to food security, and in high-income countries like Canada, food security isn’t about food shortages. It’s about access. Food access is an indispensable component of food security that describes the physical, social and economic resources needed to secure food.
Many food programs aim to tackle food security across Canada, but they often don’t work for the people they aim to support. Why? Because these solutions are designed for communities rather than with them. They take a top-down approach, without fully involving the people they intend to help.
Now, imagine a different approach, one where the communities most affected by food insecurity play a leading role in shaping the solutions. That’s the focus of Food Uniting Neighbours. It uses a co-design approach, so a collaborative process where researchers, community organizations and people with lived experience work together, meaning community members were not just consulted; they were active partners in creating solutions. Instead of making assumptions, co-design centres on community leadership, shared decision-making and real-life experiences.
Thirteen community advisers from the Onward Willow neighbourhood, a low-income area in Guelph where this work is based, were paid a living wage and worked with us researchers to identify barriers, design interventions and lead implementation, with the goal of increasing access to nutritious foods in Onward Willow. This work was supported by funding from the Public Health Agency of Canada through their Healthy Canadians and Communities Fund, which gave us the time and resources to wholly commit to a true co-design process.
Once we identified the most salient barriers to food access through focus groups with over 85 community members, we worked collaboratively with the community advisers to co‑design and pilot test five interventions tailored to local needs: community cafes to bring people together over nutritious meals and to connect; food-skills workshops to build confidence and make use of foods often provided by food programs; grocery gift cards for a sliding-scale online platform providing financial flexibility and choice; gardening materials and workshops to support at-home food growing; and transportation support through carts and wagons to reduce physical barriers, making it easier to transport groceries.
To understand the impact of these interventions, we conducted interviews, focus groups and surveys. We asked: Were these interventions feasible? Did people like them? Did they make a difference? And most importantly, did community members feel that these solutions reflected their realities and priorities?
What we found was clear. All five interventions were feasible and highly acceptable. Across the interventions, 86% to 100% of participants said they would recommend the intervention to others.
We also saw promising impacts. Gardening interventions significantly increased fruit and vegetable availability in homes, food skills workshops improved participants a sense of community and community cafes were praised for reducing isolation and creating a welcoming space. People valued having choice, being able to access foods that fit their culture, dietary needs and budgets.
They also appreciated social connection and building relationships in spaces that felt welcoming over food. Most importantly, they felt a sense of ownership, knowing these programs were built through collaboration and not just imposed from the outside.
These findings matter because they show that contextually relevant, community-driven solutions can work. But I want to be clear: These interventions, whether workshops or cafes, are not complete solutions to food security. They help address specific barriers and build social connection, but systemic issues like inadequate income and lack of affordable housing remain.
The real innovation through our work is the model. Co-design ensures that interventions reflect local realities. Embedding community voices into food security policy can lead to more equitable and sustainable solutions. Food security isn’t just about food; it’s about equity, dignity and shared leadership. When communities lead, solutions are stronger.
We recommend that the committee consider the following: First, embed co-design in policy development. Ensure that federal food security strategies require meaningful community engagement and co-design processes so programs reflect local realities.
Second, continue to fund community-led models. Create dedicated funding streams for initiatives that pay community advisers a living wage and support grassroots leadership, building trust and sustainability in food programs.
Finally, integrate food access with broader social policy. Align food security efforts with income supports, housing policy and transportation planning to address root causes alongside local interventions.
Implementing these steps will help ensure Canada’s food security policies are equitable, effective and sustainable. Thank you very much.
The Deputy Chair: Thank you. Senators, we will now proceed with questions. You will have five minutes, as you know, for your question, and that includes the answer.
Senator Sorensen: Thanks very much. I’m going to start with Ms. Petresin if I can. I will tell you that I’m a grad from the University of Guelph but certainly not a PhD candidate, so congratulations on that.
I’m just going to ask you to elaborate a little bit more on Food Uniting Neighbours. First of all, I’m curious to know the first piece. Is this, in fact, your thesis? I’m getting a little nod there. The idea of actually engaging with people that are the end users of something is not rocket science, but it is very rare. I will say on the record, in this world, that’s why we appreciate our experts so much because this is where we actually get to talk to people who are engaged as opposed to policy writers.
I was curious, you said early on, “once we did this, then we did this.” I’m just curious to know about the first part. How did you engage? How diverse — I can only imagine that the groups you met with were very diverse. Then finally commenting on what the federal government can do and the struggle — I’m also a previous mayor, so when funding comes from the feds through the province to the municipality, I don’t know if you have a comment on that.
Ms. Petresin: Yes, sure. I’ll start at the beginning.
In terms of Food Uniting Neighbours, we’re a team. There are currently 12 community advisers. We started off with 12, we had 13 and now we’re back at 12. It is a very diverse group. There are currently 10 women and 2 men. Over half were not born in Canada. There are a bunch of languages spoken around the community advisers team — I think over eight — so there is a lot of diversity that reflects the Onward Willow community too.
We have a community centre in Onward Willow called the Shelldale Family Gateway. It’s kind of like a local meeting spot, and it’s where we ran our programming from and put recruitment posters up to engage the community advisers, as well as relied on some of our local partners to engage people who were interested. There was kind of an interview process for the community advisers, very informal. It was more so learning about their experience and what made them interested in food access work.
From there, once we had those 12 community advisers, we did focus groups with the broader Onward Willow community. I led some of those. There was a master student as well whose thesis was kind of the focus group and identifying the barriers to food access in Onward Willow. Some of the community advisers also led some of those focus groups.
In terms of whom we were engaged with at that point, there were 87 community members from Onward Willow whom we had engaged, and again, most of whom were not born in Canada, with a vast variety of backgrounds. From those focus groups, we heard about the most common barriers people were experiencing, some of which were transportation. We do have public transit in Guelph; however, getting to the food bank and to other food programs is very difficult for people. They’re getting these big boxes of food and then what? Having to carry them home is very difficult.
Unfamiliar foods are also very common. We have a lot of recent immigrants in Onward Willow, so people are getting cans of chickpeas. They’ve never seen a canned good like that before, so they won’t take it even though they need food in general. They won’t take it because they don’t know what to do with it. That was another common barrier identified as well.
To be honest, there was a lack of program awareness. In a lot of the focus groups, people described how the hours are changing and it’s not consistent. People don’t know where to go or when things are open. Those were a few of the most prominent barriers. From there, we went back as a community adviser table. I did some literature review work and presented that to the community advisers. We chose those five interventions that I talked about to pilot test and go from there.
Like I mentioned, just to quickly comment on the federal funding, we were funded by the Healthy Canadians and Communities Fund, so obviously, that gave us the resources and the time to engage community advisers, to pay them a living wage and to go through that process meaningfully. Not just consultation, but actually active participation. We’re obviously very grateful that we have those funds to be able to do that.
One of our recommendations is to continue to fund those community-led models and prioritizing that to make sure that end-user input is provided and given.
Senator Sorensen: That was a grant application that was written directly to the feds?
Ms. Petresin: Yes.
Senator Sorensen: This is your thesis?
Ms. Petresin: Yes, this is my thesis project.
Senator Sorensen: That’s great.
Senator Muggli: Good morning and thanks for being with us today. We really appreciate it. I have a two-part question and will probably need a second round.
I’ve been on a couple of committees, including this one, where we heard from folks in the federal government responsible for the National School Food Program in schools. I’m curious, maybe from Ms. Stern, what your thoughts are on how that program can contribute to food security. I’m interested to hear from the academic side as well, Ms. Petresin. Something we learned about that program is there is no clear framework for outcome measures that has been created. How are we measuring the success of that program?
I’m interested in hearing from Ms. Petresin or Ms. Stern. How can we actually measure outcomes? Maybe we need to give them some suggestions on how the program could have some outcome measures. I’ll start with Ms. Stern.
Ms. Stern: Thank you, senator. I think the National School Food Program is an incredibly important program for Canada. It was really exciting to see the big commitment that it will be made permanent. When you think about someone who is in a food-insecure household, there is constant stress. If you’re a parent, that stress of feeding your child is always there. Knowing that there is at least one meal or one snack a day is helpful. The research has demonstrated it could save households $800 to $1,000 per year, so that will also make a difference for low‑income households, but it will not have a significant impact on reducing food insecurity in Canada.
It will make a difference, but in the scheme of things, when we look at the evaluation of it — I think you can look at the evaluation of school food in many different ways. If the outcome you’re looking for is on food insecurity, you’ll see it in the national metrics of food insecurity. I don’t think it will make a big difference there. It will make a big difference for lasting change for children.
Senator Muggli: Ms. Petresin, any thoughts on outcome measures?
Ms. Petresin: Yes, for sure. Echoing what Ms. Stern said, it is obviously an incredible investment and about time. I think we can all say that. It’s great to see the traction in this movement.
In terms of how to measure outcomes, I have not done any direct work with the National School Food Program.
