THE STANDING SENATE COMMITTEE ON AGRICULTURE AND FORESTRY
EVIDENCE
OTTAWA, Thursday, April 30, 2026
The Standing Senate Committee on Agriculture and Forestry met with videoconference this day at 8:03 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 Mary Robinson (Chair) in the chair.
[English]
The Chair: Good morning. My name is Mary Robinson, and I am the Chair of the Standing Senate Committee on Agriculture and Forestry. Welcome to members of the committee, our witnesses, as well as those watching this meeting online.
I would like to start by acknowledging that the land on which we gather is the unceded traditional territory of the Algonquin Anishinaabe Nation.
Before we hear from our witnesses for today, I would like to start by asking the senators around the table to introduce themselves.
Senator McNair: John McNair from the province of New Brunswick. Thank you.
Senator Sorensen: Karen Sorensen, Alberta, Treaty 7 territory.
Senator Ross: Good morning. Krista Ross, New Brunswick. I’m sitting in for Senator Rob Black.
The Chair: Thank you all.
I would like to ask all senators to consult the cards on the table for guidelines to prevent audio feedback incidents.
I would also like to remind all those participating to refrain from switching languages mid-sentence and to not speak too quickly. Clear audio supports accurate interpretation, transcription and captioning.
Today, the committee is continuing its study on the role of the agriculture and agri-food sector with regard to food security in Canada.
For our first panel, we have the pleasure of welcoming: Sarah Elton, Food systems and public health researcher, Assistant Professor and Eakin Chair at the Dalla Lana School of Public Health at the University of Toronto, who is joining us online; and Brady Deaton, Jr., Professor and McCain Family Chair in Food Security in the Department of Food, Agricultural and Resource Economics at the University of Guelph, who is joining us in person.
Thank you very much for joining us. It’s wonderful to see you both again.
We’ll begin with your opening remarks before we move to questions from members. You will each have five minutes. The floor is now yours, Professor Elton.
Sarah Elton, Food systems and public health researcher, Assistant Professor, Eakin Chair, Dalla Lana School of Public Health, University of Toronto, as an individual: Good morning. It is a pleasure to address the committee this morning.
I am a food systems researcher and assistant professor at the Dalla Lana School of Public Health at the University of Toronto. Today, I will describe a major finding from my research that is relevant to your study of Canadian food security: Public food system infrastructure supports food security for Canadians. It does this by connecting farmers to city markets and by enabling independent businesses to compete with major corporations in a food system that we know is characterized by corporate concentration.
The institution at the centre of my research is the Ontario Food Terminal. For those members of the committee who did not get a chance to visit, if you have been in Toronto and driven along the Gardiner Expressway, you might have seen it just to the north of the highway in Etobicoke.
Six days a week, the terminal provides a wholesale marketplace for food that is grown in Canada as well as for imported produce. Independent businesses of all sizes do their business there: supermarkets, greengrocers, restaurants, catering companies, mobile produce vendors and also food banks.
Since 2020, I have worked with a team to track the supply chains of fresh fruits and vegetables that feed Canadians. A large part of the study has focused on the terminal to better understand the role of public food system infrastructure.
What we found is: The terminal enables independent businesses, both large and small, to participate in the food economy. It provides a market for Canadian farmers to sell direct to a diversity of wholesale customers, providing an alternative to the gatekeeping powers of major retail chains.
Also at the terminal, Ontario farmers, produce dealers and wholesale houses sell fresh produce to a range of independent businesses that then provide food access to communities.
Critically, we found that low-income communities are served by small and micro food sellers that source at the terminal.
When we examined the prices of the fruits and vegetables that flow through the terminal to these small and independent retailers, the public benefit became even clearer to us because we found them selling for significantly less than at major chain supermarkets.
I worked with my colleague Aparna Raghu Menon to find that many common produce items like tomatoes, apples and culturally significant foods like okra were 20% to 40% cheaper at independent greengrocers than at major chain supermarkets, at least in part due to the existence of this competitive publicly supported wholesale market.
Because this is Canada and, well, there’s winter, we investigated what Ontario-grown produce was for sale at the terminal between the end of the growing season in October and the start of it in the spring with, of course, seasonal food security in mind.
We found that a winter supply exists. Many farmers we spoke to want to produce more in the off-season, but there are both economic and ecological reasons that prevent scaling up.
Then we looked at what the terminal requires to function. We mapped where regional produce was grown, and it was clear that agricultural land in the region needed to be considered as a supporting component of this kind of public food system infrastructure.
From this, we concluded in a recent article published in Nature Cities that Canadian food security is also dependent on farmland protection.
I will end by reflecting on the fact that our research has been made critical to national security by the shift in the relationship with the United States.
For decades, Canada has relied on the United States for its food security. This is now a demonstrated vulnerability.
When my team analyzed trade data, we found that of all the produce that we import into this country, more than 82% of it travels via the United States’ transportation infrastructure via their shipping ports and their highways. Any disruption to this puts our food supply at risk.
So what can we take away from our study? Investment of government funds in public food system infrastructure can have an intergenerational impact, as we see at the terminal. It can support independent businesses operating in a food system dominated by major corporate actors. These independent businesses, in the case of the terminal, make affordable food accessible to many Canadians. And the food security provided by the terminal is dependent on farmland within driving distance, which means food security involves protecting regional farmland from development. Farmland should not be used to build houses, new highways or for other industries.
Thus, public food system infrastructure is one way the government can support food security for all Canadians.
Thank you.
The Chair: Thank you, Professor Elton. Next we have Professor Deaton. The floor is yours.
Brady Deaton, Jr., Professor and McCain Family Chair in Food Security, Department of Food, Agricultural and Resource Economics, University of Guelph, as an individual: Thank you very much. I’m honoured to be here. I’m happy to see familiar faces from your last visit to the University of Guelph. In my opening remarks, I will mainly discuss public policy matters related to food insecurity, which affects an unacceptable 25% of our population.
My comments are based on my research as a professor at the University of Guelph, my professional training as an agricultural economist and my life and work experiences in low-income and food-insecure regions of the world.
Food insecurity remains one of the most substantive concerns facing Canada. This problem predates our most recent geopolitical tensions and is compounded by contemporary economic challenges, particularly for low-income individuals. Food insecurity is well defined — inadequate access to food quality or quantity due to financial limitations — and measured by Statistics Canada.
A core cause is low income. Therefore, the most efficient way to reduce food insecurity is to increase the effective income of households, whether directly through increased income or indirectly through reduced costs of food, housing or other essentials.
In an earlier publication, my colleague and I reviewed the 2019 Food Policy for Canada through the lens of food insecurity. We found that the policy aspires to address food security but not in ways that effectively reduce food insecurity. Most programs in the policy that are associated with food security lack a clear focus on either increasing income or reducing food costs. In our paper, we provide a simple framework for government to consider when developing programs designed to reduce food insecurity. I would be happy to review that in our Q and A.
By Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada’s own assessment of the Food Policy for Canada, many of the programs with the potential to reduce household food insecurity were deemed unlikely to have done so, with benefits accruing instead to community food security. An important question remains: To what extent do the food insecure themselves benefit from community food security?
One program intended to address food insecurity is Nutrition North Canada, the federal government’s premier program to reduce food prices in remote and northern regions where Indigenous communities face high rates of food insecurity. My colleagues and I find that the program does effectively lower food prices on average.
Several considerations, however, warrant ongoing attention: The program is not targeted to the food insecure, so all community members benefit regardless of income or food security status; the program applies only to select foods and there is a variation in the subsidies across those foods, so benefits vary by purchasing behaviour; and grocery prices remain high due to remoteness. My view is that Nutrition North Canada is best thought of as one program within a broader portfolio of efforts needed to meaningfully address food insecurity.
I think it is worth noting that many, if not most, of the efforts to address food insecurity are outside the conventional scope of the agri-food sector. Programs like Old Age Security and the Canada Child Benefit, for example, are income supplementation programs that have been shown to reduce food insecurity.
