Previous research on food insecurity in Canada found that two-thirds of food-insecure households relied on incomes from employment sources. However, little was known about the nature of the jobs that these working families depended on.

PROOF researchers at the University of Toronto used data from Statistics Canada’s Canadian Income Survey to examine the relationship between different types of employment and household food insecurity among working families.

The new study, published in Canadian Public Policy, reveals that a large majority, 89%,of food-insecure households reliant on employment incomes have a main income earner in a permanent, full-time job.

The findings dispel common assumptions that having a job, particularly a full-time job, is enough to protect a household from food insecurity, the insecure or inadequate access to food due to financial constraints.

The researchers first examined how food insecurity varied based on the type of employment held by the household’s main income earner. They found that households with a main earner involuntarily working part-time, defined as being unable to find a job providing more than 30 hours a week, faced the highest risk of food insecurity.

Almost half (45%) of working households with a main earner in an involuntary part-time job experienced food insecurity. However, this group represented only a small fraction of food insecure households relying on employment incomes.

While households with a main earner in permanent full-time work have lower risk of food insecurity than those with part-time employed main earners, these households represented 89% of all food-insecure working households. This overwhelming majority prompted the researchers to examine more closely what characteristics of permanent full-time jobs were associated with greater food insecurity.

Focusing on households with a main earner in permanent full-time employment, the research identified several critical factors that increased the risk of household food insecurity. These households were more likely to be food-insecure if the main earner had a lower quality or less stable job, as indicated by lower wage, lower skilled occupation, shorter tenure, and recent unemployment, even after controlling for other established predictors of food insecurity.

Permanent, full-time workers with longer tenures and higher skilled occupations may also have more non-wage compensation and better workplace benefits, like health insurance or paid family or sick leave, that help insulate their families from food insecurity.

Among workers in permanent full-time positions, job quality and stability matter for the food insecurity of the household.

Households with Black or Indigenous main earners in full-time, permanent jobs are at higher risk of food insecurity, even when compared to others with similar job characteristics. The findings likely reflect inequities and discrimination in the workplace but also the broader impact of systemic racism on households’ financial circumstances.

These findings have important implications for how Canada addresses food insecurity. Focusing primarily on addressing unemployment and underemployment may be insufficient if the available jobs don’t provide adequate income and stability. While it is clear that precarious work contributes to food insecurity, it is not where the bulk of the problem is situated.

The research suggests that policies aimed at reducing food insecurity need to address not just whether people are working, but the quality and stability of work available to them. This broader approach includes examining minimum wages, employment standards, job security protections, and available income support programs.

Making low-skilled jobs more stable and better paying is important for reducing food insecurity among working families. As some of these jobs disappear due to automation, offshoring, or turbulent trade relations, job training programs may also be critical for helping affected workers move into better employment opportunities.

The study also raises questions about existing support programs available to working Canadians and whether they do enough to support them. The Canada Workers Benefit, a federal tax credit designed to support low-income workers, has such a low income threshold that many permanent full-time main earners may not qualify and those who do receive modest benefits.

From an earlier PROOF study, Employment Insurance, while providing temporary assistance during unemployment, doesn’t fully offset the increased likelihood of food insecurity associated with job loss and could be more impactful if it were more generous.

The study is a step forward for understanding how employment relates to food insecurity in Canada. More research is needed to examine the role of other factors, like the industry of the work and employment circumstances of other household members, not just the main income earner, and how changes in the Canada’s labour market and economic have contributed to the rise in food insecurity over the past few years.

As food insecurity rates continue to climb across Canada, this research provides crucial evidence that addressing the crisis will require fundamental changes to how we think about work, wages, and economic security.

About the Research

The study analyzed data from 16,830 Canadian households whose main income source was employment and where the main earner was employed at the time of the survey from the 2021 Canadian Income Survey.

Food insecurity was measured using the validated 18-item Household Food Security Survey Module, which asks questions about experiences of insufficient or uncertain food access due to financial constraints over the past 12 months.

The research controlled for numerous workplace, job-related, and socio-demographic characteristics to identify independent predictors of household food insecurity.

This study was supported by the Canadian Institutes of Health Research.

Read the Full Study

The complete research paper is available in Canadian Public Policy:

Wei, M. F., St-Germain, A. A. F., Li, T., & Tarasuk, V. (2025). What Predicts Permanent Full-Time Job Holders Being Food Insecure?. Canadian Public Policy, 51(4), 443-459. https://doi.org/10.3138/cpp.2024-059

The post The Main Income Earner of Most Food-Insecure Working Households Has a Permanent, Full-Time Job, New Research Reveals appeared first on PROOF.

The Senate Standing Committee on Agriculture and Forestry is currently studying the role of the agriculture and agri-food sector with regard to food security in Canada. Dr. Dutton’s testimony cut to the heart of a confusion that has plagued policymaking for years.

Dr. Dutton emphasized an important distinction that often gets lost in policy discussions – food insecurity is completely different from how the term “food security” is used to describe a wide range of food issues like agricultural production, supply chains, and food system resilience, which this committee works on.