Senator Muggli: I noted the very good job you’ve done on measuring outcomes in your program.
Ms. Petresin: Thank you. Yes, for sure.
Senator Muggli: I want to commend you. That’s why I asked you. I think you know about this.
Ms. Petresin: It is on and always working. There are some basic things like engagement and tracking and things like that as well. In terms of how it’s actually working, I think there needs to be some kind of surveys in place, whether that’s surveying the kids directly or the parents on behalf of the kids. I think it would be great to actually get the youth involved because the youth voice is important and they have great ideas.
To be honest, when we think about planning these programs and how they work, I’m obviously going to advocate for co‑design and engaging the parents and the youth themselves and hearing that voice and what they would like to see and how those programs are working and affecting people.
Another big part of it is that the stats are great, engagement tracking, the savings, the cost savings, that is all very important. The qualitative side of things is very important, and so is hearing from people about what kind of impacts this program is making and getting into that richer data, the story behind the numbers as well.
Senator Muggli: I appreciate that. I think we’re missing a lot of the qualitative in a lot of the programs. Root cause to Ms. Stern. You clearly indicated that the root cause of food insecurity is income insecurity. You talked about improving maybe some of the existing programs to help address that. Are there particular programs that should be targeted to address the income security side of it, or should there be a new income security program that comes to mind for you?
Ms. Stern: I think there are a few ways to address it. It’s maybe a little bit more nuanced than income, it is lack of money which is generally from income, but it’s about managing cash flow and the crunch that people feel. One group I talk about in particular is those with a social disability. Fifty percent of people above the age of 15 who are food insecure has a disability. It was incredible to see the roll out of the Canada Disability Benefit which is providing —
Senator Muggli: I was going to ask a question on disability as well. Carry on.
Ms. Stern: So the Canada Disability Benefit is providing up to $200 per month for households who have a disability, which is a good start but not enough to even lift most of those households above the poverty line.
On top of that, there are huge barriers for people to access it. The current budget committed $150 to help people pay for the application fees, but that’s reimbursable. We are looking at households who are already struggling and who already face so many barriers having to find a medical professional to fill out a form for them, which they’re going to have to pay out-of-pocket up front with no guarantee that they’ll get the Disability Tax Credit, or DTC, to then apply for the Canadian disability to one day hopefully get that $200 and get reimbursed. So a fix there would be direct reimbursement to medical professionals for the form, or streamlining that process to get that money in people’s pockets more quickly.
Senator Muggli: Okay thank you.
Senator Martin: Good morning. I thought your presentations were very complementary. My colleagues have asked some of the questions that were kind of first and foremost on my mind. What I had prepared has been asked, but a few things came to mind.
Ms. Stern, you talked about what we need as a whole-of-government approach, but I know with every ministry and departments within ministries to try and coordinate all of that is quite a task and it will take time. But if this were to happen, from your perspective, how should it be coordinated? Is there a lead department? What do you see if you could structure such coordination?
Ms. Stern: Thank you. I understand it would be a big challenge. Government is big. How do you drive action and how do you push something like that forward? When I look at the issue of food insecurity and that it is primarily tied to income and cash flow, I would think ESDC should own the target, but they can’t drive all of the action.
We know that policies from other departments are going to impact it. If you think about how you spend money, for most people the biggest chunk of your wallet is going to put a roof over your head. So we need to tie food insecurity as an indicator of success for our affordable housing programs. That’s one way to link it in.
When we look at job employment statistics and job training programs, how do you tie those things back into using food insecurity as an indicator for success? Within agriculture and agri-food, we need to have food for people to access, we need food to be able to get all over this country, and we need food to be affordable, whether you are in Toronto, Thunder Bay, or Moosonee. We need to look at ways to address that.
I would suggest a committee with a secretariat, perhaps headed by someone within the ESDC department. There is probably an opportunity to consult and bring in experts from outside of government, to bring in individuals with lived experience like the National Advisory Council on Poverty to advise the group and provide input.
Senator Martin: Thank you for that. I was thinking if we could start fresh and do something and create this excellent plan, that would be ideal, but we don’t want to just throw everything out. There must be things that are working well right now, even though we do have the issue. The numbers are alarming that one in three children in Canada live in a food-insecure home and all the stats you cited. Are there things that are working very effectively that you would like to put on the record?
Ms. Stern: We know that money is the number one thing that will impact food insecurity. We’ve seen programs and projects across the country where people have been given grocery cards and been given money to purchase food, and you’re seeing a direct impact on reducing food insecurity.
We’ve been partnering with the Government of Newfoundland and Labrador on a program that is run through their family resource centres where households in Newfoundland are given $150 a month and in Labrador $225 a month to purchase food to help their households. We’ve seen a 66% reduction in severe food insecurity on those that have completed three surveys.
Across the country, we worked with an organization called Right to Food on a program that was funded by the Public Health Agency of Canada, where people were prescribed fresh produce. People with diet-related issues, for example, diabetes, when they have money for food, we see positive health outcomes and also reductions in food insecurity.
Senator Martin: Would you be able to create such a list of programs that are very effective? That would be helpful, I think.
Ms. Stern: Yes.
Senator McBean: Senator Martin, I was going to say, “Just keep going,” because that was my question too. In the first minute of both of your presentations, you both said the same thing, I hope in your mind you didn’t go, “Oh damn, she said the same thing,” because repetition is really good, and pounding it into our heads that it’s not a food issue, it’s an access issue is really important for us to bring into this study.
Then we need to remember our lane. Who are we, agriculture and agri-food and forestry, but agriculture and agri-food for this purpose, and we’re in a federal lane.
So thinking of those things — and, Ms. Stern, I wish Senator Robinson was here because she always knows agriculture people when they come.
Ms. Stern, I think maybe you’ve addressed it but maybe there are more things to say. You said one of the barriers is people’s ability to access funds that they are eligible for. I’m going to start with that and maybe with the disability funds, but can you expand on that?
Ms. Stern: Canadian research has demonstrated there are about $2 billion of federal benefits left on the table each year from people who are not fully tax filing or applying for the benefits they’re entitled to. We were really excited to recently announce a $1 million investment with Prosper Canada. Prosper received, I believe, $48 million to $64 million from the federal government to help increase access to benefits for people across Canada.
For some, if they haven’t tax filed before, when they tax file, they end up with a bit of a windfall because you are able to get benefits that were due to you in the past. That can be life changing for households. It can help them pay first and last month’s rent and help them have a down payment, pay off educational debt and help set them on a path toward food security. But it’s important that people are regularly accessing those benefits. They shouldn’t rely on a windfall. It is important that we have a smoother process when people tax file and they get those benefits. I think the auto tax filing will help with that as well.
Senator McBean: Ms. Petresin, what evidence-based interventions through funding, regulation or data collection would improve food access affordability in all regions? This is working where it’s working. Do you see it being able to scale up?
Ms. Petresin: For sure. I think the special innovation here that we’ve used is the co-design piece of it. Just because this worked in one place doesn’t mean it’s going to work in a different place. So I think the magic there is engaging community advisers in those different places to be able to see what the specific barriers are in that region. Of course, we know things like the lack of affordable housing and lack of adequate income and money issues, those are across the board. I think across the whole country that is an issue. But in terms of those specific, evidence-based interventions, there are things that have worked in certain communities, but it doesn’t mean they’re going to work in others. So I think that’s really what the magic is; going in with the co-design, engaging those community members, the people with lived experience who really know and live those realities to be able to advise and to lead this work in providing some of those kinds of community-level programs.
Senator McBean: As you were building your program, were there any federal barriers that made it harder?
Ms. Petresin: Funding is very siloed and we experienced a gap in our funding. Thankfully, we did get phase 2 of our funding, so that’s very exciting and we’re in that now so we’re able to continue the work. But that threat of “Is this all going to go away?” definitely loomed and our community advisers kept us accountable from day one. They told us we’ve had a ton of grants come into the community and just leave and the program ends. What are you guys doing that is different? They kept us accountable from day one that sense, too. That’s why it’s so important to have those community-led models and for them to be funded. So yes, it is tricky when you have those gaps because you worry about losing momentum. That was a time gap, it was just under a year between phase 1 and phase 2. Our community advisers are incredible. They still continued some of the work, despite the money not necessarily being there. We did as best we could, but that is not ideal.
Senator Burey: Thank you so much for being here. This issue is near and dear to my heart and it’s a complex issue, as you’re telling us. It is trying to connect the dots for people knowing that Canada, as the co-founder of Growcer stated, Corey Ellis, that we have enough food in Canada, it has to do with access, income and transportation. I can tell you during the pandemic that this sort of sharpened my focus because the transportation bit was a big thing. It’s important that you’ve been doing those kinds of programs to get us to where we need to go.
Could you speak to — and I’ll start with Ms. Stern to give you a bit more time — to this $1-million in funds committed to Prosper Canada and give us some information on the kinds of programs I think Senator Martin was talking about that you have developed with that?