I want to conclude by recognizing the fact that we are meeting in a unique moment in Canadian history — a moment defined by geopolitical tensions. In this setting, food security is increasingly blended with concerns of national sovereignty, food sovereignty, food independence and community food security, amongst others. Each of these different terms carries nuanced meanings and can motivate different policy actions with very different beneficiaries. One concern I have is that some of these terms promote ideas that ultimately usher in protectionist policies that are counterproductive to the capacity of the agri-food system to cost-effectively adapt to present and future challenges in a way that secures food availability. Just to make this point by example, the agricultural system will continue to face the historic threats of weather and geopolitical disruptions. If, for example, a large region of Canada were to have its local food production severely diminished — perhaps by drought or by flood — we would rely on the adaptivity of our agricultural system with its vast trade networks, both regional and international, to ensure food availability. I believe this adaptive capacity is nourished by an entrepreneurial and competitive system. Many of the federal and provincial governments’ long-standing programs support this resilience and productivity.
I’d like to end on a sentimental note and emphasize the ongoing importance of the discussions that we’re having and the education of our youth on these issues. For more than 20 years at the University of Guelph, I have had the privilege of working with students on the issues we will discuss today. No generation is better suited to address the future than the future generation. We are all committed to that.
Thank you for this opportunity. I welcome your questions and our discussion.
The Chair: Always good to finish on an optimistic and sentimental note. Thank you. We will now go to questions from senators. Senators will each have five minutes to ask and have their questions answered within. We’re going to start with our deputy chair, Senator McNair.
Senator McNair: Thank you, Dr. Deaton and Dr. Elton, for being here today and for participating in this. It’s nice to see both of you again.
I wanted to talk more about the Ontario Food Terminal. It is, as you pointed out, Canada’s largest wholesale food terminal and the third largest in North America, which supports food access in the province.
There’s a recent article by scholars from the University of Toronto’s Dalla Lana School of Public Health in The Globe and Mail, which is entitled “Canada’s reliance on the U.S. for our food is a recipe for disaster.” Dr. Elton, you’re familiar with this article, obviously. As you indicated in your opening remarks, it was reported that as much as 82.9% of all fruits and vegetables that enter into Canada come through the United States.
Furthermore, the authors went on to state that even when we import fruits and vegetables from other countries, the U.S. acts as an intermediary, which is consistent with what you told us when we were visiting. This means that of the more than 80% of fruits and vegetables we import from the U.S., in addition to the food that travels through our southern neighbour to get here, only 54.7% of that produce by weight is actually grown in the U.S.
You have touched on the implications for food security, with Canada not having full control of the supply chains. Did you want to expand on that a bit? You have listed a number of things at the end of your opening remarks that government could do, but it would be worth putting those in the record further, if you don’t mind, with respect to what governments should do to protect and expand existing food system infrastructure, such as the food terminal.
Lastly, how could farmers in rural communities be better connected with their markets in Canada?
Ms. Elton: Thank you very much, Senator McNair, for your questions, and thank you to Madam Chair and to everyone for having me here.
I have just taken notes a little bit about your question. I’ll go through the three parts. First, let’s talk about international trade. Yes, our system lacks resiliency, as we wrote in that article in The Globe and Mail. We are still working on publishing those data in scholarly publications, but because of publishing timelines, we wanted to communicate this as quickly as possible to the government, which is why we chose to publish that article in the newspaper first.
So much of our food is imported from around the world that we have this impression that when we go to the supermarket, our food system is very resilient because we have oranges from Türkiye, avocados from Mexico and lemons from South Africa and beyond. However, when we examined the trade data, we saw that supply chains largely travel through the United States. Of course, food from Mexico and the United States will be travelling through the United States due to our land connection, but the use of American port infrastructure was particularly alarming to us as researchers. This is a choke point. That is something we wanted to raise attention to.
With regard to the Ontario Food Terminal, a lot of this food is destined for the Ontario Food Terminal because it acts as a marketplace for wholesalers who import from around the world, including much of the food that comes from the United States that is grown there as well as Mexico and beyond. It also acts as a regional food marketplace.
There are two elements or two sections of the place. Anyone who has visited will have seen these two parts. There is the wholesale part, but then there is also what they call the farmers’ market. This is a wholesale farmers’ market that acts as a marketplace for regional food.
This food not only serves Ontario but also goes into the Atlantic provinces. I have interviewed people who ship produce that is sold at the terminal that goes beyond Ontario’s borders. Food from all over Canada, like blueberries from British Columbia, for example, is also sold there.
This is a piece of public food system infrastructure that supports the regional food system in Ontario but is also very embedded in the national food system, like interprovincial trade, and also in the global food system.
Then we followed what happens to this food. We have this incredible diversity of food being sold there. We have a lot of food system actors, and we followed the food out of the terminal and into the community. What we found was that this terminal supports largely independent businesses, so as I addressed in my remarks, it’s those smaller grocery stores and also larger independent chains. In our food system, as I’m sure you all know, more than 70% is dominated by the five major chain supermarkets and food and beverage. The terminal acts as a wholesale market and supplier for produce for all the other players in this market. It supports competition, basically, which is something that the Competition Bureau Canada called for in their report in 2023.
Regarding these businesses, when we looked at the food there, people were asking us, “Is food cheaper at these places? How do they compete with the discount arms of the major chain supermarkets?” We found that the food was, in fact, even a surprise to us when we documented it — I’m happy to share. We have a paper under review right now that provides more detail about this, but when we compared items for items, like apple to apple or tomato to tomato, et cetera, we found that the food, in most cases, was less expensive when it had flowed through the Ontario Food Terminal. That allowed us to reflect upon the role of this public food system infrastructure that makes it possible for these smaller independent actors who do not have the capacity or money for warehouses and who cannot negotiate contracts with farms in distant countries or even in Ontario to be players in this market, serving often what we found were lower-income communities in the —
The Chair: I’m sorry to interrupt, Professor Elton, but we’re over time at this point. Someone else might pick up on this question, though.
Senator McNair: Would you share that research or that paper with us?
Ms. Elton: Absolutely.
The Chair: Thank you.
Senator Sorensen: Thank you both for being here. I’m going to combine a couple of questions, and I’m going to direct it to both of you. I’ll start with Professor Deaton.
The federal government has made investments through initiatives like the Food Policy for Canada and other related affordability measures, but I would like you both to elaborate further on where those efforts are falling short in addressing structural food insecurity. What gaps remain in connecting supply-side policies to improve food affordability and also access, which you had started to speak about on vulnerable populations.
We have had witnesses from the Yukon and the Northwest Territories, and we’re expecting witnesses from Nunavut. For those of us who live in other parts of Canada, it’s quite shocking the concerns and challenges they have with accessibility.
Given time, what specific federal policy tools or reforms would you prioritize to better connect food production?
Could you also elaborate on community food services as opposed to individuals? You made reference to the North, and I was intrigued by that comment.
That’s a lot, but we’ll see.
Mr. Deaton: The first question is: Where is it falling short?
Senator Sorensen: Where are we falling short, and what are the gaps?
Mr. Deaton: Early on in our review of the policy, when we looked at the programs that were being presented, such as things like community gardens or teaching and learning kitchens, we were unsure about two aspects of this. One is whether or not the food insecure necessarily participate in these programs, and the second is whether or not they effectively actually lower prices. This seems to be the conclusion later — and I have provided citations in my notes to you where you can get these references — when Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada reviewed it. It was their assessment that it had not actually addressed food insecurity but did achieve the objective of community food security, which is the idea of making a particular type of food available within that community. Here we are drawing a distinction between insecurity and food security or community availability as broadly defined.
Within the pathway forward is to evaluate a couple of steps. Is the program being proposed likely to reduce food prices? Does it support incomes in some way, and is it targeted to the food insecure?
The food insecure are on a spectrum. There is marginal, which would be associated with concern, all the way to severe. The proportion of people in the severe category is 7%. That would also be a suggestion to focus on and to see to what extent you can target within that.
Senator Sorensen: Within that 7%. Thank you. I will move over to Professor Elton and hear from her.
Ms. Elton: Thank you, Senator Sorensen. I will say that what our research does is it pokes a hole in the idea that supermarkets are synonymous with food security and food affordability. A lot of policy that we see looks at, perhaps, inviting other major chains to mix up the competition in Canada. What our research demonstrates is that there is already a lot of competition in the marketplace, and it’s just an uneven playing field where you have smaller actors who are challenged in competing against major chain supermarkets.
This is why public food system infrastructure tries to equalize this opportunity so that more people, more smaller businesses and more independent businesses — not just small, as some of them are very large — can also compete in our food economy and, therefore, provide more choice and more access to Canadians at what we found to even be lower prices.