Household food insecurity is a specific and clearly defined concept in Canada: the inadequate or insecure access to food because of financial constraints. It has been measured for over two decades through a well-studied and validated set of 18 questions about households’ experiences of food deprivation due to a lack of money over the past 12 months. The most recent data collected in 2024 shows that almost 10 million Canadians lived in a food-insecure household.

The Problem of Conflation

The conflation of these issues presents a major problem for policymaking. It leads to actions taken in the name of reducing food insecurity that aren’t actually able to move the needle.

The solution to food insecurity lies in addressing the underlying income inadequacy and instability. The experiences of food deprivation due to financial constraints are an indicator of pervasive material deprivation and compromises to necessities beyond just food.

“This inappropriate combination of household food insecurity with issues grouped under the banner of food security complicates the language for people in government trying to grapple with the problem of household food insecurity.”

What the Evidence Shows

The Public Health Agency of Canada recently conducted several systematic reviews that looked at all of the Canadian research on interventions to reduce food insecurity and came to the same conclusion. The things that reduce food insecurity are when policies improve households’ financial circumstances, like higher wages, new income benefits, or enhancements to existing ones. The reviews also show that giving households food through various mechanisms, like community gardens, food charity, or school food, are unable to reduce food insecurity.

“The idea that giving a household food does not impact food insecurity is a major sticking point for many people, because it sounds unintuitive.

The reason this unintuitive idea is true is because of what household food insecurity reflects – the structural factors facing a household. Those can include the adequacy and stability of income, unexpected expenses, cost of living – none of which change when we deliver food.”

Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada’s own audit of the Local Food Infrastructure Fund (LFIF) and the Auditor General’s review of the pandemic era Emergency Food Security Fund and Surplus Food Rescue Program also found no evidence that these programs reduced food insecurity. In fact, the audit recommended changing the LFIF’s policy outcome from reducing food insecurity to improving “community food security”, in recognition that the provision of infrastructure for food programs does not address the problem.

Read Canada’s national food policy is at risk of enshrining a two-tiered food system for more on the LFIF.

Earlier testimony from government departments like Employment and Social Development Canada and Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada, other researchers, and representatives from community and agri-food policy organizations, also acknowledged that food insecurity is a problem of inadequate financial resources.

There is wide consensus that actions taken by agriculture and agri-food have not accomplished their stated goals around food insecurity reduction. More accountability is needed for the public funds spent on food-based interventions in the name of food insecurity reduction despite no supporting evidence or evaluation.

What Actually Works: Income Policy

Federal interventions should focus on income policies managed by Employment and Social Development Canada, not agriculture departments. Dr. Dutton’s own research found that when low-income individuals turn 65 and qualify for seniors’ public pensions, their likelihood of being food insecure decreases substantially. These programs provide more income adequacy and stability than the jobs they had or provincial social assistance programs.

Labour market participation and the existing benefits for working-age Canadians and their families have failed to do the same. There has not been any meaningful action on federal benefits to address the income inadequacy, with no major improvements to federal income supports beyond increases from indexation, which for low-income households is likely outpaced by the higher inflation for necessities making up more of their budgets.

The high rate of food insecurity exists in the context of our current income policies, so thoughtful redesign of the programs that form our social safety net is urgently needed.

“Decreasing household food insecurity in Canada means acting on the social issues that drive it. That means acting high on the chain of events that leads to food insecurity. That action is uniquely possible through intervention at the federal level. For example, income policies managed by ESDC.”

The Path Forward

Dr. Dutton’s testimony reframes food insecurity as a social policy issue, not an agricultural one. While food systems issues are important in their own right, they are distinct from food insecurity.
The problem of food insecurity cannot be solved by agriculture and agri-food sector. Policy action to reduce food insecurity must be grounded in this understanding. The federal government has many key policy levers and the ability to pursue other interventions that could go a long way to reducing food insecurity, like basic income.

We hope the committee’s final report will advance policy action grounded in the evidence: reducing food insecurity requires federal leadership on income security, not more funding for food provision or agricultural programs that can’t address the root causes.

The post PROOF Testifies Before The Senate: Food Insecurity Can Not Be Solved By Agriculture And Agri-Food Sector appeared first on PROOF.

PROOF principal investigator, Dr. Valerie Tarasuk spoke with CBC Alberta at Noon’s Kathleen Petty about how the problem of food insecurity is bigger than food bank usage and why public policies to support more adequate and stable income are needed to address it.

Listen to the full broadcast at: https://www.cbc.ca/listen/live-radio/1-1-alberta-at-noon/clip/16187165-moving-beyond-food-hamper

In 2024, 30.9% of Albertans lived in a food-insecure household, making Alberta the province with the highest rate of food insecurity. Policy choices, like not increasing minimum wage for seven years, allowing its real value to drop considerably amid record inflation, and not ensuring that social assistance programs provide enough for basic needs, contribute directly to the state of food insecurity in the province.