Ms. Stern: The funds for Prosper are to support the federal government investment in the Resilient Futures program. The Resilient Futures is to help people across Canada to tax file and also help them access their benefits and provides some financial empowerment and literacy training. So if people have a windfall or have access to that money, how are they planning with those funds? That is really trying to unlock the door to benefits that exists already and help get them into people’s pockets. We believe that getting that money into people’s pockets will help impact food insecurity. However it all comes down to the adequacy of those benefits as well. For some households, if you’re accessing most of those benefits and tapped out, it’s not going to make as much of a difference as someone else that didn’t get the child benefit before and is now able to see it. That is one important piece. The other piece I had mentioned is really getting new money into people’s hands. So the idea of providing money to purchase food.
We see that in different ways across the country. It really emerged during the pandemic when emergency food organizations had to close, charities were left to purchase gift cards and start distributing to people so people could shop in mainstream retailers or in retailers that had gift cards. If you think about the dignity that this can provide as opposed to having to line up at a food bank and get food that might not be the food that you are used to or want. Imagine if there is a way that we could give people money to buy food to allow them to shop in the way they want to be able to access that food.
Senator Burey: One of the things that our committee does is provide information to Canadians. How would someone access that help to fill out a form? Because I know a disability tax credit and a windfall, I have had patients able to buy a car, a second‑hand car, so they don’t have to wait on the bus. It has been life-changing. How are people going to get that access? Can you tell us a little bit?
Ms. Stern: If we look at access to the DTC, which is the gateway for the Canada Disability Benefit, an organization like Plan Institute, it is based in British Columbia but supports across the country. They have call centres with people dedicated to help people enroll and access the DTC and ask questions. I think, as a charity, they are doing incredible work in that space and trying to promote that.
Other organizations focused on helping people with disabilities, like L’Arche Canada, March of Dimes and Disability Without Poverty, are all working to raise awareness about the issue and help people with the forms. I think what I would say is it is important that those charities are there to help people fill out the forms, but why do people need the charity to help fill out the form? Is there a way for us to make that simpler?
Senator Burey: Ms. Petresin, I was very fascinated and interested in your research. As a community pediatrician, that is where all the action is in the community. Thank you for doing that research.
Could you tell me about some of the health outcomes that you noted during — looking at those five different groups?
Ms. Petresin: We started this as a pilot study, so we didn’t look at any kind of large health outcomes. We looked at different things depending on the intervention so our main focus was feasibility and acceptability because it was a pilot study. But our secondary outcomes, we did look at more food access outcomes, things like fruit and vegetable availability, diet quality, using a brief validated screener and also barriers to healthy food access, using a validated screener as well. For the cooking and food skills workshops, we looked at cooking confidence and at a sense of community as well. For the cooking workshops, we didn’t see any statistically significant differences in cooking confidence, but we did for sense of community. We saw a statistically significant increase in sense of community following the workshops. In terms of the grocery gift cards, we didn’t find any impacts on food access outcomes there. That was just 10 people, it was a very small pilot and also it was for a very specific platform, it wasn’t a gift card to a large grocer, but for an online sliding scale platform. There might have been some digital equity pieces there, too, because we did see very different demographics engaging in that intervention compared to the others.
Senator Ross: Thank you to both of you for great presentations this morning. I have a question for Ms. Petresin. You mentioned that you had an 86% to 100% success rate for all the five interventions. I’m wondering if you can you give us a sense of what the overall cost was for this project, for this model.
Ms. Petresin: The overall cost of running the program? I can comment a bit on how much money we got and we used it all. In phase 1, we were given just under $800,000 and we used all of it. We paid all of our community advisers a living wage based on a Guelph living wage, which was a big chunk of that money. Obviously, there were students involved in supporting that work as well. And just all the logistics of running those things, giving people grocery gift cards, running the workshops, all of those things.
Senator Ross: What was the term of the project that $800,000 supported?
Ms. Petresin: That was two years. That was the first phase.
Senator Ross: How many households overall do you think were helped?
Ms. Petresin: In terms of how many we engaged through all five interventions, we evaluated 159 people. However, that is just the people we evaluated. Likely, there were a lot more people impacted. For example, we held community cafes and tried our best to survey as many people as we could. Over the span of those three cafes, we served 1,000 meals or something like that. And any food that we had left over from the cafes, we would bring to a neighbourhood group for further distribution in the community. So in terms of how many we evaluated, formally it was 159, but in terms of the impact, it was likely much greater.
Senator Ross: Regarding a project like this — I think Senator McBean mentioned the word “scalable” — do you think a project like this is scalable from a cost perspective and the number of people helped?
Ms. Petresin: Yes, for sure. That is an interesting question, because we’re looking at scaling now. We’re looking at expanding. We’re currently recruiting community advisers in Centre Wellington and Elora to get that rural perspective and looking at some of the differences in how those compared to a city environment and getting more of that rural context. We have the funding to do that now.
At the end of the day, it does come back to asking ourselves how amazing it would be if everybody had enough and didn’t need the programs, but that is not the reality. Programs like this support in many ways — yes, with food access, too, but even with a thread of social connection across. That’s been something that has been very surprising to us. System navigation — that is something that Ms. Stern commented on a lot. That is difficult. Through more social support and people meeting more people, that makes system navigation easier.
Senator Ross: Do you have a sense from your funding partners they are looking at this as a model for cross-country involvement?
Ms. Petresin: Yes. For the Public Health Agency of Canada — the Healthy Canadians and Communities Fund — a criterion of that grant was engaging community. That level of engagement varied across the programs that were funded. We really took on that co-design model where community advisers led this work, and we researchers figured out the evaluation and the structural administrative support, but, yes, that grant application did have to involve community members and lived experience engagement.
Senator Ross: Excellent.
I wanted to share with you both something that’s happening in my community. There’s an organization called Greener Village, and they launched in September of this year the construction of Atlantic Canada’s first perishable food rescue centre. You probably heard about it, but, in 2018, they received a tractor trailer load of carrots, but they were not able to process them and get them to families who could use them. They weren’t able to use it all, and a lot of the food was wasted.
Since then, they have raised $8 million from three levels of government and the community. There is a lot of community support for this in Atlantic Canada. I think it’s an interesting model. It will also include classes, greenhouses — all kinds of things. It is really about processing perishable food that comes in large quantities, and it is a pretty unique thing, especially in our area of Atlantic Canada.
Ms. Petresin: Very cool.
The Deputy Chair: Colleagues, we’re now into second round.
Senator Sorensen: I will direct this question to Ms. Stern.
In my work here, I also sit on the Indigenous Peoples Committee. As I understand, the Maple Leaf Centre for Food Security has explored Indigenous-led collaboratives that support remote and reserve communities to build food sovereignty via food-related projects and Traditional Knowledge of cultural food practices. I would love to hear more about that.
Ms. Stern: Thank you for that question.
Our longest partnership has been with an entity called the Northern Manitoba Food, Culture, and Community Collaborative. It is a collaborative created for northern Manitoba after the person who started it had visited communities. She went and said, “We are going to bring in funds. What do you need done?” And she heard from communities that funders keep coming, and they keep walking away. The communities couldn’t talk to them all. It is hard work, or people just don’t know that the people are there.
The collaborative was created to pool funds. There is a variety of donors, primarily philanthropic donors, although they are now getting investment for the first time from the Manitoba Ministry of Agriculture.
The granting decisions are made primarily through a collaborative effort of the funders and community members. Community members peer review the applications. The applications are very straightforward, so they can be done by phone, through a conversation, to say what people are interested in doing in their community.
For example, in one of the communities that we worked with, there was an interest in getting youth back out on the land. There were two Elders in the community who got funding to bring youth out on the land on a regular basis and bring food back into the communities. Part of that had a knowledge and culture transfer.
There was another program that was within the Bayline communities north of Thompson, which are communities only accessible by train, and the train goes through every two days. To grocery shop, those communities had to take the train to Thompson, and they also had to go to Thompson for medical appointments. You try to pair those together. Then you have to try to get the train home or you’re stuck in Thompson for two days.
One of the community members said, “We could start a food‑buying co-op. We can collect money, send someone in to stay for two days. They will do the shopping.” She negotiated with the train lines for them to take the excess cargo. That is how that community was doing their grocery shopping.
It was driven by that community. As a funder sitting in Toronto, it blew my mind that there was no other way to buy food in that community. Going to what Ms. Petresin was saying about having that community involvement and engagement in those programs, it’s really important.
Senator Sorensen: I get my mind blown every day in that committee. Thank you. That answer choked me up, so I’m going to leave it there.
Senator Muggli: Ms. Petresin, you mentioned that, in the program you deliver, there was room for a living wage for the participants. I’m interested to hear from both of you what your thoughts are on living wage policies and whether that is a better way to address root causes of food insecurity. I’ll start with you, Ms. Petresin.