Senator Sorensen: Thank you. Have you done any research around the North in terms of accessibility and affordability?
Ms. Elton: No. This study was in the city of Toronto largely.
Senator Sorensen: Thank you.
Senator Ross: I’m interested in the concept of the Ontario Food Terminal, so my question is for Professor Elton.
Is there an opportunity for similar models in places like Atlantic Canada? I understand there are only three of these terminals in Canada, and they would be within what we in Atlantic Canada call MTV: Montreal, Toronto and Vancouver. They are non-subsidized. They are non-funded.
Is this model something that could be replicated, or do you feel that the whole of the country can be served through these three hubs?
I want to know if you can speak to the connection, if there is one, between the terminal and organizations such as food banks and other social support programs for the food insecure.
Ms. Elton: Thank you very much for your questions.
I’ll start with the second one because it’s a quick answer. Yes, I have interviewed food banks and food service agencies that depend on the terminal for purchasing. It’s not largely donations. They also purchase through the terminal as opposed to purchasing from other options.
For your other question, yes, this is a model that can be replicated elsewhere. I will say that the Ontario Food Terminal is different from the ones in Montreal and Vancouver. This one is truly public. It was created by the Ontario government after World War II, and that’s because farmers at the time were struggling to sell their crops at prices that could support their livelihoods. The Conservative government at the time believed they had a role to play in the food system, so that government invested civil service, dollars, et cetera into building up the institution, passing the Ontario Food Terminal Act and locating land to build the terminal on a highway — it was actually on a railway track. Now the railway no longer operates through the terminal. This was a public effort and led largely — as we see in the historical literature — by a civil servant, so that distinguishes the terminal.
However, we see these around the world regarding this idea of the wholesale terminal. Governments in Europe and Asia continue to invest in public wholesale markets because of the role they play in allowing for these independent actors to have a role in the food system. It could definitely be scaled up. The model could be translated to any part — not any part of the country, of course, in terms of scale, but it is a model that transfers. As we see, they’re all over Latin America, Asia, Africa and Europe, so this is a model that can be adapted to the region.
Senator Ross: Thank you.
Senator Burey: Thank you for being here. I’m sorry I was a little bit late today and I missed a little bit of your presentations, but I’ve read some of your research. This question may have been asked, and maybe both of our expert witnesses could answer this.
I’m going to pick up on Senator Sorensen’s question regarding community gardens and learning kitchens and the idea — which you alluded to, Dr. Deaton — of them not really reducing food insecurity, at least in this study, but they had improved food security in the community as well. I wanted to drill down into that and ask if you were able to tease out whether it improves social cohesion when food is more available. This is the kind of information that maybe the government would want to know as well.
Mr. Deaton: To be clear, in terms of evaluating this program, I’m referring to the evaluation that Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada did, and I think this is what they mean by these benefits do accrue to the term “community food security,” where it does achieve things like that where the community is involved. I think that is what they are alluding to when they use that term.
When we’re thinking about how to evaluate it with respect to these programs and things like household food insecurity, or HFI, and what we measure in Canada each year, there is research that identifies whether it’s pushing the needle on that. I’ll leave you with an article, but I’ll read you just a quick summary of their conclusions. One of the authors of this article is Valerie Tarasuk, who is very active in food insecurity at PROOF at the University of Toronto.
It states:
Exposure to food voucher programs may reduce HFI, but exposure to food box, community gardening, school food, hunting and fishing, and food charity programs may have little to no effect on HFI. . . .
You can look at the methods they employ to come to that conclusion if you’d like.
Just to clarify, I think what you’re getting at is that those kinds of outcomes are what people are hoping for or implying occur when community food security is achieved.
Senator Burey: Do you have any comments, Professor Elton?
Ms. Elton: Yes, Senator Burey. Thank you. I know the question was for my colleague. However, I happen to have done my PhD in this area, so I do have knowledge from my own research.
What I found was that in lower-income communities, for people who have gardens and who are possibly newcomers to Canada or who eat food in food ways that are not the Euro‑Western food ways, they grew culturally significant fruits and vegetables, largely vegetables, in allotment and community gardens in the city of Toronto. I did ethnographic work and spent a growing season in gardens across the city, as well as doing a survey of, I think, 101 people. And I found that people said for them — so this was not the whole community — because they had gardens, they had access to food from their gardens that was culturally significant, and people reported freezing vegetables, for example, to have access to these throughout the year as well.
Senator Burey: Thank you.
The Chair: I have a question. Professor Elton, I wonder if you could speak a little bit about the location of the Ontario Food Terminal. You’ve alluded to it. In your opening remarks, I think you mentioned farmland protection, and I’m wondering if you can tell us: What do you see as the benefits to where it is and the drawbacks if it were to be relocated?
Ms. Elton: Thank you for the question.
Yes, this is an excellent point. The Ontario Food Terminal is located in the growing area of Etobicoke, so there are two land issues that arise. There’s one at the supply end, where the food is coming from. Those are regions where the Government of Ontario is expecting intense population growth in the next generation, and, therefore, there will be housing development pressures on that land. We’re also seeing pressure to develop a new highway on farmland in this area. Then we have the development pressure in the city of Toronto at the Ontario Food Terminal specifically. There’s a property adjacent to it where the owner would like to develop condominiums, and that requires rezoning what are currently employment lands.
That raises the important issue of land protection in cities for employment lands to enable all the businesses that function not just in the terminal but also near it. A terminal like this is located critically in an urban area. Then we have the development pressure on the “foodscape” and on the region where the food comes from. I have spoken to colleagues around the world, specifically in Australia, where the food terminal in one of the cities was moved out of the city, and they reported that there was a negative impact, specifically on smaller operators who now have to drive further out of the city to source food when they’re operating very small grocery businesses that are short on staff and often use family labour. So where it is located is key.
The Chair: Did we hear that these smaller grocers in dense urban areas have a small physical footprint? I’m from rural Canada, so it’s quite normal to see a 20-foot, 30-foot or 50-foot reefer trailer pull up outside a grocery store, but I’m thinking of those small independent grocers we see in downtown Toronto and how that might impact them.
Ms. Elton: That’s an excellent question. These are mostly smaller businesses. Again, they’re not always smaller because some of them are quite large, but specifically for the smaller businesses, they are driving or there’s a jobber — which is another business that operates out of the terminal — who is driving a small truck that can access smaller, denser parts of the city. Also, in more residential areas, which some people call “food deserts” in the city of Toronto, we have seen smaller trucks driving into these communities and serving people right there.
The Chair: Thank you, Professor Elton.
Professor Deaton, I was wondering if you would take a minute or two to talk a little bit more about your food security plan. Could you expand on what you think would be the most valuable information to impart to the committee?
Mr. Deaton: Sure. Let me speak specifically to the issue of food insecurity. I made an earlier comment about the outline of how to develop a programmatic approach. Broadly speaking, to address food insecurity, the focus should be really squarely on recognizing that there’s a spectrum of food insecurity and recognizing that there’s a portion of that spectrum that is severely food insecure. By that, I mean they’re forgoing food.
As you develop your programs with the intention of addressing food insecurity, then you really focus carefully on programs that you can identify as increasing effective income. By that, I mean either directly increasing income — through the programs we’ve talked about — or making sure they’re lowering some costs so that the income available to buy food is expanded. That could range from housing costs to food costs to various elements. That’s the focus.
When we look at the broad agricultural system in general that supports the economy and many jobs, it’s important that the system itself remain very effective so that it creates the surplus that allows you to invest directly in addressing the food insecure.
The Chair: Perfect, thank you.
Now we’re going to have three minutes each for questions because we’re getting tight on time.
Senator McNair: Dr. Deaton, I wanted to give you a little bit more time to expand. In your opening comments, you talked about a simple framework that you and a colleague had prepared, and you offered to drill down a little bit on it. We’re getting teasers today, and we know there’s a lot more and little time, so I’ll give you the floor.
Mr. Deaton: This is a published paper. I’ll leave you a copy, and I’ve referenced it in my remarks.
It works when you set the goal of food insecurity. There are many different goals, and we’ve talked about those, but if that’s the goal, then there are a number of questions that you can ask with respect to refining the programmatic content. Now we’re getting into the weeds of how you make these programs work to reduce food insecurity.
A first question can be this: Does it increase effective income? Does it directly increase income? Does it lower prices in some way that expands the person’s capacity to buy food?
