Thank you.
Thank you for the opportunity to share my views on the problem of food price inflation.
I'm a father of five children. Their ages run the gamut. I have a 15‑year-old, a 12‑year-old, a 9‑year-old and three‑year-old twins. Like all Canadians, I have noticed the increase in food prices.
There's no doubt that the grocery bill has gone up dramatically. When you know how to cook and you cook a lot, when you know how to prepare food and minimize food waste, and especially, when you know how to store that food, you can make it work more or less.
When I see the cost of food, a number of considerations come to mind. I was in Toronto yesterday to participate in a food waste event at a supermarket. I was there alongside businesses that work with Tablée des chefs. The point of the event was to take advantage of perfectly good but unsold grocery store produce otherwise destined for the compost. That's what we were trying to highlight.
What we are experiencing today is temporary, with the dramatic rise of prices in certain food categories. Take lettuce, for example. Yesterday I saw broccoli being sold for five dollars a head. They were small and wouldn't have fed my family of seven. I don't know many people who would've bought that broccoli. It's reasonable to assume that expensive produce will end up as food waste. It will sit on the shelf, no one will buy it and it won't get eaten, resulting in more food waste. That's the first point I want to make.
My second point has to do with the significant increase in people experiencing food insecurity. I saw it first-hand on my recent trips to Calgary, Toronto, Montreal and Quebec City. I have worked in the food industry for 20 years, and I can tell you that the difference in the past six months is glaring and troubling. The current circumstances are putting a lot of people in vulnerable situations. I hear it every day from my colleagues who run organizations working on the front lines. We are in touch with over 200 agencies. During the pandemic, we partnered with more than 200 organizations across Canada, through our Solidarity Kitchens initiative. The situation is worrisome.
Another thing I'd like to bring to your attention is the importance of developing cooking knowledge and skills from an early age. I know how to cook. I have a culinary degree from the Institut de tourisme et de l'hôtellerie du Québec. Those skills are very helpful to me today, when I cook for my family, when I invite friends over for dinner and when I make meals to help people in need. I use food that would otherwise be wasted to cook meals in bulk for people in need. I also try to convince my fellow chefs to join me in that effort, to feed people struggling with food insecurity.
I would say that is paramount. The chefs and cooks I have asked to join La Tablée des chefs work alongside me in bringing culinary knowledge and skills to students in more than 250 schools across Quebec. La Tablée des chefs works mainly in Quebec, but we are also involved with 40 or so schools outside Quebec, in five provinces, and we hold activities in English and in French.
It's hard to do more than that at this time. I'm looking at the universal healthy school food program, especially food literacy. I am eager to see real funding allocated to building food literacy, in other words, youth culinary education in schools.