Ms. Petresin: Yes, at the end of the day people do need more money. The way we measure food insecurity in Canada is looking at economic access. We are specifically looking at that, and the numbers are clear. We both talked about the statistics, and at the end of the day, yes, people can use more money. Having a guaranteed living wage would help people access food and more. From an economic perspective, it’s having the funds to purchase food.
Senator Muggli: What is the amount they were paid?
Ms. Petresin: For Food Uniting Neighbours? They were paid $25 an hour.
Senator Muggli: Okay. How many hours?
Ms. Petresin: That’s a good question. I don’t want to misspeak, and I forget how many hours per month it was.
Senator Muggli: I was curious if it was equivalent to full‑time work.
Ms. Petresin: It wouldn’t quite be full-time work, but we were meeting every week for two hours every Wednesday for a long time, as well as all the additional work on the side.
A pretty significant chunk of the funding went to the community advisers.
Senator Muggli: Translating that into a living income, Ms. Stern, do you have any thoughts on that?
Ms. Stern: It’s important that people are paid fair and competitive wages for the work they do. “Living wage” is complicated because we don’t have a standard across the country; there is no national standard for it. I think there are three provinces that have a process for employers to become living wage employers, and what’s required for that is not consistent. I think it can be challenging, because organizations need to pay fair wages, but they also need to keep the funds they need to invest and keep their product prices at a price that people can afford. It’s complicated.
Senator Muggli: On the opposite end of the spectrum, barring proper income security in our country, is there anything we can do better in terms of the charitable sector as it relates to the donor side or the tax side? How can we help the charity sector be more sustainable?
Ms. Stern: We want the charitable sector to be sustainable, and we also don’t want people to rely on the charitable sector. It is a complicated thing. Programs like what Greener Village is doing — there is similar work taking place in Vancouver, as well as in Winnipeg with Harvest Manitoba, on charities now investing. Charities are making big investments to process surplus food. That’s hard because, on one hand, we need to think of how to reduce the amount of surplus food that we have, but giving people surplus food doesn’t solve food insecurity.
How do we tackle those two things at once? What are the incentives we need to provide from an agri-food perspective to ensure that farmers, producers and manufacturers find a way to create less waste, which would hopefully bring the cost of food down, as well, but, in the interim, while it’s there, we want to make sure people have access to it.
Charities investing in further processing — it’s important for now, but, hopefully, we don’t need it for a long time.
Are there other ways? Are there companies that have excess capacity that could be doing some of that further processing and getting the food into the system instead of charities having to invest in that?
Senator Martin: In your research paper under the abstract and the conclusions at the end, it says:
Future research is needed to explore long-term impacts of these interventions on diet quality and broader health outcomes.
It was a two-year program, and it would be impossible to continue funding these forever. After the two-year investment, I guess you’ll be following this? I’m curious as to the impact that the fund program has had on the community and whether you’re measuring and following that.
Ms. Petresin: Yes. The first phase was two years, and a big part of that first year was establishing the program and setting up for success. We didn’t just dive into those interventions. Obviously, planning those interventions took a lot of time. All of the interventions were just pilot interventions; they weren’t very long term. They gave us a starting point.
Now, we’re at the point in Phase 2 where we have a three-year grant, and we’re deepening our work in Onward Willow. We are looking at the longer-term outcomes but also exploring Centre Wellington where we’re engaging our own community advisers to inform the work there. We are comparing the two different settings; one is rural and one is an urban setting.
In terms of the evaluation piece on the communities, we’ve looked at things like how they liked their programs, brief measures of diet quality, food access outcomes, fruit and vegetable availability, barriers to accessing healthy food and seeing whether there were any differences there.
We also evaluated the community adviser experience and what being a part of this has meant to them as well. What do they bring to the table? What is the importance of the community advisers to this project for things like humanization? A lot of the community advisers spoke about that. They are the boots on the ground. They can build that trust with the community because they are all in the same situations. They can have that level of relatability. They really do humanize this project. A lot of the community advisers talked about how they can finally unmask in this space. They don’t have to mask who they are and what they’re going through because they are working with people in the same situations. They are that connection, that bridge, to the community.
We have looked at it from those different angles and also from the experience of the community advisers.
Senator Martin: Beyond Phase 2, I’m interested to eventually see the diminishing dependency and the empowerment of this community and the outcomes.
Ms. Petresin: As part of this Healthy Canadians and Communities Fund, Phase 3 exists but has not been announced yet. Fingers crossed we get that as well.
Senator Martin: The success of something like this could be taken across the country.
Ms. Petresin: For sure, yes. Our community advisers have a dream, too. They want this all over Canada. They want to be able to train people how to do this, peer to peer, and how to implement this model.
Senator Martin: I’m also curious about the North, where there are some very dire situations. Recently, I heard about a suicide because of food insecurity. It seems there is also a lack of data, and it is very hard to reach. Are you looking at doing something in the North?
Ms. Petresin: We are not. We’re just focused in the Guelph region right now, so we’re not currently looking at that.
Ms. Stern: For the North, I’ve looked, and MakeWay has been doing a lot of work across the Territories. We funded the evaluation of their recent full-time hunter-harvester program where people were paid a living wage, often the same salary as a teacher in that community. Their role was to go out on the land, as they have done forever, and bring food back into their communities and share it as their culture dictated.
They were also tracking climate impacts as they went because if you’re hunting in that way and if you’re not on the land all the time anymore, it’s not safe to be out on the land. You need to know how the ice is shifting. They should be releasing, in the coming weeks, the ROI study, or return on investment study, that looked at those impacts on food insecurity, on mental and physical health, and on cultural sharing.
The Deputy Chair: We have limited time left, colleagues. You may want to put your questions on the record.
Senator McBean: I have two questions. This budget has automatic tax filing. Will that help? To my previous question, will that be helpful? Are there gaps in that?
Ms. Stern: It will help people who have filed taxes before because it will be easier for them moving forward. For those who have never tax-filed who may need to find ID to do it, that doesn’t help them yet. We have to close the gap. When you have tax-filed once, that will make a difference.
Senator McBean: I think this is targeting people who haven’t tax-filed, isn’t it?
Ms. Stern: If they haven’t filed, they’re not in the system, so they can’t do the auto-file.
Senator McBean: Ms. Stern, I respect that you are on the foundation side of Maple Leaf Foods but are also looking at the agri-food side of this whole issue. How should the federal government be partnering with the agri-food sector to shift away from reactive charitable responses? As we were saying, it would be nice to get everything out of the charitable sector. We want to shift to long-term poverty and food-insecurity reduction strategies, to get agri-food of business? How do we also close that gap for people who can’t afford food?
Ms. Stern: That goes with a complicated piece on trying to, as a company, make enough money to continue to survive and also provide affordable food to people. We are looking at how we can set a target, bringing in people with lived experience, but also bringing in people in industry to be part of that conversation, to think about how these pieces work together.
One of the things that I’m proud of is the company’s partnership with the Chicken Farmers of Ontario and Feed Ontario. Chicken Farmers of Ontario donate some of their quota each year. They can donate one quota or use it for personal consumption, but that needs processing. We’ve been able to work with them out of our plant in London to process all of the chicken donated by the chicken farmers at cost and get it into the Feed Ontario system.
There are probably opportunities to do things like that, where companies have excess capacity and the ability to do that type of work.
Senator McBean: Could the federal government partner in a tax way? In housing, one of the barriers that is making housing expensive is that the GST rebate was never indexed. Is there something comparable that could be done in agri-food, like a partnership that keeps it as a business but also takes away a federal barrier?
Ms. Stern: That is, unfortunately, outside of my scope of understanding on the business side of things.
Senator McBean: Come on?
Ms. Stern: I know. I work on the other side. I can’t answer that one.
Senator McBean: Thank you very much.
Senator Burey: Thank you again. I want follow on with what my colleagues have been saying. This program can have such impact. Ms. Stern, you spoke about the outcomes of mental and physical health. At the end of the day, we want to have this as an investment. This is why we’re doing all these programs.
Are you partnering, Ms. Petresin, with other research organizations, such as Institute for Clinical Evaluative Sciences, or ICES, and their researchers, to find the long-term health outcomes of the participants in this program, with chronic health diseases and such? This is why we do it, because it’s costing us a lot, and it’s unsustainable. At the end of the day, are you doing that kind of partnership, or is that kind of thinking going on?
Ms. Petresin: Yes, that kind of thinking is yet to come. Currently, we’re not. We’re still in those early stages. It is certainly something to consider moving forward, to look at some of the long-term health outcomes. Ms. Stern and I both spoke about how important they are and how they are tied to food insecurity. We do need to consider that moving forward.
That is a great idea, to leverage some of those larger research organizations. Our partners right now are local partners, doing work in Guelph. We are lucky in Guelph that a lot of exciting stuff about food is going on, such as our local public health unit, the Guelph Community Health Centre, and SEED, which is a local food security initiative. It is more at the local level for right now, but it is on our radar to take a broader look at some of those longer-term health outcomes and how we explore doing that.