A second important question is this: Will the food insecure actually participate in this program? There’s literature I’ve referenced in my opening comments about examining situations in which there are interventions, but the food insecure aren’t necessarily participating. Then when you’ve identified the food insecure, you can start to ask the question: Of that spectrum of food insecurity — marginal, moderate or severe — who are we likely to get participating in this programmatic content?
Then the question is this: How does it compare to another alternative? You may come up with a way that meets all these goals, but there may be a more effective alternative out there. That requires working within the programmatic content that you have available to you in one government division, but there may be alternatives across that. That’s the outline in a snippet.
Senator McNair: You’re reminding us that the terms “food security,” “food insecurity” and “food sovereignty” have nuanced and different meanings and aren’t always as interchangeable as people think they are. Thank you.
Senator Sorensen: That was a really good comment: the difference between those three. That was good.
I’ll try to direct my question to both of you given the time. The question seems a bit redundant, but can you finalize some comments on your thoughts on Canada’s national food security strategy initiative? I haven’t heard anyone else talk about other countries. Are there other countries we should be looking at for examples of successful programs or strategies? I’ll start with Professor Deaton.
Mr. Deaton: I haven’t looked at other countries’ strategies with respect to this. My sense is that if we move to the large question of food security, and given we’re broadly speaking of the situation that has been mentioned and, of course, the geopolitical tensions, if I can speak in that context, then Canada is best served recognizing that its agriculture sector is export-oriented. Our local farmers are very active and not only supporting domestic consumption but also exporting wheat and canola — this is the country that Canada is. That is challenged by the current geopolitical context.
How do we respond in that context? We currently have a suite of agricultural policies in place — the business risk management programs in particular — to support Canadian farmers as they move through a transition, if that is necessary, due to the threat.
Canada is best served by adapting in a way where we are the most cost-effective and competitive and we are able to expand relationships with new countries. We do that by having a very forward-looking, adaptive and very productive agricultural system. That’s the focus broadly speaking, and now I’m moving away from my more specific thoughts about food insecurity.
Senator Sorensen: That is very much appreciated. Those are good comments. How about you, Professor Elton?
Ms. Elton: I haven’t looked at the national food security initiatives of other countries. However, in Canada, we need to think of the diversity of farmers who are out there. In addition to the commodity farmers, we also have vibrant fruit and vegetable farmers who also need support, and there’s an opportunity, given this geopolitical change, to invest in these urban and rural linkages between our rural communities where people are growing fruits and vegetables in particular.
One opportunity in terms of policy is the National School Food Program. In other countries — for example, France, Italy and many other examples around the world — procurement policies for national school meal programs are used to specifically provide a consistent market for their produce farmers in these countries. That is one way that national policies can work together to support farmers and kids in that respect.
Senator Sorensen: Thank you very much.
Senator Burey: I wanted to get to this question: Professor Deaton and Professor Elton, you eloquently put together a Venn diagram looking at the food insecure and how we get more available income by whatever means we decide. On the other hand, you noted the need for producing that surplus so that food could be more available. I’m going to go now to that production of surplus side of what you’re talking about in terms of our favourite person, George Washington Carver, and extension services. How do we do that? I’m going to stop talking so that you can both dig into that.
Mr. Deaton: How much time do I have? You know this is a question that is dear to me.
George Washington Carver was a remarkable person. Born into slavery, he goes to Iowa and gets a graduate degree, then becomes one of the foremost agronomists, but moves to Tuskegee at the call of Booker T. Washington to reach out to rural farmers who were poor to do better and basically improve the land through the adoption of cover crops.
The key element there is his efforts — and that speaks directly to the university — opening up the opportunity for university professors and students to engage meaningfully with the public. This is a forum in the United States, where they often refer to it as an extension. And in Canada, we refer to it as outreach.
I think there’s a capacity within universities to expand and focus its outreach activities in a way that addresses the kinds of aspirations of improving the well-being of lower-income people who are like George Washington Carver.
The Chair: That was only a minute and a half.
Mr. Deaton: I’m happy to do more if you’d like.
Ms. Elton: Based on conversations we have been having in our research group consultation with people in the food system, the number one concern is about federal funding being cut from research institutes involved in agriculture as well as One Health issues. The other issue is surplus, which affects prices for farmers. What we heard when we gathered food actors in March was that these smaller produce farmers, who don’t have thousands and thousands of acre farms in Ontario, would be better served by contracts with, for example, food banks and public procurement in order to have someone they are growing for in the public sector. That allows them to have cushions in terms of prices because if you grow a lot of broccoli and if everybody grows a lot of broccoli, then the broccoli price is really low when you go to sell it. In regard to trying to even out those economic issues that come with surplus — the paradox of plenty — this is what these people were suggesting to us.
The Chair: Thank you. I have a couple of questions. Dr. Deaton, are you familiar with Farmers Helping Farmers in Canada?
Mr. Deaton: No, I’m not.
The Chair: It’s an interesting organization, and you might want to have a look at it. My understanding of it is there are Canadian farm groups that go to Kenya from Atlantic Canada and they help — much like your example of our American friend — farmers learn how to do a better job of feeding themselves through agriculture. It’s a wonderful charitable effort on the part of farmers in Atlantic Canada in particular. Professor Elton, in speaking about Canada’s vulnerability with the staggering amount of our fresh fruits and vegetables that enter via the U.S., you talked about ports. I wanted to dive into that a little bit more. I’m wondering if you have any suggestions on who is best positioned to address the kind of deficit situation we’re in as far as our port infrastructure. I’m wondering if you have any knowledge you could share with us on that.
Ms. Elton: Thank you, Madam Chair. Yes, 82.9% of all fresh and frozen fruits and vegetables travel via the United States, and many come through the choke point of the ports. They also enter — which I hadn’t mentioned previously — through a small number of border crossings at the U.S.-Canada border, so there’s yet another choke point there. When we ask logistics people, they say they can reroute the food elsewhere. There are economic and structural reasons that make it such that it’s cheaper and there are people who move produce better. I’ll put it that way. I don’t want to besmirch Canadian port workers in any way. But that was reported to me. They said they could reroute it other ways; however, it’s faster and cheaper to go via the United States, but it really was stressed that it’s not cemented. Supply chains, as we know, can change very quickly, so it’s about rethinking with the industry on how to move food here.
The Chair: Are you aware of anyone doing specific research into how Canada should better position itself to develop our ports and to be more sovereign in how we receive our exports, if that’s not too much of an oxymoron?
Ms. Elton: Unfortunately, I don’t know other people who are working on this in this area. I know it was very hard to find this database that has allowed us to finally have these numbers. Now I have people in the industry who are saying, “We always thought this, but thank you for putting a number to it.”
The Chair: I think what we’re learning here is we should probably do some more work in that regard because we do talk about ourselves from coast to coast to coast. It appears we have lots of coastlines; it’s a shame we’re not using that to shore up our sovereignty.
Professor Deaton, do you have any kind of thoughts as to how policy could be shaped to do a better job? This committee has heard a lot of testimony, and we’ve talked a bit about the intense food insecurity in our northern communities and how vital those communities are to our nation. I’m wondering if you’ve got any thoughts as to how policy could be better shaped to support those fly-in only communities, particularly in Nunavut. I would love for you to spend a minute or two on that.
Mr. Deaton: The key thing is you’re dealing with the remoteness, and I always like to use the difference between Ottawa and Iqaluit is the same difference between Ottawa and Orlando, except there are roads that go to Orlando. You’ve got a very different setting there, so that’s important. I think you have a portfolio of efforts. With respect to food insecurity, in regard to whatever income supplementation programs are already available through the government, those can be expanded, but you want to make sure the food costs are as low. You have Nutrition North Canada, and all studies agree that it does reduce food prices. There’s some debate on exactly how much of a pass‑through is going, but all studies are agreed on that point.
That can always be refined and targeted. I’m very much in agreement with Dr. Elton and the comments that other committee members have made about this idea of public infrastructure, whether it be the scale of airplanes that are able to land on runways because you can pack more food into a larger plane. Planes move from place to place, so there may be opportunities in these public investments and infrastructure that create that adaptive dynamic in the area to — and this is where it will always be challenging — somehow reduce that remoteness, though the distance stays the same.
The Chair: Thank you very much. That does conclude the time we have, and once again, I wish to thank our witnesses for taking the time to be with us. We certainly appreciate the research you’re doing and the outreach you’re doing, as well as what you did to prepare for your opening remarks and fielding questions today.
