$10 for a bag of potatoes. $8 for a bag of apples. $10 for a bag of flour.
That’s what residents in Northern Ontario in communities from Timmins to Attawapiskat pay for supermarket staples, according to a recent report from Food Secure Canada.
As many families sit down for a traditional turkey dinner this weekend, we should make sure that we don’t let the holiday festivities eclipse the shocking impact of food insecurity across Canada.
Canada is one of the wealthiest countries in the world – in fact, we were recently ranked as having the tenth highest Gross Domestic Product (GDP) of any country. But in spite of our wealth, over 850,000 Canadians use food banks each month and food bank usage is up 26% from 2008. One in 8 households in Canada struggle to put food on the table. Food-insufficient households are 80% more likely to report having diabetes, 60% more likely to report high blood pressure and 70% more likely to report food allergies.
And the situation of hunger and food insecurity is even more startling in Northern communities.
Two in 5 Northern households are food insecure. Residents of Nunavut, where a carton of orange juice goes for $12.99, spend two times more than residents in the rest of Canada on food. Indeed, a recent report showed that people living in the North would have to spend half their income to meet basic nutritional needs – compared to just 10-15% in Southern Ontario.
Food access is a major part of the anti-poverty movement in Canada. It’s part of why we started our annual ChewOnThis! campaign. Every year, people take the message to sidewalks, grocery stores, schools and community gatherings from coast-to-coast-to-coast to bring awareness to food insecurity and mobilize around the need for a rights-based national anti-poverty plan. Our 4th annual campaign happens just one week from today and this year, we excited to announce that we have participating organizations from every province and territory.
You can join us for ChewOnThis! this October 17th by taking this message to your neighbourhood and participating in a community event – or online through our social media outlets. We’ll be joining forces at 12:00 pm EST that Monday in a Thunderclap to make sure our message is heard. To join the Thunderclap, click here.
ChewOnThis! teams will be handing out 18,000 postcards which can be signed and sent to the Honourable Jean-Yves Duclos, Minister of Families, Children and Social Development. These postcards will make clear that people in Canada believe that we need action on poverty – Canada needs a rights-based national anti-poverty strategy. Here at CWP, we are excited about the momentum, but we also know it’s not enough.
The right to food, like the rights to vote, health and education, are part of the Canadian government’s obligations under the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights. This right is a fundamental human right and yet, Canada is experiencing a national crisis.
CWP will keep pushing for the government to meet its international commitment to an adequate standard of living by developing a National Right to Food Policy and increasing federal investment to address the very high levels of household food insecurity in Northern communities in a culturally-responsive way. It’s all part of a larger need for a National Anti-Poverty Plan that takes a rights-based approach – a plan that fundamentally includes the voices and perspectives of people living in poverty from its creation through to implementation.
This Thanksgiving, let’s bring human rights to the table.
Laura Neidhart is the Development & Communications Coordinator for Canada Without Poverty.
