Finance committee  I'm going to echo what you're saying. Poverty is not about a lifestyle choice or a character flaw or poor budgeting; it's about low wages. It's about inadequate social supports. People want to work. People want to contribute. People have things they want to get done in their lives.

Finance committee  CERB has been a lifesaver. We would have been hit with a tsunami of desperate people in our community food centres. The irony of CERB is that it's completely highlighted how inadequate our social support systems are. CERB is about $2,000 a month, as you know; if you get that over a year, that's the poverty line: $24,000 a year for a single person.

Finance committee  I'll quickly respond, but I can't speak for the food banks. Community Food Centres Canada has a very different model that is more upstream and preventive. About 27% of people who use our community food centres across the country are seniors. We're very concerned right now about them feeling isolated and lonely.

Finance committee  I'm going to let my colleague Sasha talk about the disability tax credit, but I'll first respond very quickly about our concerns around charity. Food will not solve hunger; only income will. If you remember anything from our comments, it's that. We need to ensure people have enough money in their pockets to make the decisions they need to make.

Finance committee  I'm going to let Sasha take this.

Finance committee  Thank you, Chair. Good afternoon, and thank you for the opportunity to speak with you today. I hope you're all doing okay in these unsettled and unsettling times. I am joined by my colleague Sasha McNicoll, who's our senior specialist on policy. We'll both be answering questions.

Finance committee  Having spoken to some of the leaders in the emergency food space, I think I can safely say that demand is up by anywhere between 25% and 50%, depending on the region. I think we need to be very clear that the sector was haemorrhaging long before COVID came in. The vast majority of people who are food insecure in this country would never visit a food bank for a whole variety of reasons, which I won't get into here.

Finance committee  I would certainly be in favour of opening the gates as much as possible to accessing CERB. Whether this collective vulnerability we're all experiencing as a society galvanizes a new kind of conversation in our country about how much we support people who have basically fallen out of the economy and fallen out of society...I think it's a very important one.

Finance committee  Good afternoon. Thanks for the invitation to speak today. My name is Nick Saul. I'm the CEO of Community Food Centres Canada. I'm joined by my colleague Sasha McNicoll, our lead on policy. CFCC builds health, belonging and social justice in marginalized communities across the country through the power of food.

Agriculture committee  I want to be careful about this. Does Evan or anyone else want to answer that question?

Agriculture committee  I think we have to invest in it. I should be clear. This is not an area of super expertise for me. I'm an anti-poverty activist at heart who is organizing in low-income communities through food, because food is a powerful way to connect people, and also work on some of the big, seemingly intractable problems of our time, as I said, climate change, public health, and inequality.

Agriculture committee  Sure. One thing I would say that may be a surprise to folks is that food won't solve hunger. Food is not going to solve hunger. Income is going to solve hunger. It's really important for us to figure out a way to ensure that moms and dads and kids are putting really good food on their tables, and that's not the case right now.

Agriculture committee  Sure.

Agriculture committee  There's very little support for that currently. You get about $800 an acre out of corn. I have a friend who farms in Creemore. He makes $35,000 an acre on mixed greens that he sells directly to restaurants and through community shared agriculture. There is a market. It just needs to be validated, encouraged, and recognized, with more knowledge provided to support people to move away from conventional practices when it comes to agriculture.

Agriculture committee  I'd really like to see the national food policy, if it can't do it itself, push other ministries to really focus on income security and food security. Evan talked about food insecurity in the north. It's a massive problem with 40% to 50% of those communities being food insecure.