For our second panel, we have the pleasure of welcoming in person Dr. Paul Roumeliotis, Medical Officer of Health of the Eastern Ontario Health Unit. Thank you for joining us.
Joining us online, we have Chantelle Richmond, Professor and Canada Research Chair at Western University.
Lastly, we welcome online Dr. Jonathon Maguire, Pediatrician and Nutrition Scientist at Unity Health Toronto and Professor at the University of Toronto.
Thank you all for joining us. We’ll begin with your opening remarks before we move to questions from members, and you will each have five minutes.
The floor is now yours, Dr. Roumeliotis.
Dr. Paul Roumeliotis, Medical Officer of Health, Eastern Ontario Health Unit: Thank you very much. It is a pleasure to be here. Thank you to Senator Burey and all senators for inviting me.
I had the pleasure of listening to the previous talk. People might ask what a public health physician and pediatrician is doing here talking about policy and agriculture and all of the multiple geopolitical factors that are there, but you know what? That’s public health. Public health has to do with the social determinants of health, public policy and equities and inequities. This is an example of severe inequities that we’re seeing in our society.
When you talk about food insecurity, you look at household food insecurity. As a public health leader, one of my jobs is to really look at the needs of our population and the barriers that are there. When you’re talking about agriculture, you’re talking about from seed to table. There are many factors that can come into play, but I want to focus on food insecurity and talk about the health issues and the socio-economic issues related to it, as well as some of the things that we can see as public health practitioners. Again, I’ll give both pediatric and public health perspectives. I wear both hats.
As we know, food insecurity has to do with insecure access to sufficient, safe and nutritious food. I’ll underscore it’s due to financial constraints. It’s really insufficient income, not food supply in most situations.
In my area, almost 26% of households in Cornwall in eastern Ontario have food insecurity, while 16.1% of children in Canada live with food insecurity. And nationally, about 15% of households have food insecurity.
Going back to inequities and talking about marginalized populations and vulnerable populations, if you talk about who mostly cannot afford food, it’s really households that are relying on social assistance. It’s low-wage workers. Again, people making minimum wage does not equal a livable wage. There are two differences here.
For renters, 52.1% of them have food insecurity. There are also female lone-parent households, racialized populations and off-reserve Indigenous populations as well. Employment does not protect against food insecurity. That’s the bottom line. We need to look at it through an equitable lens in terms of who needs what and how much one needs.
Looking at the health impacts, it’s undeniable there are a multitude of health impacts. If you look at children and youth, malnutrition will cause abnormal growth and development, and they will have higher rates of chronic disease later on in life. We know that what happens early on in life can be manifested 40 or 50 years down the line. We see higher rates of hyperactivity, depression and behavioural and emotional issues in children.
In adults, we see higher rates of chronic disease, disparities among them and poor mental health outcomes, as well as higher risk of premature death, infections and so on.
Everything that can happen badly will happen more in this population. That is a paradigm that we see in public health.
There are also economic impacts. We’re very well aware. I always talk to my municipal colleagues and say that economic health equals good health overall. We do know that in terms of the health care system — which is, as you know, very stressed today — there’s increased health care utilization, reduced workforce productivity and greater reliance on other support systems. It’s a real $1.2-billion annual cost just related to food insecurity.
How do we address food insecurity? From the public health standpoint and in looking at policies and things that we need to address, it’s really food insecurity again. I underscored before that it’s driven by inadequate income. That’s really what we’re seeing. Individuals have the inability to cover basic expenses, no capacity to save and an increasing need to make impossible trade-offs: rent versus food or medication versus food. All these things come into play. There is also rising debt, stress and so on.
There is increasing use of food banks; we see it. Yesterday, in the news, the Salvation Army Cornwall food bank closed down. They had no funding. They are overwhelmed. Our food banks in Hawkesbury and Cornwall are overwhelmed by the needs of people showing up who would not go there 10 years ago.
Then we’re looking at what the policy solutions would be. I know Dr. Deaton talked about them before, such as looking at child benefit programs, again, focused with an equity lens. That’s really very important to do. There are public pensions and those types of things. There is strong evidence that with assistance, you can actually take people out of food-insecure situations. That’s quite important.
When talking about household food insecurity, we’re looking at effective solutions, such as implementing a basic income guarantee. We talked about that for many years. The cost of poverty is higher than treating poverty in terms of giving an income guarantee. Minimum wages, again, are not livable wages in today’s society. We need to strengthen social assistance, invest in affordable housing and so on.
We know that as incomes increase, food insecurity decreases. That’s really the pendulum; there is a relationship and connection.
We are talking about agriculture now. My final thoughts really are: Canada’s agriculture and agri-food sector plays a critical role by supporting stable and sustainable food production, which we could use locally and export; enabling efficient distribution systems; and, very importantly, advancing innovation and climate resilience, including geopolitical resilience, which we’re seeing now.
Finally, a strong agricultural system, however, does not guarantee food security if people can’t afford it. That’s the bottom line. Effective food security policy must integrate income-based solutions, agricultural sustainability and innovation and equity-focused policies — equity is the bread and butter for public health — that address systemic barriers.
My final thought is: Effective food security policies must address economic barriers, support agricultural innovation and protect communities experiencing marginalization while, again, speaking to inequities.
The Chair: Thank you for your statement. Next we have Professor Richmond.
Chantelle Richmond, Professor and Canada Research Chair, Western University, as an individual: Good morning. Thank you for this opportunity.
[Indigenous language spoken].
I am an Anishinaabe scholar from Biigtigong Nishnaabeg, and I’m a professor and the Canada Research Chair in Indigenous Health and the Environment at Western University. I’m also a geographer. My research examines Indigenous health and healing, both as a function of places that people live but also as spaces where relationships occur.
For nearly 20 years, I’ve been working alongside First Nations communities and organizations, mainly in the Great Lakes region, most notably through a long-term community-engaged food study with the Southwest Ontario Aboriginal Health Access Centre, or SOAHAC, which serves Indigenous Peoples in the city of London, Ontario, where I live.
I have three key messages today, and each of them is grounded in the work I have been doing in these various communities. I’m happy to discuss further how these may serve as recommendations for this committee.
My first key message is that understanding the determinants of Indigenous food insecurity matters for creating policy that will actually address it. Food security refers to consistent access to sufficient, safe and nutritious food. And while Indigenous Peoples in Canada are among the poorest in this nation, the deeper causes of Indigenous food insecurity refer to the historic and ongoing colonial disruption of Indigenous food systems, recognizing that the experiences of First Nations, Inuit and Métis people are very distinct.
Indigenous food systems encompass all foods within a particular culture that are available from local lands and are culturally accepted, including how foods are harvested, prepared, shared and celebrated. These systems draw from knowledge, relationships, ceremony and identity. They are, in the fullest sense, the responsibilities that Indigenous Peoples carry to care for themselves and for their communities and for the lands and waters that constitute who we are.
The ongoing impacts of colonialism proliferate today as intergenerational trauma, language loss and the erosion of the knowledge that Indigenous food systems depend upon. To support a resurgence of Indigenous food systems, federal food policy must distinguish the unique determinants of Indigenous food insecurity and recognize Indigenous food systems as vital pieces of health infrastructure.
The second point here is that investing in urban Indigenous population health and policy ought to be a clear federal mandate. In Ontario, nearly 86% of First Nations, Métis and Inuit people now live away from their home communities and territories. In Ontario, that number is close to 75% urbanization. This means that there is a lot of geographic and social isolation from traditional foods, knowledges and cultural practices. This creates a clear mandate for urban Indigenous organizations that address everyday food insecurity needs, albeit very often through limited funding and at a massive personal cost of emotional and unpaid labour.
This is where the need is greatest and where federal investment has been and is most absent.
SOAHAC’s food programming distributes Indigenous foods and medicines to approximately 120 families every month. Until last year, it was run largely through donated staff time. Jocelyn Zurbrigg, the lead dietitian at SOAHAC and my long-time community partner, says, “We make it work because we must. There is no alternative.” Program recipients to the food bank program describe improved nutrition and physical health, but they also talk about restored cultural belonging, pride and healing.
SOAHAC’s program, like so many others across the country, requires sustained core funding. The urban context is not an exception to federal responsibility.