Callers from across the province shared their thoughts on food insecurity.

The toll on health

A doctor from Calgary regularly sees food-insecure patients struggle with following prescriptions or accessing mental healthcare services due to cost. Research on the relationships between food insecurity, health, and healthcare tells the same story.

People in food-insecure households are more likely to have poor health, have greater difficulty managing their conditions, and require more healthcare. Provincial governments should pay attention to food insecurity and work to reduce it, given the toll on public health and healthcare budgets.

Inadequate income supports

Callers also highlighted the inadequacy of provincial programs, like Income Support and AISH, and recent changes that could see many disability welfare recipients receive even less support.

Alberta is the only province to claw back the Canada Disability Benefit from welfare, meaning recipients won’t benefit at all from the federal initiative to help people with disabilities in financial need.

Wages and salaries not keeping up

There are also concerns about the inadequacy of wages in light of high inflation, particularly rising food and shelter costs.

Two-thirds of food-insecure households rely on employment incomes, making food insecurity a problem that is concentrated in the workforce. Jobs aren’t enough to protect against food insecurity if they don’t provide stable income that cover basic needs.

Policy solutions

Reducing household food insecurity requires the commitment to ensure that incomes are adequate, secure, and responsive to changing costs of living. There are many provincial and federal policies around income support, taxation, and employment that could be changed to better support Canadians in need. Reimagining our social safety net as a basic income or a guaranteed minimum income could also go a long way toward reducing food insecurity.

The post CBC Radio Alberta at Noon: Moving beyond the food hamper appeared first on PROOF.

In our study published in Health Reports, we examined how vulnerability to household food insecurity changed between 2019 and 2023, a period marked by major economic disruption from the  COVID-19 pandemic and record inflation.

Food insecurity is a reflection of public policies and the labour market’s failure to ensure households have enough money for basic needs and the structural inequities that make it harder for some groups to have adequate financial resources.

While households with lower income, less education, renters, Indigenous households, families with children, and households relying on social assistance or Employment Insurance remained at higher risk, households across all sociodemographic and economic groups became more likely to be food-insecure in later years.

The most notable change is the risk of food insecurity for households reliant on employment income. In 2019 and 2021, these households were less likely to be food insecure than those relying on other sources of income, but by 2023, that protective effect had disappeared.

This finding raises additional concern about the nature of jobs in Canada and the need for policies to better support working families. With two-thirds of food-insecure households reliant on employment income, simply having a job has never guaranteed food security. As food insecurity increasingly affects the workforce, it is critical that jobs enable Canadians to make ends meet.

Read the paper, Changes in households’ vulnerability to food insecurity in Canada before and after the COVID-19 pandemic.

Fafard St-Germain, A. A., Li, T., & Tarasuk, V. (2024). Changes in households’ vulnerability to food insecurity in Canada before and after the COVID-19 pandemic. Health Reports, 36(12). https://www.doi.org/10.25318/82-003-x202501200001-eng 

The post Relying on employment incomes once meant lower risk of food insecurity — <br> not anymore appeared first on PROOF.

The Carney government says its November budget empowers and invests in Canadians. But it lacks meaningful measures to reduce food insecurity – an important indicator of economic well-being and a strong predictor of poor physical health. It is therefore out of touch with the financial struggles that millions of Canadians face.

In 2024, 25.5 per cent of people in the 10 provinces and 37.4 per cent of those in the territories lived in a household affected by food insecurity – insecure or inadequate access to food due to financial constraints – based on data from Statistics Canada’s Canadian Income Survey. That’s about 10 million Canadians – the highest prevalence of food insecurity to date. The next update in the spring will likely set another record, given the current economic situation.

None of the three affordability measures highlighted for the recent budget – automatic tax filing for some low-income Canadians, institutionalization of the National School Food Program and extension of the Canada Strong Pass discounts for the winter and next summer – will lower the rate of food insecurity or alter its trajectory.

Instead, the government needs to increase income and financial stability for vulnerable households. The majority of food-insecure households have low to modest incomes, rely on often-precarious employment and are led by working-age adults.

If the government truly wants to build a stronger Canada, it must start by confronting the reality that millions cannot afford enough to eat. Real progress against food insecurity will not come from symbolic gestures or temporary half measures, but from sustained investments that strengthen and modernize income support for low- and modest-income households.

More generous benefits needed, not just automatic tax filing

The government announced in the budget that the Canada Revenue Agency will automatically file tax returns for low-income Canadians to ensure they receive government benefits for which they qualify such as the GST/HST credit, the Canada Child Benefit, the Canada Disability Benefit and more. Some low-income households may not be aware that they are entitled to these benefits or that they must file a tax return to collect them.

Getting more low-income Canadians to access all of these benefits could help. However, tax returns filed in 2023 covered 94.5 per cent of the population, including children in families where an adult filed the tax return. This suggests that most food-insecure households will not gain from the new automatic filing initiative.