Senator Burey: I’m talking about the ICES research scientists because they have access to all the big databases, and they can track things. Maybe they are listening.
The Deputy Chair: On behalf of my colleagues, thank you both for participating today. Your testimony and insight are very much appreciated. I also commend both of you for the significant work you are doing with respect to food insecurity in Canada.
For our second panel, joining us by video conference we welcome Dr. Steven Webb, the Chief Executive Officer for Global Institute for Food Security; as well as Dr. Evan Fraser, Director, Arrell Food Institute, University of Guelph. In the room today we are welcoming Dr. Daniel Dutton, Associate Professor, Community Health and Epidemiology, Dalhousie University and investigator at PROOF. Welcome, gentlemen. On behalf of the members of the committee, I thank you for being here today.
We will now hear your opening remarks which will be followed by questions from the senators.
Steven R. Webb, Chief Executive Officer, Global Institute for Food Security: Good morning and thank you for the opportunity to speak before this committee.
I’m Steve Webb, CEO of the Global Institute for Food Security, or GIFS, at the University of Saskatchewan.
As we know, there are many facets to food security, including the immediate challenges related to food affordability, inflation and access. There are also separate factors affecting the integrated systems that bring food from farms to plates around the world.
At GIFS, we’re focused on the latter, establishing innovative technology platforms and impactful partnerships that accelerate product development and enhance productivity. A strong innovation ecosystem is an important pillar to food security, and global food security leads to food security.
As Norman Borlaug said, “You can’t build a peaceful world on empty stomachs and human misery.”
Today, Canada’s agriculture and food sector has many strengths, and produces food in abundance contributing to the food security for people here at home and internationally. But we also see a growing number of challenges. Our success is not guaranteed and, in fact, our country’s position is slipping. Canada’s agricultural productivity is slowing and has led to a $30 billion gap at the farm gate and $44 billion trade and export gap. Underlying these challenges are structural defects in our innovation ecosystem.
While our universities and public research institutes have excelled at knowledge creation, we have often struggled to consistently translate that knowledge into market-impacting innovation.
A growing number of reports, including the Global Innovation Index 2025, show Canada’s poor return on investment. Our outputs are not equalling our investment in research. Meanwhile, challenges within the sector are compounding: trade and supply chain disruptions, extreme weather events and a growing global population, among others.
To support a resilient agriculture and food sector, Canada’s food policy must embrace innovation and support it with an enabling regulatory framework that is transparent and science‑based.
Today, our sector faces regulatory burdens that restrict access to many of the latest technologies, discourage investment and stifle innovation. Our regulatory framework must evolve becoming more responsive, timely, science-based and predictable, and supporting Canada’s growth agenda, all without compromising safety. We know we can do this, because we’ve done it before.
At GIFS, we produced a series of carbon-lifecycle analyses that show Canada’s leading position as a producer of safe, nutritious and sustainable food. These studies have examined multiple crops, and each case, we see that Canadian farmers, led by those in Western Canada, produce commodities with a smaller carbon footprint than competitive jurisdictions. This is a great story made possible by the widespread adoption of innovative tools and technologies that were developed here in Canada. These are the innovations of the last generation and alone will not meet tomorrow’s challenges.
I want to propose a few solutions. We need an ag and food innovation strategy that addresses the defect in our innovation pipeline bridging the gap between our knowledge and business ecosystems. Countries like Germany have done this successfully with the Fraunhofer Institutes, and it’s something we’re working to replicate at GIFS as we work across government, academia and the private sector to support mission-driven co-creation and co-development.
Our strategy must also provide clarity and focus for all the players within the innovation pipeline with incentives tied to outcomes and embrace new partnership models that leverage the strengths of the individual organizations, reduce redundancies and drive efficiencies.
We live this every day at GIFs. Just last week, we were excited to announce a partnership with the Canadian Beef Improvement Network. This partnership leverages GIFS’ unique, at-scale capabilities to reduce friction in the supply chain building resiliency and repatriating Canadian data and it lays the groundwork to enhance long-term competitiveness.
Indeed, there are significant opportunities ahead for our sector, and I’m confident with the right supports and framework our sector will grow supporting Canada’s economic growth productivity while building on our sustainability success story. Thank you for the time today. I welcome any questions and discussions on these topics.
Evan Fraser, Director, Arrell Food Institute, University of Guelph: Thank you so much for this opportunity. I would like to make two points; one in relation to food insecurity which relates to affordability, poverty, pricing and access; and, second, the potential for agriculture to be a cornerstone of national food security.
With regard to the food insecurity point, the timing of our meeting today is really good. This morning, a group of us from all across Canada just launched the sixteenth annual Canada’s Food Price Report, and this year’s report paints a bleak picture. We anticipate that food prices will rise by 4% to 6% over the next year. Translating that into real dollars, an average family of four will have to find an extra $1,000 in an environment where budgets are already squeezed.
If we look into the data, as Ms. Stern and Ms. Petresin said an hour ago, we have to confront the fact that people experiencing food insecurity are disproportionately families from Black, Indigenous or other racialized groups. A huge number of food‑insecure people live with some form of disability or are often new Canadians, and to survive, they skip meals, compromise on nutritional quality and go to food banks.
Food insecurity has to be seen in the context of high housing prices. Earlier this year, I had the opportunity to bring one of Afghanistan’s top agricultural scientists to work with me at the University of Guelph thanks to a program that helps scholars at risk of persecution. As a result, I’ve become deeply involved in helping this amazing family settle here. A one-bedroom apartment, 700 square feet, for a family of five is $2,100 a month in rent, which is more than I pay for my mortgage.
My point is that food insecurity can’t be seen in isolation of high housing costs and wages, and that makes it incumbent on all of us to recognize both the need for but also the limits of food banks and other emergency charities.
Let me move to the second point. If food insecurity relates to wages, housing prices and access, food security relates to the power of our agricultural sector to deliver healthy and sustainable food, like Dr. Webb just mentioned. On this front, I think we sit at a moment of incredible opportunity but also tremendous peril. Agriculture and agri-food have a potential to drive positive change in terms of climate, nutrition and the economy, but we have to do this in the context of massive geopolitical upheaval, climate change and the trade war, of course.
I would say, to protect against the perils and take advantage of the opportunities, we need that robust agricultural sector that Dr. Webb just talked about. It’s often said that civilization sits only nine meals or three days from anarchy, that if the food trucks stop moving into Canada to nourish our cities, it would be three days before we started running out and seeing anarchy really unfold.
I would say, to be truly food secure as a nation, we need to not only focus on the policies and programs that Ms. Stern and Ms. Petresin were talking about, but also the ones that Dr. Webb has mentioned. There are three key items on my agenda that we should focus on, and they resonate with what Dr. Webb just said.
First, we need an investment in an ambitious program of applied research, training and infrastructure to build up food sovereignty, realizing that food security is national security.
Second, we have to attract more capital into agriculture and agri-food innovation, and Canadian companies have to boost their at-home research and development. We can’t keep exporting our best minds and our best technologies along with our beef and our lentils.
Finally, we have to train the next generation and bring a diverse array of people and thinkers into the agricultural solutions space. This work is something that I’m personally very engaged in through work at the Arrell Food Institute at the University of Guelph. We’ve just received $17 million for a new national, coast to coast program of sustainable food systems for Canada to support a next generation of innovators and entrepreneurs in agri-food innovation.
To end, I’ve got a key message for you. I would encourage you to consider embarking on a two-part nation-building strategy. The first should focus on food insecurity, addressing head on the fact that one in four Canadians is food insecure and develop the social programming and community engagement to fix that problem.
Second, I believe very strongly that Canada should invest in research and training to develop the strategies so that we build up a resilient, strong, productive food production system that will not only see us through crises but also lay the foundations for a more prosperous sector and country, writ large.
With that, I would very much like to thank you for your attention. It is wonderful that you are spending your energy on these important issues, and I’m very grateful for having the opportunity to share with you today. Thank you.
The Deputy Chair: Thank you for your comments, Dr. Fraser. Lastly, Dr. Dutton, you now have the floor.
Daniel Dutton, Associate Professor, Community Health and Epidemiology, Dalhousie University, as an individual: Good morning. I am an Associate Professor at Dalhousie University in the Department of Community Health and Epidemiology. I’m also a member of a research group called PROOF, with members across Canada and the U.S. who have the goal of identifying policy options to reduce household food insecurity in Canada.
I want to open by pointing out that household food insecurity is a specific scientific concept. It sounds like it should be the opposite of food security, but it is not. Household food insecurity is the inadequate or insecure access to food due to financial constraints at the household level. Food security has been used to refer to everything from our ability to produce enough food domestically to feed our population, the food supply chain and access to food banks. Food security, therefore, is a term inclusive of many problems that have to do with food, and people sometimes conflate action on anything food related with solutions to household food insecurity, which is not correct.
