Thank you, Chair and committee members, for the opportunity to appear before you and discuss the critical issue of food security and the impacts that rising food costs are having on Canadians.
First, I'd like to say that I agree one hundred per cent with everything Mr. Hetherington just said.
As you may remember from my last appearance before this committee, Second Harvest is Canada's largest food rescue organization. We are a global thought leader on perishable food redistribution. We strive to grow an efficient food recovery network to fuel people and reduce the environmental impact of avoidable food waste.
That mission is all the more important during difficult and uncertain economic periods. As we all know, we are in the middle of one of those periods. The food sector is facing unprecedented adversity.
Rising costs—the reason we're here today—labour shortages and climate change have been a considerable burden for producers and businesses across the supply chain. Solving these challenges has proved to be very complicated. Even though food companies are innovating, investing in new technologies and trying to find efficiencies, addressing these issues will not be easy or happen quickly.
In the meantime, the Canadian public is bearing the brunt of the challenging economic landscape.
As inflationary pressures lead to higher grocery prices, the use of food charities in Canada has increased significantly, and support for Canadians is expected to continue rising in 2023 by an additional 60%, based on a recent poll done by Second Harvest. These organizations, of which there are 61,000, are triaging an affordability crisis affecting households nationwide. Every day, Canadians are forced to choose between healthy nutritious food and other essentials like housing, heating, water and transportation. Food is a discretionary cost, so not only is the price of food making it prohibitive to purchase enough groceries; it's forcing Canadians to buy the least nutritional and most overly processed foods, because that's what they can afford, if they can afford it at all.
As everyone here knows, poor nutrition is linked to many negative health outcomes, including heart disease, stroke, some cancers and type 2 diabetes, not to mention food insecurity's impact on mental health and cognitive behaviour. In children, poor nutrition results in lower educational outcomes and problems with physical, emotional and psychological development that will live with them throughout their lives. Not only are rising food costs pushing more Canadians into food insecurity in the short term, but the impact of being unable to access healthy foods will last far longer than the inflationary pressure we face today. While long-term solutions are sorely needed, in the meantime we must act now to ensure Canadians have access to the nutrients they need to live a healthy life.
I cannot stress enough the desperation that is being felt by Canadians across this country as people are simply trying to survive and don’t have the means to make ends meet. As Neil said, for many of them it is for the first time ever. These are people with full-time jobs.
This committee faces a very difficult question: How can our government fix this?
In addition to the recommendations I made in October to bring back the emergency food security fund and the surplus food rescue program, I recommend that this committee investigate the impact that eliminating best-before dates would have on Canadians. Best-before dates are wildly misunderstood. They are not expiry dates. They refer to a product’s peak freshness. While Canadians struggle to put food on the table, they are also convinced that best-before dates are about safety and will throw away perfectly good food to protect themselves and their families. Eliminating best-before dates would prevent safe, consumable food from being thrown out and save Canadians money on their grocery bills.
While the issues of food affordability and growing food insecurity are complex and require long-term solutions to resolve, there is more that we can do right now to ensure millions of vulnerable Canadians are not going hungry. Currently, for every one grocery store there are four non-profits feeding Canadians and filling legislative gaps. I ask all committee members for their efforts and support to address this crisis head-on.
Thank you.