In addition, almost all food-insecure families with children (98 per cent, according to my calculations) are eligible for the Canada Child Benefit – the largest federal tax-delivered cash transfer. It is also received by almost all eligible families with only a small minority not filing the required tax return.

The benefit has been shown to have the potential to reduce food insecurity, but with 33 per cent of children now living in food-insecure families, it is clear that we are far from maximizing its potential impact.

The federal government should increase benefits for lower-income families and eliminate the current age-based tiered system so that families don’t lose income when a child turns seven. Additional supplements for single-parent families and those in remote or Northern communities would help address the much higher vulnerability to food insecurity that they face.

With the government’s focus on fiscal responsibility and more efficient spending, there is a strong argument to fund some of the improvements to the child benefit by tightening income thresholds for eligibility and redirecting money currently given to high-income families who are not at risk of food insecurity.

School food and minor savings are not enough

A national school food program has the potential to improve student nutrition and educational success, build stronger school communities and even support local economies. However, there is no evidence such programs reduce food insecurity.

The government has said the federal funding to provincial and territorial school food programs will save a family of two children up to $800 per year. That amounts to $33 per child per month for the additional 400,000 students that are expected to benefit from the anticipated program expansion – a paltry figure, compared to a family’s financial needs amid rising living costs. It also does not resolve the underlying financial hardship they face.

Nor do the vacation discounts offered through the Canada Strong Pass or a proposed review to reduce ATM and e-transfer fees. It is shameful to present this pass as an affordability measure in a budget that purports to protect Canadians and help them get ahead when many households are struggling just to afford basic needs.

A different direction is needed

These measures came on the heels of other budget measures, such as the middle-class tax cut introduced following the election, which will provide limited additional support for lower-income households while allowing high earners to benefit the most. It does little to advance the stated objective that “every Canadian should be able to afford necessities, feel secure, and get ahead financially.”

While the budget offers a one-time supplement for applicants for the Canada Disability Benefit to offset the costs associated with obtaining the necessary qualifications, the benefit itself has been criticized for providing far too little assistance and for being too burdensome to access. There are also concerns that it will lead the government to overlook the need for broader income support.

In the wake of the tariff-induced economic uncertainty, the government introduced temporary Employment Insurance enhancements, such as waiving the waiting period for claims, allowing workers to keep severance payments while receiving EI benefits, increasing the benefits for long-tenured workers, adjusting the benefit calculation to require fewer hours to qualify and allowing more weeks of benefit entitlement.

The problem with these EI measures – some extended by this budget – is that they are temporary. Because the benefit calculation adjustments have already ended, the remaining extensions also likely have limited impact on precarious workers.

Employment Insurance can play a critical role to help prevent food insecurity or its worsening by buffering some of the financial shock of job loss, but it needs to be modernized to meet current and future labour market challenges and be more generous and accessible to all workers.

Responding to crises that can exacerbate food insecurity, such as ongoing trade tensions and the economic downturn, is important but we can’t pretend it is enough. Food insecurity has been a persistent and growing problem that long predates the recent turbulence.

If the federal government truly aims to build a stronger Canada, it must start by ensuring Canadians can meet their basic needs. The kinds of investments needed to address food insecurity are those that strengthen and modernize federal income supports in a lasting way.

The budget should have included some revision of existing benefits for food-insecure households, such as the child benefit and the GST/HST credit, to provide more for lower-income, working-age adults and their children.

Until the federal government treats food security and income adequacy as cornerstones of economic policy, budgets such as this one will remain out of step with the country’s most urgent needs.

This article first appeared on Policy Options and is republished here under a Creative Commons license.

The post Ten million Canadians live in food-insecure households. The federal budget doesn’t help them appeared first on PROOF.

With the latest estimate from Statistics Canada showing 1 in 4 people in the ten provinces live in food-insecure households, there is every reason for food insecurity to be a priority for policymakers.

However, the discussions in Parliament have been far from grounded in the decades worth of research on what it means for a household to be food-insecure and what kinds of policy interventions could reduce the rates. Sometimes it is not even clear that parliamentarians are talking about the right numbers.

PROOF founding investigators, Drs. Valerie Tarasuk and Lynn McIntyre participated in two systematic reviews of research on the efficacy of different kinds of interventions for food insecurity reduction in Canada by the Public Health Agency of Canada.

The reviews yielded two key findings: federal and provincial policies that improve the incomes of households in need are effective at reducing food insecurity, and food-based interventions fail to reduce food insecurity.

They reflected on these findings in a new commentary in Health Promotion and Chronic Disease Prevention, highlighting that the reason for the persistence and rise of food insecurity in Canada is this lack of accountability in the policy-making process.

“As the problem of household food insecurity continues to grow, effective evidence-informed responses are badly needed. The systematic reviews of evidence compiled by PHAC provide an important foundation for such action. But the results of these evidence reviews also lay bare the need for accountability, so that no more public funds are wasted on initiatives with no evidence of impact under the guise of addressing food insecurity.” (Tarasuk & McIntyre, 2025)

Evidence-supported policy levers, like the Canada Child Benefit, have not been revisited or adapted with food insecurity reduction as an explicit goal. Meanwhile, public funds continue to be spent on food-based interventions in the name of food insecurity reduction despite no supporting evidence or evaluation.

