Food Insecurity is not a Food Problem - Our Remarks to Canadian Senators

On December 4th, 2025, The Maple Leaf Centre for Food Security was invited to address the Standing Senate Committee on Agriculture and Forestry, in their examination of the role of the agriculture and agri-food sector with regards to food security in Canada.

Our Executive Director, Sarah Stern, made remarks and answered questions from Senators about our priorities and approach to alleviating food insecurity in Canada. Read her remarks below, or listen to the full session recording at this link.

---

“Mr. Chair, Deputy Chair, and Honourable Members of the Committee, thank you for the opportunity to appear before you today to discuss the urgent crisis of food insecurity in Canada.

My name is Sarah Stern, and I am the Executive Director of the Maple Leaf Centre for Food Security. The Centre is a national charity committed to working collaboratively across sectors to reduce food insecurity in Canada. Established as the corporate foundation of Maple Leaf Foods in 2016, the Centre invests in scalable programs, knowledge building, research, and public policy advocacy to increase access to good food and reduce food insecurity across Canada.

Food insecurity is pervasive and significant, and the problem has only worsened since Canada began tracking food insecurity in the early 2000s. The unacceptable fact is that 10 million people in Canada, including 1 in 4 adults and 1 in 3 children, can’t afford the food they need.

Since 2016, we have learned a lot about what is driving the rising rates of food insecurity in Canada, who is most impacted, and what might be done about it.

One of the most important things we’ve learned is that food insecurity is not a food problem. Canada does not have a food shortage problem. The problem is that people do not have the resources that they need to access food. They are faced with impossible choices about whether to pay their rent or buy food, or pay for medication or buy food, or pay for heat or buy food.

Food insecurity is a marker of material deprivation and is tightly linked with low-income. Money to buy food is the single greatest leverage point to address food insecurity. Other barriers – such as where people live, whether they live with a disability, or even inability to access financial benefits that they are entitled to – make getting enough good food even more challenging.  

Food insecurity does not impact everyone equally. It disproportionately affects households with children, single parents, working-age singles, and those with low educational attainment. One of the biggest disparities can be seen among different racial groups, in particular Black and Indigenous communities, who experience food insecurity rates far higher than the national average.  Furthermore, close to 50% of people over the age of 15 living in food-insecure households have a disability.

Food insecurity has been linked to chronic health problems including heart disease, chronic pain, infectious disease, depression, and anxiety disorders. The result is that people experiencing food insecurity land in the healthcare system; food insecurity is not only an issue of social justice – it is also impacting our health care costs and our productivity.

To adequately address the food insecurity crisis in Canada, we will need structural policy solutions.

Food banks and other charitable organizations do incredibly important work to respond to the immediate needs of some food-insecure people. For many they are a lifeline or a tourniquet that allows their household to stop the bleeding. However, we cannot continue to look to charity to address this crisis alone. And really, we live in a country where no one should need to rely on charity to access food.

There are many policy portfolios and government departments that can impact food insecurity and therefore a whole-of-government approach is required.

To that end, the Centre has advocated for the establishment of a government target to reduce food insecurity. Targets and commitments drive and align action. Canada’s Poverty Reduction Strategy has driven considerable progress toward reducing poverty by 50% by 2030. Similarly, setting a target to reduce food insecurity by 50% would effectively mobilize this whole-of-government approach to tackle food insecurity.

This idea has broad support from Canada’s largest leading national food insecurity organizations, private sector actors and amongst the public. Our most recent public insights polling demonstrated that almost 80% of Canadians would support setting a target to reducing food insecurity.

This target would elevate existing policy initiatives and encourage coordinated program execution across relevant Ministries such as Employment and Social Development Canada, Health Canada, Housing, Infrastructure and Communities Canada, Indigenous Services Canada and Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada –  all with the objective of reducing food insecurity.

We have reached a crisis point for food insecurity. There is public will to address the issue, and we are calling on policy makers to make bold commitments to do so. It is time to commit to reducing the unacceptable levels of food insecurity in Canada.

Once again, thank you to members of the Committee for the opportunity to speak today. I am happy to answer any questions or follow up with more information.”