Poverty, Food, and COVID19

More than 4 million Canadians are food insecure and the impacts of COVID19 have increased this number to 4.5 million people now experiencing food insecurity with black and indigenous communities disproportionally affected.  

Nick Saul, president and CEO of Community Food Centres Canada, talks to Steve Paikin on TVO’s agenda about food insecurity and why we need transformative public policy action. Saul notes, “Canada entered into COVID19 as a very unequal society and the effects of COVID19 have exacerbated these inequities and inequalities in our society” He mentions that food and food banks will not solve hunger because at the root of hunger is poverty and people not having enough money to meet their needs. 

When one talks about food insecurity, we often reference the lack of access to and lack of income to buy healthy, fresh, culturally appropriate food, but Saul mentions an interesting point. Beyond the immediate effects of food insecurity, such as lack of income, there are also devastating social impacts such as not being able to host people for dinner, not being able to put your kids in sports because you don’t have the food to feed them adequately. The social impacts in addition to the detrimental health impacts of food insecurity drastically impact the quality of life of folks who are food insecure. 

COVID19 has made clear that we cannot go back to normal.  “We have built an economy built on vulnerability. We should not allow businesses to be sustainable if they are not paying their workers fairly. People should not be working full time and wondering if they can put food on the table” says Saul. 

We need to do better. One potential solution is a permanent basic income program beyond COVID19. Public policy has a large role to play in creating meaningful changes within our social infrastructure to create equitable and resilient communities for all.  

Watch the full video https://www.tvo.org/video/poverty-food-and-covid-19