There needs to be accountability around policies set out to address food insecurity and plans for a path forward. That starts with explicit targets to eliminate severe food insecurity and halve the overall prevalence by 2030.

Leaders in the community response to food insecurity, like Right to Food and Food Banks Canada, have long acknowledged that the solutions to food insecurity are those that improve the financial resources of struggling Canadians and have called for these targets.

The measurement of food insecurity has provided important insight into the financial situations of Canadian households and whether their incomes are sufficient and stable enough to afford necessities and manage budget shocks like job loss or increases in the cost of living.

The high and rising rate of food insecurity shows that both employment and our social safety net are failing to ensure households can cover basic needs. Integrating this understanding of food insecurity into decision-making would lead to more effective and responsive policies that protect households from serious financial hardship.

There is plenty of evidence on how to reduce food insecurity: investments that strengthen the social safety net and raise household incomes.

We need the government to be accountable for the policy decisions that have led to this point and commit to evidence-based action with measurable goals for reducing food insecurity

Read: The evidence is in: accountability needs to be injected into the policy-making process for household food insecurity reduction

The post From Evidence to Accountability: Setting Targets to Reduce Food Insecurity appeared first on PROOF.

This is the third consecutive increase in the percentage of people living in food-insecure households and another record high level.

Last week, Statistics Canada released data from the 2023 Canadian Income Survey (CIS 2024). While the CIS 2023 provides information on income and poverty using 2023 tax files, hence its name, questions about food insecurity were asked in the following year, from January 21, 2024 to July 2, 2024.

Since food insecurity status is determined by the report of food deprivation in the past 12 months, we think it is more appropriate to characterize the food insecurity statistics as representative of 2024.

The data on the percentage and number of people living in food-insecure households^a summarized in this post comes from Statistics Canada’s article in “The Daily — Canadian Income Survey, 2023”, and their public data tables. Links to these tables are available in the graphs below.

In the past, Statistics Canada has released CIS data from the territories separately from the provinces. While the “national estimates” still only comprise the provinces, this release includes territorial estimates for the percentage of people living in food-insecure households (any food insecurity including marginal). More detailed breakdown by level of severity, economic family type, or selected demographic characteristics is not publicly available at this time.

We have included the territorial estimates from this release in our map of food insecurity, but due to unique challenges for data collection and small sample sizes in the North, caution needs to be taken when interpreting these prevalence estimates or comparing them with other statistics. More research on food insecurity in the North and survey methodologies is warranted.

Food insecurity in the ten provinces, 2024

Food insecurity remains a large and persistent problem in Canada. The estimates for 2024 are the highest in the almost twenty years of monitoring. The persistently high prevalence of household food insecurity across Canada highlights the need for more effective, evidence-based policy responses by federal, provincial, and territorial governments.

Statistics Canada measures food insecurity using the Household Food Security Survey Module (HFSSM), which consists of 18 questions about experiences of food deprivation over the past 12 months. These experiences range in severity from worrying about running out of food to going whole days without eating, all due to financial constraints.

Based on a household’s experience, they can be considered food secure or in one of 3 categories of food insecurity:

Marginal food insecurity: Worry about running out of food and/or limited food selection due to a lack of money for food.

Moderate food insecurity: Compromise in quality and/or quantity of food due to a lack of money for food.

Severe food insecurity: Miss meals, reduce food intake, and at the most extreme go day(s) without food.

Living in a food-insecure household means living in pervasive material deprivation with compromises to basic needs beyond just food.

The increase was greater among those in households experiencing moderate or severe food insecurity. The percentage of people living in severely food-insecure households increased from 6.0% in 2023 to 6.7% in 2024. The percentage of people living in moderately food-insecure households increased from 10.9% in 2023 to 12.4% in 2024.

The continued worsening in the severity of food insecurity in Canada is very concerning. The negative health outcomes and increased health care needs associated with food insecurity are graded, with those in severely food-insecure household more likely to have chronic physical and mental health problems, require healthcare services like hospitalization, and die prematurely.

Differences across the provinces and territories

The percentage of people living in food-insecure households is highest in Nunavut at 58.1%. Among the ten provinces, the percentage of individuals living in food-insecure households was highest in Alberta at 30.9%, Saskatchewan at 30.6%, and Newfoundland and Labrador at 30.1%.

In 2024, the percentage of people living in severely food-insecure households varied from 8.7% in Alberta to 3.7% in Quebec. Quebec continues to stand out as having the lowest percentage of people living in food-insecure households and severely food-insecure households.

Food insecurity over time

In 2024, the percentage of people living food-insecure households rose and established new record highs in every province, except Prince Edward Island and Manitoba. More research on the change in food insecurity over this period is needed to better understand the nature of these changes. Some of these changes may not be statistically significant, especially in provinces with smaller populations and sample sizes like Prince Edward Island, but additional information like confidence intervals is currently not available.

