Food Secure Canada’s 8th Assembly was held in Halifax, Nova Scotia last week. This was the fourth assembly that I’ve managed to attend personally and it felt radically different from the others. At the end of the conference, I felt not only inspired and refreshed by the wealth of important and imaginative food and farming activity from across the country, I also felt a distinct gravity—the weight of responsibility to make change happen in a moment of critical importance.
This year’s conference was a rallying call: The 2015 federal election is upon us and there is a lot to do.
This message was brought home repeatedly throughout the conference and especially at the closing panel where Diana Bronson, executive director of Food Secure Canada, and Nick Saul, CEO of Community Food Centres Canada, stood up and reminded us that important change is fought for and now, more than ever, we have an opportunity to make change because the public is with us.
As I reflect on this message and on the amazing work that the members of our alliance have accomplished over the past four years in getting the Local Food Act passed, I’d like to draw out a few key themes of the conference that I think we all need to consider carefully and thoughtfully.
1) We need a joined up food policy. Therefore, we need joined up advocacy efforts
Dr. Rod MacRae talks about a joined up food policy that works across jurisdictions, departments and ministries. At Sustain Ontario, we have been working hard to match our advocacy efforts across the province with those of local and regional food policy groups. This was especially important this year when our municipal elections followed so closely on the heels of (another!) provincial election. It’s now time to consider how our efforts can be integrated into a national strategy. If we don’t act in a joined up way, how can we expect our governments to?
2) We need savvy, well-resourced government relations
Rod MacRae also spoke to the fact that many of us are organizers and that often the skills required for organizing are different than the ones needed to work directly with government. I’m proud to say that there’s growing evidence of these skills here in Ontario. Representatives from both the Ontario Ministry of Agriculture and Food and the Ontario Ministry of Children and Youth Services were at the assembly. Our efforts in Ontario are having an impact! And yet, we know we need to do more and we need to do it well in order to continue to see the Local Food Act and investments in Student Nutrition Programs achieve the vision and goals of the food movement. This will only come with further investment in important relationship building.
3) Coordination and sharing of resources is key
We saw two important examples of this taking shape at the Food Secure Canada Assembly: The national “Raising the Bar” and the “Ontario Say Yes!” campaigns for Universal Student Nutrition programs have been developing in parallel to each other. At the pre-assembly meeting for the Raising the Bar network, there was some interest to use the Say Yes! Campaign slogan and materials nationally. We also saw a strategic conversation for how Food Secure Canada and Sustain Ontario’s Municipal/Regional network can work together to share successes and resources for municipal food policy councils across the country. We need to do more work to leverage our collective efforts as we move forward.
4) Bite the hand that feeds you….carefully and strategically
One of the most interesting panels held at the assembly examined whether food banks are part of the solution or part of the problem. The panel, with Kathryn Scharf from CFCC, Valerie Tarasuk, author of PROOF, and Shawn Pegg, Director of Policy for Food Banks Canada, considered not only the need for long-term change in the form of a guaranteed annual income, but also the short term role of food banks as places to start a conversation about poverty. At the core, however, food banks are the face of hunger and they have the ears of the public. They have the responsibility to change the mainstream narrative around hunger and poverty but many of them are perpetuating the message that food banks and charity are the solution to hunger in order to continue to fund themselves. In response to this, Nick Saul stressed the point that we need to do both: to meet people where they are at and work with them to advocate for change; to bite the hand that feeds us. He underscored this point in the final panel, elaborating on the same issues at a political level:
- We can work both inside and outside of government and we need to. Politicians can “sniff out” a background lobby effort that has no legs. There needs to be a movement behind it in order for government relations to work.
- We have to both do and act. Community gardens and kitchens are not a solution unto themselves, but rather a chance to bring people together to start a conversation and change hearts and minds.
- He told a story about two kids in a wagon holding a sign at a demonstration that said “We may be cute, but we’re actually revolting.” This, in a nutshell, is our movement except that we’re not revolting enough. We need to keep our focus on fighting for change.
5) Do less and do it better
Food cuts across silos so we know that it touches on many issues. But the message that was brought home at the end of this year’s Food Secure Canada assembly was that as a movement, it’s time that we mature, become more sophisticated and more focused in our efforts. The time is ripe, but we need to know collectively which fruits we want to harvest first. At the assembly, there was a clear call to action around Student Nutrition Programs, an ask that the Ontario Edible Education network has also been promoting here in Ontario, and there was a commitment from both the Liberal and NDP MPs who were present. Other key asks included supports for new farmers, indigenous food systems and adequate income, mirroring similar asks put in front of the political panel at Bring Food Home. We are already landing on the same topics. Let’s use this momentum to bring clarity to our asks.
After two provincial and two municipal elections here in Ontario, we’ve learned a lot about what works and what doesn’t in getting our issues on the political agenda. And, more importantly, we’ve learned to use elections to build relationships for the long term.
This is a catalyzing moment in the history of the Canadian food movement. Let’s take this opportunity to think carefully and strategically, learning from the lessons in Ontario, on the food system that we want to see in Canada. Let’s make it a joined up one.
Food connects us all….. regionally, provincially and yes, nationally.
Carolyn Young