Finally, restoring relationships with land, identity and food is essential for sowing the seeds for Indigenous food sovereignty. Moving toward food sovereignty means restoring Indigenous Peoples’ rights and capacities to know, grow, harvest and share their own foods on their own terms wherever they live. This will require investment in research and training that honours the resurgence of Indigenous food knowledge and relationships across the full diversity of Indigenous lives and places, including urban contexts.
If we’re serious about making food security achievable for all Canadians, federal research funding bodies must prioritize Indigenous-led food sovereignty research and the training environments that prepare Indigenous scholars to lead them.
Meegwetch. Thank you for the opportunity.
The Chair: Thank you, Professor Richmond. Finally, we have Dr. Maguire.
Dr. Jonathon Maguire, Pediatrician and Nutrition Scientist, Unity Health Toronto; Professor, University of Toronto, as an individual: Thank you very much. Good morning, Madam Chair and honourable senators. Thank you to Senator Burey for the opportunity to speak to you today.
I hold the Lawson Chair in Patient Engagement in Child Nutrition at the University of Toronto where, as a health researcher, I co-lead a large children’s cohort study called TARGet Kids! where we have been following about 12,000 children for the past 18 years to understand how optimized children’s growth and development are. First and foremost, however, I am a practising pediatrician at St. Michael’s Hospital.
Through a real example, I want to show you an all-too-common scenario to illustrate what Dr. Roumeliotis, Professor Richmond and others have been talking about this morning: the factors that underlie food insecurity.
I met GG at three months of age. She was referred to me by her family physician for growth faltering. GG’s mom and dad are from a low-income family, and like nearly one in three Canadian households with children, her family had food insecurity. Adults with food insecurity are 30% to 50% more likely to have obesity, diabetes and cardiovascular disease. GG’s mom had both obesity and Type 2 diabetes, and these conditions resulted in placental insufficiency, which means GG’s placenta did not give enough blood to nourish her, so she was born with low birth weight.
Food insecurity is associated with lower breastfeeding rates, so GG was exclusively formula-fed, which is problematic because infant formula is expensive — around $200 per month — while breastfeeding is free. To pay for housing, GG’s parents fed her infant formula mixed with cow’s milk, which is significantly less expensive than infant formula but is unsuitable for human infants, resulting in protein-calorie malnutrition and iron deficiency. At three months of age, GG’s weight and length were well below the first percentile.
Children with food insecurity have significantly higher health care costs. Intensive support from the health care system, including from me, was needed to normalize GG’s growth by 12 months of age. However, children with food insecurity have 25% higher odds of developing developmental delay, and GG’s early growth faltering resulted in irreversible changes to her brain. At 15 months of age, she wasn’t walking or talking, and she was diagnosed with global developmental delay. Unfortunately, global developmental delay is a misnomer because children with it rarely catch up to their peers.
Healthy food is expensive. Lower calorie-dense, lower sugar and lower sodium-containing foods, which are good for us, are more expensive. Higher calorie-dense, higher sugar and higher sodium-containing processed foods, which we know are bad for us, are less expensive. We have shown that children with food insecurity are less likely to consume fruits and vegetables and more likely to consume sugar-sweetened beverages, processed and fast foods, which are all risk factors for childhood obesity. Unfortunately, by the time GG was five years of age, she had childhood obesity, which is known to persist through childhood, adolescence and adulthood, and it costs an estimated C$22 billion a year in health care and other social costs.
Children with food insecurity are also twice as likely to be diagnosed with learning disabilities. At seven years of age, GG was diagnosed with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder. At 10 years of age, she was diagnosed with a learning disability and emotional dysregulation. Children with food insecurity have lower odds of meeting academic expectations in reading, writing and mathematics.
Throughout the elementary school years, GG struggled. She required costly support from the school system to help her meet expectations. Unfortunately, by 16 years of age, she was experiencing anxiety and depression, which are known consequences of her earlier struggles. She didn’t complete high school because she couldn’t keep up with the academic expectations.
The issues that GG faced are not random or bad luck. They were entirely predictable and completely preventable. My colleagues across the country see variations of GG’s story every single day.
Food insecurity isn’t just a matter of not having enough food, although it is for some. It’s more a matter that healthy food is inaccessible for a large segment of our population, which has cascading biological effects on children that persist over the life course. These effects influence multiple areas of people’s lives, including their relationships and their mental and physical health, resulting in higher health care and social costs in addition to lost productivity.
Researchers have done cost accounting on a societal level. The hidden costs of food insecurity dramatically outweigh the costs of groceries themselves. According to the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, which Canada ratified in 1976, access to healthy food is a human right. Our current policies and systems perpetuate food insecurity. They force people to make decisions that trade consuming healthy foods for other necessities, like shelter and safety. We need a different approach to this problem to have a different result.
How do we break this cycle for GG and many other Canadians just like her? That is what I think this committee can do. School food programs are a great start. Like Dr. Deaton said, increasing effective income through multiple ways to help people afford healthy food is a great start, but more needs to be done, particularly more research to help us understand the issues and develop effective solutions. That would be very helpful.
I’ll give an example of our priorities in health research. Canada’s industrial food complex made in profits just since this meeting started what our national Canadian Institutes of Health Research spend on nutrition research in a whole year.
I want to end on that note. Thank you very much for the opportunity.
The Chair: Thank you, Dr. Maguire.
We’re now going to questions from senators. Senators have five minutes to both ask and have answered their questions.
Senator Burey: Expert witnesses, colleagues and friends, thank you so much for being here. I know two of our witnesses because I’m a pediatrician, and I have had the great honour and pleasure of working alongside two of these great pediatricians.
Unfortunately, I have to leave because I have other duties, but my first question is to all of you. I thank you all for allowing us to understand the deep and compelling reasons why this issue needs to be addressed immediately with a whole-of-society approach.
Interestingly, you mentioned, Dr. Maguire — you all mentioned it — that when children are food insecure, it leads to childhood obesity. Most people aren’t aware of that connection. In the interest of time, I want to really dig into what further research, support or programming is needed to help lower childhood obesity rates in low-income Canadian families. We’ll start with Dr. Roumeliotis.
Dr. Roumeliotis: Thank you very much.
In fact, it is a paradox when you talk about low income and food insecurity resulting in obesity. That’s because cheap food is fast food, and fast food is fat food. We know that. When I was getting my master’s in public health at Johns Hopkins University, we did some studies on that and looked at where people bought groceries and what they could afford and couldn’t afford, and they could afford more of the unhealthy foods.
The other thing too is people living in marginalized or dangerous areas tend not to have more physical activity. They don’t have access to extracurricular activities. They have no parks around them, so they go home and just stay home.
It’s a combination of forced physical inactivity and, of course, food insecurity. When they do have food, it’s not highly nutritious but highly caloric, and that’s the problem.
We are doing a study with the University of Toronto, actually. It’s a 10-year study. It’s looking at a health trajectory over 10 years. We are looking at factors that affect obesity from birth. We’re tracking pregnant women before pregnancy and then all the way through pregnancy to basically see which factors are actually promoting obesity and which factors are not. We’re looking at blood factors, genetic factors, sociological factors and so on. That’s an ongoing study we are doing with the University of Toronto. I’m co-investigator on the healthy project. I can share that with you. We’re looking at what factors lead down the road and what we can then implement to prevent those things.
Senator Burey: We can have our other two online witnesses answer. Please go ahead, Dr. Maguire, and then our next witness.
Dr. Maguire: Thank you, Senator Burey.
I entirely agree with Dr. Roumeliotis. One thing I would add to that is it’s an unfortunate set-up because the early factors, such as the placental changes and in utero factors and the things that happen to children in the first two years of life, really set up children with food insecurity to have childhood obesity. They are metabolically programmed to have childhood obesity. Then on top of that, we put all the social issues we are talking about and inaccessible healthy foods, which compounds the matter.
Underscoring what Dr. Roumeliotis is saying, our group is also doing research on these topics. Childhood obesity is preventable. We know that. The challenge is exactly how to prevent it.
Ms. Richmond: I think one of the more challenging things we see in Indigenous populations is the way the nutrition transition is happening and what that means for the types of foods that are available in Indigenous communities and how that leads to childhood obesity. As we move away from traditional foods — which have been historically very healthy — if we think about moose meat, for example, these are animals that move long distances, and eating that food is really good for you. As you move away from traditional foods and into store-bought foods and foods that sit on shelves for long periods of time, this undoubtedly has a negative impact.
