Finance Committee on Oct. 11th, 2023

[The Chair, Liberal, Peter Fonseca]

I call this meeting to order.

Welcome, everybody, to meeting number 105 of the House of Commons Standing Committee on Finance. Pursuant to Standing Order 83.1 and the motion adopted by the committee on Thursday, June 8, 2023, the committee is meeting to discuss the pre-budget consultations in advance of the 2024 budget.

The finance committee is honoured to be starting our cross-country tour and our pre-budget consultations in advance of the 2024 budget right here in Atlantic Canada. Yesterday we were in P.E.I., and today we are here in New Brunswick, in beautiful Fredericton. We're looking forward to hearing from our witnesses.

On our finance committee, we have members from right across Canada, but we do have a number of members with us today who are from Atlantic Canada. We have MP Atwin from right here in Fredericton, MP Thompson from Newfoundland and MP Stewart, who is also from New Brunswick.

For the other members, I'll allow you to introduce yourselves as we get into our questions. As I said, we're from right across Canada.

We thank you for putting your organizations and your names forward to be witnesses in this study. It is really helpful for our committee to hear your testimony and to provide some of the recommendations that we're looking to put into our report.

On that, as our witnesses who are with us today, we have, from Greener Village, the chief executive officer, Alex Boyd, and from the Municipality of Tantramar, Mayor Andrew Black. Welcome.

With that, Mr. Boyd, you can start with an opening statement, and then we'll hear an opening statement from Mr. Black.

[Alex Boyd, Chief Executive Officer, Greener Village]

Thank you very much, Mr. Chair. Greener Village is honoured to contribute to the vital discussions concerning pre-budget consultations in advance of the 2024 budget.

Greener Village is a community-driven organization dedicated to addressing hunger and promoting food security in the greater Fredericton area. We operate a class 5 learning kitchen, community gardens and greenhouses, a thrift store that provides resources to food bank clients, and such seasonal supports as income tax preparation and back-to-school support. Our mission also includes establishing infrastructure to divert food from landfills, supporting scalable commercial food production, and reducing greenhouse gas emissions associated with the import-dependent food supply chain.

We envision a future where locally produced, value-added food products contribute to a more resilient and self-sustained local economy. New Brunswick’s food insecurity index is 22.7%, the second-highest in the country, with 30% of New Brunswick's children living in food-insecure households. Additionally, 30% of indigenous people in Canada grapple with food insecurity, an issue further exacerbated by the far-reaching impacts of climate change, which has disrupted all four pillars of food security among indigenous communities.

The origins of food banking trace back to 1981. The first Canadian food bank was in Edmonton, established in response to the economic downturn in the oil industry. Initially designed to address a temporary emergency need for food, food banks have since proliferated across the nation, providing food support to millions of Canadians annually through a network of over 4,750 agencies. In 2022 alone, 6.9 million Canadians, including 1.8 million children, lived with food insecurity. This marked a substantial increase from the previous year, a period characterized by unprecedented inflation. This number will continue to rise. As of September 2023, at Greener Village alone we saw a 35.7% increase in demand over the previous year.

A distressing paradox exists in Canada, and that's our significant amount of food wastage. Approximately 58% of Canadian produce ends up discarded, with 32% of that food waste being salvageable through rescue-focused food techniques like freezing and packaging. In Atlantic Canada alone, over 220,000 metric tons of food go to waste each year, enough to feed the entire Atlantic Canadian population for five months.

Food security extends beyond access to food. As a critical component of Canada's social services infrastructure, it also encompasses the improvement of structural and intermediary determinants of health, mitigating long-term negative health outcomes and their associated costs for the government. As the cost of living continues to rise in Canada, food banks have become a lifeline, a necessary component of current Canadian culture that is saving lives today.

In mid-2022, food prices experienced their most significant increase in 40 years, surging by 11.4%. This presents an alarming challenge for Canadians already grappling with the cost of living. Diverting food from landfill to food recovery has the potential to avoid 3.82 metric tons of CO2 emissions for each metric ton of rescued food. When we do the math, the 220,000 metric tons of food available for rescue in Canada this year equates to a carbon price of over $56 million. By 2030, by the way, that number will swell to just under $150 million.

With careful consideration, the impact of today's investments in food security will have exponential gains across all sectors. Specifically, food banks and other food charities stand ready to evolve in not only improving the help offered to those in need but also in improving their communities as a whole.

The main barrier to this evolution is adequate funding to create the infrastructure, staffing capacity and frameworks for project execution that underpin long-term success. The creation of an earmarked fund to support a national pilot program that's available to food banks would be the ideal way to drive food bank innovation, evolution and impact across the country.

Supporting food security initiatives is about not only ensuring access to food but also enhancing the overall health and well-being of our communities. To this end, Greener Village presents specific recommendations for categories under which food banks and food charities can apply for pilot funding.

The first category is specifically food security and sustainability: Develop and support initiatives that strengthen local food systems, divert edible food from landfills and promote autonomy and resilience for citizens and communities.

The second is tourism and economic development through the craft food industry. If we facilitate the creation of, and access to, food storage and CFIA and class 5 commercial rental kitchens, catalyzing entrepreneurship to promote craft food production, this will lead to the growth of scalable food businesses, job creation and the diversification of culinary offerings.

The third is to reduce dependency on food imports. We can invest in intraprovincial and interprovincial food transportation, warehousing and cold storage infrastructure to decrease food waste, transportation costs, greenhouse gas emissions and the reliance on imported foods.

Finally, the fourth is funding barriers. We can create capacity to streamline funding channels and help charities create social enterprises to make them more sustainable.