Children living in food-insecure households, 2024

The chance of someone living in a food-insecure household differs greatly depending on their age. It has been long documented that children under 18 and working age adults have considerably higher proportions of people living in food-insecure households, compared to seniors 65 years and older. The percentage of children living in food-insecure households is over double the percentage for seniors.

In 2024, a third of children under 18 in the ten provinces (32.9%) lived in a food-insecure household. That amounts to 2.5 million children, increasing from the 2.1 million in 2023. About three quarters (75%) of these children, 1.9 million children, were in moderately or severely food-insecure households.

The percentage of children living in food-insecure households was highest in Newfoundland and Labrador and New Brunswick, where 2 in 5 children (39.9%) were affected by some level of food insecurity.

In 2024, food insecurity affected 31.2% of people in families with children^b. Female lone-parent families are very likely to be food-insecure, with over half (52.1%) of people in these families affected.

Food insecurity and race

Food insecurity is racialized. The highest percentage of individuals living in food-insecure households in 2024 was found among Black people at 46.7% and Indigenous Peoples living off-reserve at 39.9%.

The situation for Indigenous communities is likely even worse given the lack of representation of people living on First Nations reserves and some remote Northern communities in the national surveys used to monitor food insecurity in Canada, as well as the lack of data on the territories in these estimates.

Notes

a. The estimates reported in this blog and the Statistics Canada resources cited should not be compared to estimates from the PROOF annual reports. In those reports, we present estimates of food insecurity at the household level, in line with the conceptualization of food insecurity as a household measure. In this post and most Statistics Canada resources, food insecurity is reported at the person-level, i.e. the percentage of people in food-insecure households.

b. The statistics regarding families with children refers to economic family with main income earners under 65 years of age and their children by birth, adopted, step, or foster under 18 years of age. They exclude families with main income earners over 65 years or older and families where there are only children of relatives of the main income earner. ‘Economic family’ is defined by Statistics Canada as a group of two or more persons who live in the same dwelling and are related to each other by blood, marriage, common law, adoption, or a foster relationship, with the main income earner (highest income before tax) serving as the reference point. A female lone parent family may have other family members and their children in it. This is not a decision by PROOF and is a function of how the available data is organized in Statistics Canada’s public data tables.

There may be some minor differences in the provincial estimates of overall food insecurity in different graphs due to rounding.

The post New data on household food insecurity in 2024 appeared first on PROOF.

Statistics Canada has monitored household food insecurity for over 20 years through the Household Food Security Survey Module, which asks households about their experiences of deprivation ranging from worrying about running out of food to going whole days without eating, all due to a lack of money.

Since the start of this monitoring, we’ve known that households relying on social assistance have the highest rates of food insecurity. These households are also the most likely to be severely food insecure, meaning they have reduced food intake, missed meals, or worse, because they didn’t have enough money.

In 2023, 70% of households relying on OW or ODSP were food-insecure and 43% were severely so.*

Living in a food-insecure household puts people at greater risk of a wide range of chronic mental and physical conditions and makes it harder for them to manage existing health problems. As a result, they require more healthcare services, including hospitalization and emergency room visits, stay longer in the hospital, incur greater public healthcare costs, and are more likely to .

The consequences for people’s health are greatest for those living in severely food-insecure households. The cost of healthcare for an adult living in a severely food-insecure household in Ontario is more than double that of someone in food secure household.

OW and ODSP are income support programs of last resort, meant to help households through difficult times and support low-income people with disabilities after they have exhausted all other options. However, the current designs are failing the people who qualify for these income supports.

Social assistance reform is necessary to reduce severe food insecurity in Ontario and enable recipients to live healthy, productive lives

A third of severely food-insecure households in Ontario in 2023 received some support from OW or ODSP.*

Improving the financial circumstances of social assistance recipients could drastically reduce severe food insecurity in the province and lessen the burden of food insecurity on the provincial health care system at a time when it is under mounting stress.

Social assistance is a critical policy lever for food insecurity because it dictates so much of recipient households’ financial circumstances. Research has repeatedly shown that the high risk of food insecurity social assistance recipients face is a function of how much financial support they get. When provincial governments provide more through these programs, the risk of food insecurity drops.

The financial support provided by social assistance programs in Ontario is far from being enough to afford necessities. The current maximum amounts for a single individual to cover basic needs and shelter each month are only $733 for OW and $1,368 for ODSP.

Every year public health units across Ontario estimate the cost of a basic nutritional diet in their regions to show what people can afford on different incomes. Through this work, the inadequacies of OW and ODSP have been extensively documented for years now. (See full table and links to individual reports below)

Even after considering all the other provincial and federal benefits available, single people on OW and ODSP in most regions can’t afford the cost of food and average rent.

While households with children receive more income from social assistance, provincial/federal child benefits, and other tax credits, the costing work shows that they have little leftover for other needs.