What we’re seeing is the ways that the nature and the character of traditional foods are actually changing as well. Bannock is one of our traditional foods. It is not very healthy, yet it supports belonging and comfort and dear memories for me when thinking about my mother and my grandmother preparing these foods. When you eat too many of these foods that have become tradition because they are associated with that transition away, then that can lead to some severe consequences.
The Chair: Thank you.
Senator McNair: Madam Chair, I would suggest that if there is another comment or question, I’m willing to cede my time.
Senator Burey: I wanted to talk more about the percentage of research dollars spent on nutrition. What recommendations could you make to this committee in terms of how important it is and how much it costs society in terms of research dollars spent on nutrition studies?
Dr. Maguire: Thank you, Senator Burey. It is puzzling why we spend relatively little on nutrition research, especially nutrition research involving children. I don’t have a good answer for that, Senator Burey, but I feel like we make unusual decisions that might be unhealthy for all of us. I think putting more resources into research and development around health and nutrition, particularly for children, would be helpful. Imagine energizing the entire Canadian nutrition research machine around this problem. All of a sudden, we would have a lot more answers to the very important questions that you and others are asking this morning.
The Chair: I know that Senator Burey is really torn. She does have other duties pulling her away. I’m sad to see she’s got to leave.
Senator McNair: Thank you for being here today and for providing the testimony before us.
The question is: How do we break this cycle? That is what we’re left with. Based on your research and knowledge, what is the impact of federally funded food programs on children’s health and well-being throughout the country, and, more importantly, what do you think the federal government should be doing to increase equitable access to healthy food for children and families in Canada? It’s for all three of you, starting with Dr. Roumeliotis.
Dr. Roumeliotis: Thank you very much.
I think there are two things. The food programs are very much welcome. That’s an issue, and we know that notwithstanding the long-term consequences, obviously, children who are hungry don’t learn well. That settles that.
The issue is that — and I say it very often — it’s too little, too late because you need to intervene earlier. As my colleagues have said, a lot of the effects of malnutrition and all the other social determinants of health surrounding that manifest themselves and cause long-term and, many times, irreversible damage before 18 to 24 months of age. Of course, giving kids food at school is an excellent idea, but it’s not the only thing. We need to look at the whole age spectrum, even prenatally. Again, one of my colleagues talked about the effects of intrauterine growth retardation for small-for-gestational-age babies. We know that they have higher rates of chronic disease later on at 40 or 50 years of age. Something goes on early on.
We need to continue the school programs but also focus on the younger children. What I tend to see in other areas as well, whether it’s child care or other issues, is that we tend to forget the first few years of life, and those are the pivotal years of life. Those are foundational. Anything that focuses on the first few years of life in terms of research and increasing support for parents, social support and so on — like they have in Sweden, for example, where they have the social network — will add to our ability to offset some of these inequities that we’re seeing and some of the long-term effects.
Dr. Maguire: I entirely agree with Dr. Roumeliotis. Focus on the first two years. There are cascading biological effects that will happen. We will get back what we put into it, and don’t lose sight of that. Children don’t say very much in the first two years, and they get lost and forgotten.
As Dr. Deaton mentioned earlier, part of this is about changing a family’s effective income so that it goes further and so that they’re able to make better choices for themselves. School food programs are amazing, and they help change that balance.
I would ask you a bunch of questions that help address the very question you’ve asked: Why do healthy foods cost more than less healthy foods? These are policy decisions.
I’m not saying we should take away Old Age Security by any extent, but we’re a little imbalanced in how much support we provide to our older citizens compared to our younger citizens. Why do we do that? Why are food costs so high? Why are they continuing to get higher? Why do we continue to rely on the food bank, which is basically philanthropy, to feed our children? It seems a little funny. If we take a few steps back and ask these questions, and the solutions become kind of obvious, to me anyway.
Ms. Richmond: I think one of the big missing pieces here, particularly in the Indigenous context, is restoring knowledge flow and the intergenerational knowledge transfer about healthy foods and about cultural foods.
We had a question earlier about the North and about food waste in the North. We’re still living in Canada in a context where Indigenous Peoples are suffering from decisions that were made a long time ago but that truly impact our abilities to know and understand how to be Indigenous people and how to relate with lands that are full of highly nutritious foods, with our culture, our languages and our systems that maintain so many important resources that, unfortunately, we’re forgetting how to use. I think part of that answer in the Indigenous context, both in urban spaces and on-reserve in northern territories, is to restore those cultural connections. Something key to understanding how we think about food sovereignty more generally is creating healthy children and healthy families that support a broader healthy nation.
Senator Sorensen: Thank you very much. Nice to meet all of you. I’m going to start with Professor Richmond.
I believe there’s increasing recognition of Indigenous food sovereignty within federal policy discussions, but that might be because I’m in Ottawa and I sit on the Indigenous Peoples Committee, so I’d like to think it’s more global than that.
Could you elaborate further on some gaps that remain and how federal agriculture and agri-food policies do support Indigenous‑led food systems if, in fact, you can elaborate on that? What changes would you prioritize in terms of recognizing traditional food systems?
What I’m hearing from other witnesses in this area is investment. We heard that the North is not great for agriculture, but we heard conversations around caribou herds and deer herds and the need for protein. The biggest challenge in the North is power, which is interesting for us in everyday life down here in the southern part of the country. We’ve also heard the conversation around expired foods sitting on the shelf for way too long which, of course, are greatly reduced in nutritional value.
Ms. Richmond: Thank you very much for the question.
Indigenous food sovereignty, as I understand it, is about the restoration of our relationships. We have to think about land and generations of knowledge holders and learners and food and all the goodness that supports a system. It really cannot be separated from forms of Indigenous governance, Indigenous knowledge systems and our rights to land. It’s very relational and it’s a way of knowing and understanding, so it’s not purely political and economic, but it’s a broad system.
I think partly what is happening is we often forget about how important that system is and that we are very much connected to and interrelated to the places that we come from, even when we are not close to them. For example, I live in London, Ontario. My homeland is about 1,600 kilometres away, but those values and understandings that I learned as a young person follow me into the different systems and the different structures in which I operate. Indigenous knowledge and that relatedness and these principles — thinking about principles like reciprocity, being a good steward and being a guardian of the land for future generations — can guide all of us and are important for thinking about broader policy and direction for the nation as a whole. The other thing I wanted to talk about is the importance of building good spaces of learning these in post-secondary settings and in our research infrastructure. The Canadian Institutes of Health Research, for example, has the Institute of Indigenous Peoples’ Health, and that is a vital and important network for producing and elevating these sorts of elements in Indigenous knowledge and how these can play a really important role in federal policy, in relationship building across sectors and, I think first and foremost, for creating the sorts of policy and direction that will actually meet needs.
Thank you for the question.
Senator Sorensen: I appreciate it, and I’d like to believe we’re making baby steps in that direction.
I’ll direct this to both our medical witnesses. First of all, Dr. Maguire, thank you very much for that case study. That was powerful and just fascinating to know that you have watched that child for that many years.
I want to ask a question about postnatal care. We have heard a lot about prenatal care, and I guess I’m thinking outside the medical system, because the medical system, as commented, is very overused right now. We need a lot more medical attention. Is there room for programming from an investment standpoint, whether it be provincial or federal, for the concept of postnatal care? It’s not unlike a midwife or a doula, who helps a lot in prenatal care, while mothers and fathers seem to be a little bit left on their own postnatally, other than coming in and getting their baby weighed and vaccinated and all the other things we do. Is there a movement toward postnatal care? I’ll start over here.
Dr. Roumeliotis: Absolutely there is. Only 0.8% of GDP is spent in Canada on supporting parents at birth, which is a number that is 2% in other parts of the world. We’re really far behind.
Yes, 75% of what makes you healthy has nothing to do with the medical system, so we’re looking at the other social networks. In Ontario, we have a program called the Healthy Babies Healthy Children program, which I run in my area. I advocated recently for an 8% increase in our funding, and I got it, but that was after 10 years.
Senator Sorensen: That’s provincial.
Dr. Roumeliotis: That’s provincial. There are programs that are run through public health or other agencies that meet families at birth at the hospital and then provide home services, lay home visitors and nurses at home and then put them into the system.