This inappropriate combination of household food insecurity with issues grouped under the banner of food security complicates the language for people in government trying to grapple with the problem of household food insecurity. Some find it helpful to think about how food insecurity is part of consumption poverty and so is related to challenges attributable to general affordability, cost of living, labour market outcome inequality and housing, like we just heard.
Statistics Canada measures household food insecurity using a specific questionnaire that has been agreed upon by researchers to accurately measure household material circumstances. That means efforts to decrease that measure will improve the lives of Canadians by improving their health and decreasing health care demand. For reference, about one in four people in Canada are in food-insecure households.
I know this standing committee has heard from government employees from AAFC, ESDC and others who have also emphasized that household food insecurity is tied to income. I’ve heard it all morning, so that’s great. This is consistent with decades of research on food insecurity.
The Public Health Agency of Canada recently published reviews on what impacts food insecurity in Canada and came to the same conclusion: Food insecurity is improved by actions that decrease financial hardship. Those reviews identified that giving households food through in-kind mechanisms does not make much of an impact on food insecurity.
The idea that giving a household food does not impact household food insecurity is a major sticking point for many people because it sounds unintuitive. The reason this unintuitive idea is true is because of what household food insecurity reflects — the structural factors facing a household. Those can include the adequacy and stability of income, unexpected expenses and cost-of-living, none of which change when we deliver food.
Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada’s own audit of the Local Food Infrastructure Fund and the Auditor General’s review of the Emergency Food Security Fund and the Surplus Food Rescue Program also found no evidence of these programs reducing food insecurity.
The National School Food Program has potential to do well for education outcomes and student nutrition, but for reasons I mentioned, we would not expect it to be a major factor lowering future household food insecurity. People will appreciate the benefits they receive from the National School Food Program or other community food programs; however, these programs are not going to impact household food insecurity because it is not necessarily a food availability problem.
In Canada, we address many other important problems without in-kind transfers and end up improving household food insecurity. I’ll give you an example from my own research. Old Age Security is more generous than social assistance, and research shows that when low-income individuals turn 65 and qualify for these public pensions, their likelihood of being food insecure decreases. I want to point out that Old Age Security is not making households incredibly rich. These benefits are adding stability to a household’s budget, and that budget faces rapidly rising food costs, along with housing costs and general inflation.
In closing, I am a researcher in a faculty of medicine, and I care about the implications of household food insecurity for Canadians. Treating the symptoms of food insecurity will not decrease it in the population, just like having excellent cancer care will not decrease the likelihood of someone getting cancer in the population. Most Canadians, I guess, would probably prefer to prevent cancer than to have excellent treatment for cancer when they get it. Similarly, the prevention of household food insecurity is more effective in terms of overall health improvement.
Decreasing household food insecurity in Canada means acting on social issues that drive it, and that means acting high on the chain of events that leads to food insecurity. That action is uniquely possible through intervention at the federal level; for example, through income policies managed by ESDC. That action is not food related, despite initial impressions that it should be, and does not really fall specifically on the shoulders of agriculture or agri-food. Thank you.
The Deputy Chair: Thank you to each of you for your opening statements.
Colleagues, being aware of the time available to us, I suggest that, for the first round, each senator is allowed five minutes, including question and answer. If the question is for a particular panellist, please indicate that, or if it’s for all three.
Senator Sorensen: I’ll direct my question to Dr. Fraser.
Four of my colleagues and I had the opportunity in October to be at the University of Guelph, and we met with many people, including Dr. Fraser, and learned a lot about his institute.
Based on your bio, you were the inaugural co-chair of the Canadian Food Policy Advisory Council, the multi-stakeholder group that advises the Minister of Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada on the implementation of Canada’s food policy. First, does the council still exist, and if it does, what does that look like in terms of meetings or discussions?
Second, we’re often told that food security policies touch on so many different portfolios and departments. I’m curious to know if, when you are in some of these meetings, do other ministers show up other than just the Ag Minister or staff?
Mr. Fraser: Senator Sorensen, thank you. It is nice to see you again. I’m really grateful for that question.
A bit of history: About 10 years ago, a number of us within government and outside of government thought that because food is such an interstitial issue that working with government to create a national food policy for Canada would be an interesting exercise. Mr. McCauley first and then Mr. Bibeau, ministers in their time, as leads for the federal government did, indeed, run with that: They created a wonderful food policy that included exports, environment, food security and nutrition as key organizing principles. One component of that — and we’re going back six or seven years ago now — was an advisory council that Sylvie Cloutier of the Quebec Food Processing Council and I had the privilege of co-chairing. It was wonderful. We advised government on a number of different topics, including being heavily involved in the brainstorming that ultimately led to the creation of the National School Food Program. At that time, in 2021-22, we had tremendous interactions with the federal cabinet — ESDC and AAFC being the two primary portfolios that we interacted with.
Since then, we haven’t been active. There still exists a website with our smiling faces on it. We haven’t been called upon since the fall of 2023. I believe, officially, our terms are now up as a council. It has been a while since I’ve thought about it, I’ll confess. I would love to be deployed; I stand ready and willing to reconvene that group at a moment’s notice to provide across‑the-storefront advice, from farm to fork, including food banks, Indigenous communities, all the way through to major food processors and producer associations. Those are the people who were appointed to sit on that council, and we are ready to provide advice to the minister and the federal government whenever seems appropriate. Thank you.
Senator Sorensen: I am glad to have these comments as part of this meeting.
Could you then elaborate on the Arrell Food Summit, which I wasn’t able to get to in October but would have loved to have been at? I understand you bring together stakeholders from industry, government, policy, non-profit and academia. Does that help in terms of educating the federal government? Can you give me a few takeaways from this year’s summit?
Mr. Fraser: I’m delighted to have that question.
We were created on the backs of an enormously generous investment by the Arrell Family Foundation to host the annual summit and related activities. The theme of this year’s summit was resilience and building the resilience of building Canada’s food system — unpacking resilience to mean resilience is a system that can provide food for us no matter what happens. It is a system that can bounce back quickly but also one that can “bounce forward” and reorient to a greater level of health, nutrition, and economic prosperity and sustainability. That’s the way we unpacked it.
We had a wide range of vigorous debates. Mr. Galen Weston participated and informed everybody about the $50 million investment that he personally and through the Galen and Hilary Weston Foundation is making on the Million Acre Challenge, which is a series of financial incentives and investments to help farmers farm in a more climate-smart way. That was a major component of the summit.
Another major component of the summit was a panel of trade representatives from Canada, the U.S. and Mexico talking about CUSMA renegotiations and the challenges of conducting international trade policy in the current environment. On the other side of the equation, we talked with Indigenous Elders about strategies, which were largely echoed by what Ms. Petresin said in the previous hour of this panel, to engage local communities so that they can empower themselves. That, then, becomes much more of a consumer-focused, poverty-oriented discussion that was centred fully by the Indigenous panel.
Thank you.
Senator Sorensen: Thank you very much. I do remember talking about the Million Acre Challenge, which is totally interesting if anybody else wants to ask you about that.
Senator Muggli: I will start with my hometown representative from Saskatoon, Mr. Webb. It is nice to see you here.
Speaking of resilience, my question is around research and regulations. Could you speak to the importance of research regarding the integrity of food — so the protection of the quality of food, addressing predictability of floods, droughts, and pest and disease management — so any thoughts you have there? Do you have top recommendations to address regulatory burdens? What’s your number one regulatory burden you would like to see addressed to ensure food innovation is supported?
Mr. Webb: First of all, senator, thank you for the opportunity.
On the research side, I want to be absolutely clear: I talked about the innovation pipeline, and that is based on research. That knowledge creation is what powers us. The ability to develop the analytical tools and technologies to ensure that we have a traceable, transparent food supply chain is powered right from research. One of the things I would like to make sure we talk about is that research is really that early stage of innovation, and we’re really good at it. Where we need to move is from that proof of concept to functional prototypes to deployed technologies — so all the way down the innovation pipeline to deliver impacts.
Our next-door neighbour here at our facility is actually the Canadian Food Inspection Agency, or CFIA. We have opportunities to work with our partners at the CFIA to explore new tools and new technologies to do that research, and to speed up and enhance our ability to understand the safety and traceability of food.
On the regulatory side, I think it leads into the next question. We have a regulatory framework that is — think of it as a tree that has never been pruned. We add regulation, add regulation and add regulation. Every time those regulations were put in place, they made sense for the time. Speaking of traceability and the safety of food, the conversation we had with our colleagues at the CFIA when they were looking at a machine-learning digitization screen for us to look at diseases in plants, they asked us why we were looking at the visual spectrum. I answered that it was because the regulatory requirement to report is a visual base response. They were saying there were all other technologies about new infrared and multi-spectral analysis that can lead to enhanced productivity.
The opportunity we have with regulatory reform is to develop the right framework, prune the things that no longer make sense given where the technology space is today and enhance the opportunity to streamline it and make it more effective to be able to deliver new innovations into the marketplace. Thank you.
Senator Muggli: Are these burdensome regulations primarily located within Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada?