The inadequate support means it is much harder for the programs to reach their goals of helping Ontarians going through hard times to transition to gainful employment and enabling people with disabilities and financial need to live a dignified and independent life.

Recent changes to ODSP were far from enough for affording basic needs

After 4 years of no change, ODSP saw some improvement to the rates in 2022, when the core components of the benefit saw a 5% increase. These rates were then indexed to inflation in 2023, but some components, such as the Special Diet Allowance and pregnancy/breast feeding nutritional allowance, did not increase or receive indexation.

In addition to an increase and indexation, the earning exemptions for ODSP were also increased from $200 to $1000, meaning that benefit payments would not be clawed back until the recipient earned over $1000 in employment income instead of $200.

Despite these increases, the benefit’s value is still 4% short of keeping up with inflation since 2018, meaning that recipients are still worse off now than they were 7 years ago. Food costing by public health units back then had already shown that the benefit amounts were not enough to cover food, shelter, and other essentials.

Despite record rise in cost of living, the support provided by OW has not changed since 2018

Despite the fact that 44% of social assistance beneficiaries were supported through OW, the program has not seen any change since 2018. OW has been excluded from rate increases, indexation, and earning exemptions increases.

During this time, the cost of living, as measured by the Ontario Consumer Price Index, has risen by 21 percent, meaning that OW recipients have effectively lost 21 percent of their already limited purchasing power over the past 7 years.

We need government accountability on reconciling social assistance with the true costs of living

When the UN Rapporteur on the right to food visited Canada in 2012, he expressed concern about the then already high rates of food insecurity and the erosion of social protections, specifically the lack of accountability for provincial social assistance programs to provide enough money for an adequate standard of living and allow recipients to realize their right to food.

Unfortunately, little has changed since.

It has now gotten to the point where Toronto, Mississauga, and Kingston have declared food insecurity as an emergency, with a united call for improvements to social assistance. More cities are also looking to do the same.

Listen to our interview with Press Progress’ Sources podcast on the recent emergency declarations. After three cities in Ontario declare food insecurity an emergency, experts hope for more action from Doug Ford

Municipal governments, the Association of Municipalities of Ontario, and municipal service managers, who are responsible for administering and delivering social assistance programs in Ontario, witness the consequences of inadequate support firsthand and have long advocated for increases to match the cost of living.

Social assistance reform is also critical for addressing the rising homelessness, another key municipal concern, with the number of social assistance recipients experiencing homelessness almost doubling over the past two years. The vast majority (85%) of unhoused social assistance recipients are receiving OW. Since they become ineligible for the shelter allowance component of social assistance, it becomes even more difficult to transition into secure housing situations.

The desperation and inability to meet their food needs independently given the inadequacy of their incomes is also exemplified by the high proportion of food bank clients receiving OW and ODSP. Feed Ontario reports that almost two-thirds of food bank clients in Ontario were reliant on social assistance.

While food bank use is not a good indicator of the prevalence of household food insecurity in a community because most food-insecure households don’t seek food charity, the demand that food banks face is tightly intertwined with policy decisions on social assistance.

There is also wide consensus on the need for social assistance reform from health organizations like the Association of Local Public Health Agencies, Ontario Dietitians in Public Health and Registered Nurses Association of Ontario, in recognition of the importance of addressing food insecurity for protecting people’s health and the stability of the healthcare system.

It is more important than ever for the Ontario government to act on social assistance.

With more economic uncertainty and the threat of higher rises in the cost of food, shelter, and other necessities on the horizon, social assistance recipients, who have been struggling for a long time, will be forced into even more dire situations if nothing is done.

Increasing and indexing OW rates should be a priority for all platforms given the impossibility of recipients meeting their basic needs on this program now.

At the same time, there must be a concerted effort to reexamine and redesign aspects of both OW and ODSP and how they intersect with employment and other government supports so that the benefits are sufficient to cover the costs of basic needs. That includes increasing benefit amounts, indexation, increasing earnings and asset exemptions, maximizing benefits by creating a flat rate regardless of shelter situation, and more.

It is also critical for the Ontario government to evaluate the impacts of changes to OW and ODSP on food insecurity and continue to revise these programs as needed to ensure that they support rather than undermine recipients’ food security.

Better data that allows for the examination of food insecurity separately for OW and ODSP recipients and of household’s food insecurity over time is not available but would help greatly to inform policy design.

* Author’s calculations using the Canadian Income Survey 2022 Public Use Microdata File. Estimates were limited to households with unattached individuals living alone or one economic family, which are the vast majority of households in Ontario, to ensure responses regarding food insecurity reflect the entire household.

Additional Reading

• Feed Ontario’s Election Platform Tracker
• Income Security Advocacy Centre’s Province Election Round Up
• Sustain Ontario 2025 VoteONFood campaign – Reduce poverty, improve working conditions and ensure affordable housing to increase food security

How much money single persons on OW and ODSP have left for other necessities after rent and food in 2024

(See linked public health unit reports for methodology and other income scenarios)

These numbers show how much is leftover or short for single adults on OW and ODSP after the cost of food (based on the Nutritious Food Basket) and average rent (as reported by CMHC) in their area, based on the maximum basic and shelter amounts from social assistance and eligible provincial and federal tax credits.

