Candidate Questionnaire

Q1: What concrete steps would your party take to build a more resilient Canadian food system that can withstand geopolitical impacts and climate shocks?

Canada imports over half its food supply, while exporting close to half its domestic production—sometimes importing it again as manufactured products. This interdependency leaves us vulnerable to trade wars, global supply chain disruptions, and climate-related crop failures abroad. Recently, escalating trade tensions, such as U.S. tariffs on Canadian goods and Canada’s retaliatory tariffs, have raised concerns about the affordability and availability of fruits and vegetables.

Q2: How will your party support communities and food insecure households so that people can access adequate, affordable, and culturally appropriate food? What tangible policies will you put in place?

Nearly 1 in 4 Canadians live in food-insecure households. Black and Indigenous families are disproportionately affected, facing food insecurity rates of 40%, a result of structural racism. Food insecurity is strongly tied to poverty, which affects all areas of a person’s life and puts strain on local and national supports. 

Q3: How will you encourage the next generation to take up farming, while noting that the financial risks that farmers have always taken are now compounded by price pressures and massively unpredictable and unfavourable weather patterns?

Changing weather patterns are already disrupting food production in Canada, with droughts, floods, and extreme weather events becoming more frequent. The average age of Canadian farmers is 56, and new farmers face skyrocketing land costs and limited access to capital. There is a rise in inequality among farmers, with a few making lots of money, while many barely hang on or can’t get started. Canada’s agriculture sector produces billions of dollars in wealth every year but most of that is captured by fertilizer and seed sellers, fuel companies, land speculators, and grain buyers. An economically just agriculture sector would need to be completely restructured.

 Q4: What steps will you take, if elected, to make sure that the workers who grow, process, transport, cook, serve, sell and deliver our food all have decent pay and conditions? 

From farmers to truck drivers to grocery store workers to restaurant workers to delivery workers, our food chain is held together by low-wage workers, many of whom are migrants who face difficult working conditions and lack pathways to permanent residency. Growing food needs to be valued as respectable work—otherwise there will continue to be incentives to mistreat workers, rely on temporary workers, and underpay this work.