Mr. Webb: No. I think the regulations from an ag and food perspective are at the federal, provincial and municipal levels. That impacts investment and really decreases attracting foreign investment. Again, we need to be thinking holistically about the regulatory framework. From a lot of the things we talked about that example was at the federal level.
Senator Muggli: I know we won’t have time, but if you have time in writing to provide us with an analysis of some of the burdensome regulations at all those levels at a higher level, we would be happy to receive that.
Mr. Webb: Thank you, senator, I will take that homework assignment.
Senator McBean: I will continue with Mr. Webb. Mr. Webb, what are the most promising innovations emerging in global food systems that Canada could adopt to improve our domestic food security and agricultural sustainability?
Mr. Webb: Senator, thank you for the question. Getting back to this idea of the innovation pipeline where there’s knowledge creation and new research being done at universities and research institutes across Canada. One of the areas that the Global Institute for Food Security and our partners in both the public and private sectors is actually the widespread adoption of technologies that our competitors are using. Genomic selection, for example, is the ability to link the performance of a plant or animal with its DNA code and to model and predict the outcome of an animal or a plant. That speeds up the rate of genetic gain and increases resiliency in the supply chain and drives productivity.
Australia has been using it effectively across a lot of crops. Our Canadian farmers do not have access to that same technology. Why? Because there are some structural challenges in the industry, and it’s through these unique partnerships I talked about where we can bring together public and private players to leverage the capabilities across the organizations to drive an impact.
Again, that is one of the places we see. It’s not really research discovery, it is research deployment, and that’s where there is huge opportunity. That is the gap we have in Canada’s productivity outcomes, where we see investment in research but not the commiserate impact in the marketplace. That is one area we see as a real opportunity to look at new partnership models to drive that productivity and performance.
Senator McBean: Give us in writing later what some of those systemic barriers are that are preventing our agriculture system from implementing that. That would be great. I’ve just received a note from our colleague, Senator Robinson, who would like to say, hi, she thinks you’re amazing.
My next question is for Dr. Dutton. In our original discussion about what we wanted to do with this study, we did discuss the differences. You started off with defining food security versus food insecurity. What are your thoughts on the fact that this study is looking at both sides?
Mr. Dutton: It’s a natural function of how the standing committee defines its work, and as a mandate to look at agriculture and agri-food naturally you would talk about food security issues.
It’s unfortunate that the language about food in Canada, any group that cares about food will naturally pick all these topics and put them under the same roof. I’m in New Brunswick and I volunteer my time with Food For All NB. When I said I’m going to talk to the Senate standing committee, I got a list of policy recommendations on almost every topic that has to do with food. It’s a function of the fact that people care about the human appearance of having food to eat, which they look up and down the chain of all food-related topics that could possibly relate to their work.
My particular interest is in household food insecurity because I’m interested in how governments can make policy actions that improve the health of Canadians and household food insecurity is one way to measure what we truly care about with regard to consumption poverty.
You can imagine there are households that have low income but aren’t consumption poor, like maybe a retired household. They have a lot of wealth and would not consider themselves food insecure but they might have a low income. So food insecurity is useful from a purely research perspective trying to pin down the households that are particularly susceptible to shocks in the economy, like COVID, causing you to lose your job.
There isn’t a direct answer to your question. I don’t have strong opinions about whether or not food security/food insecurity can or cannot live together. It’s really important that we are careful on what can affect household food insecurity because we have a lot of evidence that things like cooking skills or financial literacy, we don’t have a great idea of how that turns into better household food insecurity. What we do have studies on is that when a household has low income and then has more income, their likelihood of food insecurity goes down. So they haven’t learned better financial literacy or cooking skills during that giving them of income phenomenon. That is where I come at the topic from.
Senator Burey: Thank you so much for everyone being here, and, of course, the Senate only deals with complex issues, so we always take a stab at it. I have two questions, one for Dr. Fraser and also Dr. Dutton.
I was just on the World Food Programme page and their definitions — and this is what we’re grappling with: What is food security?
Food security exists when people have access to enough safe and nutritious food for a normal growth and development and an active and healthy life. By contrast, food insecurity refers to when the aforementioned conditions don’t exist.
So those are the definitions. Dr. Dutton, the household food insecurity which you were speaking of in terms of how StatCan now puts that into their market basket of index or whatever it’s called to measure that material deprivation and also an indicator is a more specific drilling down to that. I’ll get your comments on that.
Then I would also get to Dr. Fraser, and thank you so much for how you explained the difference and how you were on the Canadian Food Policy Advisory Council. I’m particularly interested in kids and how they can access this innovation. You’re talking about innovation and getting them tuned into what is happening in the agricultural sector. We talked about workforce and innovation and I will get your comments on that after. Dr. Dutton, would you be able to answer?
Mr. Dutton: A lot of organization that have a wide-scope view on food issues will have definitions like that one. World Health Organization definition of health, for example, very wide. When I talk about household food insecurity in a Canadian context, I’m talking about what Statistics Canada measures in the Canadian Income Survey, which is an 18-question module that walks people through from: Do you ever worry about not having enough food? All the way down to: Your children don’t eat for a day. This is a severity index where they try to put together information on how many people in Canada are living in a household that is food insecure.
Regarding children, we have evidence, for example, that module — that thing that measures how food insecure a household is — responds to things like the Canada Child Benefit. So very much sensitive to things like income we would image changes this notion. Outside of the statistical survey, we have a notion of what could change household food insecurity, and that instrument responds to it. We think that is a good measure of household food insecurity, but definitions vary, as you pointed out.
Senator Burey: Dr. Fraser.
Mr. Fraser: Thank you so much for asking me to speak to the issue of training. A couple of years ago I met a young robotics engineer who spent his training at the University of Waterloo dreaming of working for NASA, and then discovered there were better-paying jobs, more intellectually challenging jobs working in Leamington trying to figure out how to create a harvester for tomatoes in the greenhouse sector. That really inspired me, that conversation about how he was dreaming about one thing but realized that there was actually a better career path in the agriculture food and innovation sector. The sector as a whole faces a major skills and a major labour shortage; that’s well proven. The question then is: How do we overcome those biases of kids dreaming of working for space agencies when they really should be working for ag food.
At the University of Guelph, our sustainable food systems for Canada project you imagine a funnel. We are creating a series of micro-credentials that will be largely administered online to learners from across the country. We have Indigenous partners from the Far North to attract the attention of people in remote and rural communities, all the way through to major universities in downtown cities.
We have a micro-credential platform to attract attention, including series of events from coast to coast to coast that will be running every year: hackathons, design jams, pitch contests, really designed to break the barriers apart, expose people to the excitement that is agri-food innovation, like Dr. Webb was giving us examples of. Then a mentorship program so that when we identify really promising people and really promising ideas, we can help set them up to do things like enroll in the right post‑secondary program. Or, if they are a little bit further along, set up a business and get into Canada’s incubation and acceleration ecosystem that is very robust, but doesn’t have as much to do with agri-food as it should.
Try to image that funnel and we’re trying to build that funnel with all of our partners in order to make sure that when the next generation of robotics engineer’s dream of the future, they think, I want to be working for the greenhouse sector because that is where the mission to Mars is.
Senator Ross: My question is for Mr. Webb. Following up on Senator McBean’s question, can you give me a sense of how technology goes from an idea to scale up to market launch? And are we doing a good job in Canada of getting the new tech ideas over the finish line? How can we improve in this regard? And what kind of supports would help?
Mr. Webb: First of all, Dr. Fraser has written a lot about this topic as well, so there is a good team in the room today. One of the things Dr. Fraser mentioned in his opening remarks is the need for the Canadian industry to invest more here in Canada.
My background, for the senators, is actually industry. I was 23 years in industry, started my career in Saskatchewan, was almost 20 years in the United States and I worked at the global level.
I talked about the structural gap in our innovation ecosystem, and the technologies that have driven the sustainability success story we had from the 1980s and 1990s. One thing that has happened and why we have designed GIFS to fill that gap is to attract industry investment. You need really good ideas that are at our universities, but to scale it up and impact it, you need to be able to operate at scale. And that is the place in the innovation pipeline that we occupy as the Global Institute for Food Security. That ability to connect the business sector with our academic universities and research institute partners and really translate that proof of concept to a functional prototype and go beyond.
From a business perspective — the company that I worked for, which is now CORTEVA — Canada had an unfair share of the R&D investment in the 1990s. Somewhere in the mid-2000s, the infrastructure changed, the focus changed and we were then attracted to organizations like I mentioned in my testimony, the Fraunhofer Institutes because it is that applied science operates at scale. So where our competitors are using these new tools and technologies, it is on those organizations that work with and across industry, government and research institutes. I think from a Canadian perspective, the regulatory framework in helping advance the technology a little bit further down the innovation pipeline will help attract more investment to Canada, and support the entrepreneur ecosystem, the startup ecosystem that Dr. Fraser mentioned before.