2023 – information from public health units that have not released 2024 updates yet

The post Ontario Election 2025: Putting a plan for adequate social assistance on the table appeared first on PROOF.

Listen to the full episode and check out some of the highlights below. Learn more about the Put Food Banks Out of Business campaign at: https://www.putfoodbanksoutofbusiness.com/

What does the high prevalence of household food insecurity say about Canada?

Household food insecurity is defined and measured in Canada as the inadequate or insecure access to food due to financial constraints. By asking households about their experiences of food deprivation due to a lack of money, we are learning about the health of their financial circumstance, as well as their physical and mental health.

A household struggling to afford food is invariably struggling with other necessities. Food insecurity is a sensitive indicator of how a household is managing financially, capturing the adequacy of their incomes, but also the stability of that income and the ability to weather unexpected income loss or rises in the cost of living.

The high prevalence of food insecurity tells us that many households are struggling financially and that the current labour market and social safety net have failed to ensure Canadians have enough money to meet their needs.

The strong relationship between the severity of food insecurity and a wide range of objective health outcomes beyond poor nutrition, like hospitalization and premature mortality across various conditions, illustrates that the broader deprivation identified through food insecurity is a potent determinant of health and that food insecurity represents a large yet modifiable drain on our healthcare system.

Racial disparities in food insecurity speak to systemic racism and the ongoing legacy of colonialism

Even after taking into account other characteristics known to predict higher risk of food insecurity, like renting as opposed to being a homeowner, being unemployed, or relying on social assistance, Black and Indigenous households are still more likely to be food insecure than their white counterparts.

These findings point to the ways in which discrimination plays out in systems for employment, housing, education, and more that disadvantage Black and Indigenous communities and make it more difficult to have sufficient and stable enough circumstances to be food secure.

Tackling anti-Black and anti-Indigenous racism is central to eliminating food insecurity. A well-designed basic income could be an important part of anti-racism policy and the response to food insecurity, by ensuring income security and stability for all.

The need for policy change to reduce food insecurity

Tackling the circumstances that give rise to food insecurity means re-evaluating how public policy affects the adequacy and stability of incomes for lower income, working-aged Canadians and their families. Research has repeatedly shown that policy interventions can reduce vulnerable households’ risk of food insecurity by providing them with more money.

There are many policies in both federal and provincial toolboxes, such as tax credits and benefits, Employment Insurance, income taxes, social assistance, and minimum wage. As it stands, there is no accountability for whether Canadians can earn enough or receive sufficient support from our social safety net in times of dire financial need.

With these fragmented approaches, there’s no accountability. We’ve talked about Ontario Works. Nobody has to answer for the fact that amount of money is inadequate. There’s no legislation that says it has to be adequate.

The Canada Child Benefit. I continue to puzzle over where these amounts came from. I think what what we want with a basic income is transparency to say this amount of money actually could enable somebody to meet basic needs and we don’t have that.

Put Food Banks Out of Business is part of a growing movement in Canada advocating for a basic income that establishes a livable income floor for all and shifts the approach of income supports from the notion of “deservedness” towards equity and a basic standard of living as a human right. An income floor would go far in providing both adequate incomes and income stability to manage financial turbulence without having to make such severe compromises.

The beautiful thing I think about the conversation that’s starting to happen around basic income is talking about the adequacy of incomes relative to the true cost of living and setting a floor that we won’t let people fall below. We’ve moved away from that with what we’re doing on things like welfare programs right now.

The post [VIDEO] Dr. Valerie Tarasuk speaks with Matt Noble on solutions to household food insecurity appeared first on PROOF.

Dr. Valerie Tarasuk, Professor Emerita in Nutritional Sciences at the University of Toronto, and principal investigator of PROOF has been named a member of the Order of Canada for her research leadership and contributions to advancing evidence-based policy interventions to household food insecurity.

Join us in congratulating Dr. Tarasuk on this tremendous recognition!

Update January 6 – As part of CBC The Current’s annual Order of Canada interviews, Dr. Tarasuk spoke with Matt Galloway on how her start in the field was motivated by the early rise of food charity in Toronto during a time of significant cuts to social assistance, how the current record food insecurity is the result of a lack of leadership and accountability around ensuring Canadians have enough money for the necessities, and the need for dedicated strategies and targets that address food insecurity and the underlying income inadequacy and instability specifically.

Dr. Tarasuk’s interview starts at 8 min 11 sec .

Also available at: https://www.cbc.ca/listen/live-radio/1-63-the-current/clip/16119034-extraordinary-canadians-named-order-canada

Transcript: https://www.cbc.ca/radio/thecurrent/monday-january-6-2025-episode-transcript-1.7424480

The post PROOF Principal Investigator Dr. Valerie Tarasuk appointed to Order of Canada appeared first on PROOF.