We need more of that because to me, that’s where the solution is. Those first two years of life are very sensitive. Recently, the World Health Organization and The Lancet, with one of my colleagues Dr. Stephen Lye, released a report on problems we’re seeing with children who are not developing properly because they’re not supported during the first two years of life. It’s billions of dollars of lost productivity and other things. We need to concentrate as a government on supporting new parents during the first couple years of life.
When I talk about support, I talk about global support and that social network, including income, daycare, paternity leave, maternity leave and all these other things that we know work in other countries. I’ll give you an example. In our area and in Canada, if you look at school readiness, at five years of age, children who come from disadvantaged areas and lower socio‑economic areas fail or have many more weaknesses, whereas that disparity does not exist in countries like Sweden, for example.
To me, that’s the ultimate important thing. That’s been one of the things I’ve been advocating for many years now in order to be able to increase that, of course, at the provincial level but also at the national level as well.
Senator Sorensen: Dr. Maguire, I look forward to your response, and I’ll add on to the response: It doesn’t necessarily need to be doctors who are doing this work. Thank you.
Senator Ross: I’m not normally on this committee. I’m sitting in today, and I’m finding the information that I’m learning to be fascinating. I looked back a bit on some of the work that’s already been done on this study on food security. It’s covering very broad issues, but the committee is also getting right down to the granular level on the issue: supply, cost, policy issues, societal issues, public health, economic issues and so much more. I noted that there have been dozens of witnesses over 12 meetings: farmers, doctors, professors, senators, agricultural not‑for‑profits, various ag sectors, professors, researchers, agrologists, volunteers, policy experts, the Atlantic Canada Opportunities Agency, government officials and corporations. It’s a huge study. And I would say it will be an important study.
The Senate is known for its comprehensive studies that go on to inform policy and inform our country’s views and actions on different issues. My question today is a big one: If each of you were able to include one priority or one recommendation, what would be the most important thing that this study should reflect, in your opinion?
The Chair: You directed it toward whom?
Senator Ross: All three.
Dr. Roumeliotis: I can’t answer specifically, but it would be related to the first few years of life. It’s the interventions you can do in the first few years of life, which encompasses addressing food insecurity, but it’s about focusing on that period. Of course, it’s about not ignoring families but also focusing on those children because that’s where we see the biggest impact and return on investment, both in terms of productivity and also in terms of health and participation in society later on in life.
You want to optimize these children’s life course trajectory.
Senator Ross: How about you, Ms. Richmond?
Ms. Richmond: I think I would return to a comment that I heard in the earlier session: For Indigenous Peoples in particular, it’s thinking about how we are creating future pathways and funding knowledge about what makes Indigenous Peoples’ experiences of food insecurity — as well as desires for food security and food sovereignty — very distinct. I think there’s a misunderstanding that processes of dispossession have ended and the ways that Indigenous Peoples continue to experience various health-related effects associated with residential schools. This very dark colonial history is very prevalent today. I see them in my own children and across different income populations or different communities because there’s such a distinct cultural loss, and that underlies how we understand food and how we understand our relationships to it. There’s a real need for us to be thinking about that interrelationship between history and today and also through, I think, defined research that is done by and funded for Indigenous Peoples to work with their communities and to restore those connections around food and food systems.
Senator Ross: How about you, Dr. Maguire?
Dr. Maguire: Thank you very much. I totally agree with the idea of focusing on the early years, particularly the first two years, and if I were to pick one intervention that will give you the most bang for every dollar, it is breastfeeding support. If you’re a new mom who has food insecurity, trying to get support for breastfeeding is like pulling teeth. It’s nearly impossible right now. I don’t know why it is that way outside of the medical system; why don’t we have access to breastfeeding support for every mom? It seems like a really obvious early intervention to me.
If we look at Canada’s breastfeeding rates through six months of life — particularly exclusive breastfeeding — we are not doing very well. We’re close to the bottom of nations with the same income level as ours.
I think the on-the-ground issues that health care providers and public health professionals see every day are feeding into this problem. As just discussed, we need more support postnatally outside of the health care system. We are doing a clinical trial right now on that very idea: breastfeeding support outside of the health care system. It’s very important postnatally.
Senator Ross: I thank all three of you. Those are great answers. I appreciate it.
The Chair: Great question, Senator Ross. We’ll be inviting you back if you keep giving us such compliments about how comprehensive our study is. That’s wonderful. Fantastic answers.
Professor Richmond, I wanted to ask a question. We had an article shared with us, and it’s entitled “Politics of the plate” published in Western Alumni Magazine. According to the article, nationally, more than half of the Indigenous population live in cities. In Ontario, I think the number is around 75%. I’ve heard you talk about this loss of Indigenous food knowledge and about restoring cultural connections. I’m wondering if you can give us an example of this being done well somewhere so that we can look at how it’s being done well.
Ms. Richmond: Great question. Thank you so much.
We actually have an exciting Indigenous food sovereignty project happening here in London with our partner, the Southwest Ontario Aboriginal Health Access Centre. We’re working, very excitingly, with a range of Indigenous knowledge consultants. These are language speakers, hunters and a lot of Indigenous dietitians, actually. Then we have a full academic team. We’re looking at seasonal — well, we’re really focusing on the lunar calendar because that is how many Indigenous populations have understood their roles and responsibilities. It’s very local. Strawberries grow and are harvested in June. What do strawberries mean specifically? What are the cultural definitions, orientations and responsibilities of people who carry strawberries? What do they mean for our bodies? Why are these important medicines, and what do they look like?
In the fall, we’ll be looking at duck and geese. In the spring, we’re looking at maple syrup. What we’re trying to do is reconnect people, especially urban people, with their first foods. We hear a lot of really sad stories of women especially who have been disconnected from their communities as a result of Indian Act stories, and this includes my family. They’re women who have essentially been, for lack of a better term, kicked out of their communities and who are now coming back in. Many of these women have lived outside of their communities for extended periods of time. In urban centres, places like the Native Friendship Centres, Aboriginal Health Access Centres and a range of other urban organizations are sometimes the only places where these women and their families can reconnect with culture, find belonging, re-establish language and so on.
What we’re doing is building over several years a reconnection to food. SOAHAC has its own sort of food distribution program, but if people don’t have the associated knowledge to know how to cook salmon or use maple syrup, which are very expensive to acquire, it goes wasted. People who are hungry will not waste food.
What we’re doing is not only connecting people with cultural foods but also reintroducing the knowledge needed to do this. We have a huge programmatic side to the program, and then we have a very exciting research program that includes a number of geographers, of course. We’ve got a range of physical and social scientists who are looking at the relationships to land and how safe the land is where these foods are coming from, as well as if there are ways for us to think about capturing the stories and the evidence that demonstrates that these are having the impact that we hope they will.
The Chair: Thank you for that. I referenced earlier that we heard testimony from Senator Karetak-Lindell from Nunavut. She spoke about a lot of these challenges. We also heard her speak about the impacts of climate change and how the traditional kind of gathering of country foods has been challenged in a lot of ways, so I appreciate you sharing on this.
I want to be mindful of giving enough time to Senator Sorensen so that we can hear Dr. Maguire’s response to her question.
Senator Sorensen: Thanks very much. Dr. Maguire, I appreciated you mentioning breastfeeding support, which is kind of in line with my question. I’m talking about postpartum programs that don’t necessarily require alternatively trained medical people, which is I guess how I would word it. I’m referring to postpartum doulas.
Dr. Maguire: I entirely agree with you. We have this funny thing going on where you receive all this care prenatally, but then the baby is born and “bye.” It’s unusual. If you take a few steps back, families are left without a whole lot of resources to support a newborn, particularly if they’ve never had a newborn before, and they’re struggling in so many different ways. It’s a very important thing, I think. We need to do better at that.
Senator Sorensen: Thank you very much. I appreciate that.
The Chair: I remember leaving the hospital with my first‑born and waiting for the shoplifting alarm to go off or for someone to say, “This person cannot possibly take care of this little human being.” I really appreciate that, although he’s still okay. He’s 21 now, and we did okay. It really was a struggle, and that’s with support. I think regarding your point about people who are disadvantaged and lack networks, it is staggering to think how overwhelming it must be. Yes, we really do appreciate your comments.
That brings us to the end of this committee hearing. I want to thank our witnesses. We really appreciate the time and effort you’ve put into preparing your remarks and setting aside the time to be here today to inform our study. Thank you so much. That concludes our meeting for today.
(The committee adjourned.)