Senator Muggli: Thank you, Mr. Fraser, for giving us a title to our study: anarchy in three days. If that doesn’t get someone’s attention, I don’t know what will. My question is for Mr. Dutton. What we have heard so far that Canada’s food insecurity problem follows a hierarchy. So if you think about the who, the pillars, our biggest issue is access, and that’s about income and affordability, and then stability because people are being pushed in and out of food insecurity by inflation, food costs, employment. And after that comes utilization and availability, which seems to be challenges most often in Northern and remote communities. Is that what you’re seeing in your work? And if so can you tell us where the policy effort and investment should go.
Mr. Dutton: What we’re seeing with recent increases and the likelihood of household food insecurity is less of a focus directly on what I’ve heard this morning about — I’m not going to say unfair focus — but a focus on the intersection with poverty. When we think about household food insecurity, a lot of people in their brains are picturing poor people. The market basket measure was mentioned earlier. This is Canada’s poverty line. So you can imagine we’re focusing on policies that bring people above this line. So social assistance, not a federal jurisdiction, is not going to get a family above the Market Basket Measure line. So by design, these people are now poor. That’s the policy we’ve made.
But we are starting to see the risk of food insecurity in households above that poverty line is nonzero. And I can say to you, if you imagine a single-parent household in Toronto where the wage is $48,000 a year, that person is above the Market Basket Measure by about $5,000. An unexpected expense or a change in their rent or something mundane could put them into a food insecurity world. If I think about federal policies that affect that person, they are probably not a huge priority — based on observables — for pre-existing government policies, other than if they have a child, the child benefit, and various affordability things that might apply globally.
One thing that we’ve seen in our research on COVID and people who received CERB, for example, is that their likelihood of food insecurity before CERB even existed was higher than people who wouldn’t go on to get CERB. That, to me, underlines that there are certain jobs and career pathways, maybe in retail or service industry, where the instability associated with that work just brings with it a higher likelihood for food insecurity for people working in that industry.
You pointed out a hierarchy, I think that stability is very important because when we look at programs like Old Age Security, the income amount is not drastic or impressive, but the reliability of that coming allows people to plan.
In Canada, one thing that might make a large difference is changing the amounts that people receive based on where they live. So the Market Basket Measure has something like 53 zones throughout Canada. In New Brunswick, we have a zone for St. John and Moncton, which might not make sense, but there exist zones. If you look at the likelihood of food insecurity for people at the Market Basket Measure across Canada, it is different.
Maybe you face a 30% likelihood of food insecurity in one place but 50% in another at the Market Basket Measure threshold.
To me, it’s not like stability is a second-rate consideration, I think it is key.
I think that we have a lot of focus in remote areas on accessibility. We heard stories earlier that underline how difficult it is for some people to physically access food. I think that that is where we are best positioned to have people who are local who care and working on solving that very concrete issue. I think enabling those people is a good idea, rather than trying to it hit it with a blunt instrument across the country.
Senator Muggli: Any final thoughts on the recent changes to the Canada Disability Benefit?
Mr. Dutton: More than a minute worth of thoughts. The way that the Canadian Income Survey measures disability is inclusive of things that you and I, in having a casual conversation, may not consider disabled, things that come up in the module like maybe you have ADHD or a mental health concern that is medicated and you don’t qualify for the Disability Tax Credit. Therefore, there is a bit of a disconnect between the Disability Tax Credit and disabled people who are food insecure. I am never going to advocate against a disability tax credit increase, because we can image that people who require it have challenges other than food insecurity, but it intersects with this poverty focus when we can consider broadening our view.
Senator Burey: Dr. Fraser, I wanted to give you a little more time, because we were sort of cut off earlier. We were talking about training, and you started with the example of people doing robotics. As a pediatrician, many of my patients were in FIRST Robotics, which I’m sure you have heard of. As I am from Windsor-Essex, a power house for greenhouses and agriculture and also the automotive sector, the kids were only talking about the automotive sector. What can you do to change the minds so we can have that training and innovation pipeline?
Mr. Fraser: This is a pervasive problem that goes back as far back as Confederation. Canadian agriculture, forestry and mining focus on the production of raw commodities and doesn’t focus on value-added products as much. As a result, I don’t think most young people consider the primary industries as exciting, innovative or at the forefront of science. Whereas, the work that Dr. Webb and I do very clearly demonstrate that agriculture is at the forefront.
That is just simply articulating the problem. I am not giving you a solution there. I’m just saying this is a very old problem that we have been combating for decades.
In my own role as a university professor and an educator, I have written graphic novels and created cartoon books. I have been involved in creating high school lesson plans in order to bring attention to these issues — that the challenge of feeding the future is not only at the vanguard of science but is also part of the moral mission of the current generation, and that there are good, solid, stable-income career paths at the basis of it.
When I approach students in that light — that you can participate in one of the great challenges of our generation, essentially, and also have a great job — that resonates with young people. Yet, we live in a world where working for NASA sounds exciting and working for a greenhouse sounds boring. That is a major cultural problem that we need to work on. I have some tools that I have used to some extent, but I think very strongly that we need to be doing a better job of communicating the excitement of being part of the agricultural world to young people as a key strategy for national security.
Senator Burey: Mr. Webb, could you comment on that?
Mr. Webb: Yes, one thing that we did when I was with the private sector is that we partnered with universities to actually advertise how cool it was to be in agriculture in middle cities. Why did we do that? We did that because there were declining enrollment rates at some of the agriculture colleges in the United States, and industry needs a diverse talent pipeline.
Dr. Fraser mentioned that the program that he’s leading out of Guelph to obtain that diversity. How do we get these partnerships with industry to help attract and inform? People across all of the verticals are shocked at how sophisticated agriculture is. We sequence more than the health care industry does. We do so much more than the health care industry, but we are silent. I am biased because I have been over 30 years in the industry, but I am so excited about the technology that we can do here. This is a role for partnerships to help attract that talent because that diversity of thought and attraction of a talent pool is critical to growing our industry and to contributing to GDP growth.
Senator Sorensen: Thank you very much. I am jumping in for a final question. I’m going back to Dr. Fraser. You mentioned this in your last answer, but can you tell the committee about the book you wrote during COVID, Dinner on Mars, and where we can obtain it?
Mr. Fraser: Thank you for the plug. This was a fun COVID project that Lenore Newman from the West Coast and I started as a text exchange because no one could travel anywhere in 2020, and we started dreaming about going to Mars. This was before Elon Musk fell out of favour. She said to me, “What is Elon going to eat when he gets to Mars?” We ended up writing a book. It’s called Dinner on Mars, and it was published by a Canadian press called ECW Press.
It is a thought experiment about what it would take to feed a community off of a planet, but really it is about Earth. If you think about building a community on Mars, you have to build a food system that is incredibly efficient, incredibly equitable and incredibly nutritious. Every millilitre of water and gram of organic matter is a hard-fought resource. The conclusion of the book is that we had better not screw this planet up. It is a bit of a cliché, of course. We could build a community on Mars, but it would be a very challenging and deprived environment to live in. Whereas, if we deploy the technologies that we know we have — and I truly think that Canada is on the cusp of this — we could be the world leader in creating a food system that creates far more economic value for our citizens, far more nutritional security for our citizens but also then plays as massive outsized role in feeding a future on a hot, crowded planet.
The technologies are there and are coming quickly. Dr. Webb’s institute — the Global Institute for Food Security — is at the vanguard of doing much of the genetic work for our commodities and things like that. My colleagues at the University of Guelph are doing the food science. I have eaten so many kinds of weird proteins in the last few months that have come out of brewing facilities. The future is exciting, and the future doesn’t need to look like the past.
While we honour agriculture, and we build on Canada’s incredible farm community, we can also look forward to a very prosperous and innovative future with the right investments, but it will take leadership from the federal government in order to unlock that.
I have last one comment. Often we think of research as taking money and turning it into ideas. Canada is wonderful at that. Innovation is taking those ideas and turning them back into money. That is where we fall down. Strategic investments in terms of doing that second part of the loop would position Canada to be a global leader and, indeed, Justine Hendricks calls this “Canada’s moonshot,” and John Stackhouse calls this “the generational opportunity.” That’s the sort of vibe that I would like to leave you with.
Senator Sorensen: Thank you. What a nice way to end the panel. It was nice seeing you again.
The Deputy Chair: It was a nice way to end the panel. I want to thank all three doctors here for your participation today. This was an extremely informative session, and we appreciate your contribution to the study. I also want to commend you for the work each of you do — borrowing the phrase from Dr. Fraser — to deal with our national security. Thank you very much for today’s participation.
I want to thank the committee members for your active participation and thoughtful suggestions. I also want to take a moment to quickly thank all staff that support the work of this committee. Thank you to our clerk, our Library of Parliament analysts, the interpreters, the Debates team transcribing this meeting, the committee-room attendant, the multimedia services technician, the broadcasting team, the Record Centre, ISD and our page.
(The committee adjourned.)