In conclusion, Greener Village urges the committee to consider thoughtful investment into the food bank network to help reimagine and recreate the impact that it could have for all Canadians.

These recommendations are seen as concrete steps toward addressing food insecurity, fostering economic development and promoting sustainability. By investing in these initiatives, we can create a resilient and inclusive economy that benefits all citizens. We eagerly anticipate further discussions on this critical issue.

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

[The Chair, Liberal, Peter Fonseca]

Thank you, Mr. Boyd.

Now we're going to hear from the mayor of Tantramar, Mayor Black.

[Andrew Black, Mayor, Municipality of Tantramar]

Good morning, Mr. Chair and esteemed members of the Standing Committee on Finance.

My name is Andrew Black, and I am the mayor of the new municipality of Tantramar. I am also the president of the Union of the Municipalities of New Brunswick, and as such I have a board seat with the Federation of Canadian Municipalities.

Mr. Chair, I want to thank everyone for the opportunity to be here today as a witness leading into the 2024 federal budget on behalf of my municipality and its constituents and of municipalities across New Brunswick. I am here today to speak about two topics that have a direct impact on my municipality, but I want to make it clear that municipalities across New Brunswick and arguably across the nation are just as impacted by these topics as Tantramar is. I know I have maybe around five minutes, so I will be brief. The focus of my remarks is housing and public health and safety.

I will start with the housing crisis that is affecting Canadians across the country and that is felt deeply here in the communities of New Brunswick. I was first elected to council just over seven years ago, and from a municipal perspective, we were not talking about housing. In the last three years, that has changed significantly, with municipalities being on the front line of the housing crisis due to population increases over the COVID years, a downloading of responsibility for housing onto the municipal sector and the fact that our constituents across the province are crying out for locally elected leaders to take action.

Mr. Chair, it does not help the situation when two of the federal leaders voice opinions on housing, one saying that it is not a primary responsibility of the federal government and the other making comments that municipalities are gatekeepers to development. The absolute reality is that being responsible for housing in local government is unfamiliar territory for municipalities, and the file is more complicated than it seems, with a cursory glance and a quick comment doing nothing to help anyone understand that complexity. I will call out here today, Mr. Chair, that we need help.

The Reaching Home program is an essential component of the federal government’s response strategy for chronic homelessness. This funding, including its dedicated rural and remote stream, should be scaled up and made permanent to address current needs and engage in preventive measures. Homelessness is not going away; it will be here for a significant amount of time, unfortunately.

The rapid housing initiative is a groundbreaking direct transfer to municipalities that has the potential to make substantial change happen, but it needs to be made into a long-term program with predictable funding beyond 2024 so that each RHI unit can provide funding for wraparound health and social supports and permanent operating funding to maintain affordability.

The housing accelerator fund is now open to municipalities, and it is most welcome, but to support Canadians in search of rental options, the federal government needs to optimize and invest in critical national housing strategy programs such as the national housing co-investment fund and the rental construction financing initiative to create more affordable rental supply.

Mr. Chair, everyone needs a place to call home, and having secure, safe and appropriate housing is an anchor in addressing other needs, such as mental health and addiction supports and food security for many people in New Brunswick.

The second topic flows from the first, and that is a new approach to safer and healthier communities. Municipal governments in places such as Tantramar are the closest to the people. They are on the front lines of Canada’s unmet mental health needs, often providing essential services like social and community programming, supportive housing, community outreach, and substance and addictions support services. To add to the complexity of the issue, mental health challenges are often linked with the dual crises of addiction and homelessness, with municipal governments often needing to take the lead on community well-being. A lack of affordable and supportive housing, inadequate mental health care and the impacts of systemic racism on indigenous people and racialized communities are contributing to the mental health and addictions issues manifesting in municipalities of all sizes.

Mr. Chair, the federal government needs to develop a comprehensive national mental health strategy that addresses the interconnected issues of housing, homelessness and substance abuse while increasing mental health investments in communities through sustainable long-term funding.

Community safety is also deeply connected to how we police our communities. Municipalities in New Brunswick have complex and unique public safety needs, and local leaders understand those best. With crime significantly on the rise in New Brunswick and with the recent breakdown in communication regarding RCMP back pay and negotiations, the federal government must meaningfully consult municipalities about decisions related to the future of RCMP contract policing.

I want to add one more thing to my closing remarks, and that is an urgent call to streamline and simplify federal funding applications for municipalities, whether for housing, infrastructure, climate change or anything else.

Many municipalities, particularly small municipalities, do not have the expertise or capacity to even dream of applying for these much-needed streams. Those processes could be torn apart and rewritten for adequate and fast-tracked approaches to funding opportunities.

Thank you once again, Mr. Chair and committee members, for this opportunity.

[The Chair, Liberal, Peter Fonseca]

Thank you, Mayor Black.

Mr. Boyd, thank you.

You know, we all come from different parts of the country—different shapes, sizes, demographics. I come from Mississauga, and members are going to be able to introduce themselves as they get into their questions and let you know where they come from.

I come from a municipality of more than 800,000 people, the sixth-largest in Canada. However, I think we're all grappling with the same issues, those of housing and affordability and many of the issues that both of you have brought forward. As I said, we're looking forward to your answers to the questions from the members, so thank you.

On that note, we're going to move to our rounds of questions.

In the first round, each party will have up to six minutes to ask questions. I do ask you, members, to introduce yourselves and say where you're from before you get into your questions, and I'll provide time for that.

We're starting with the Conservatives.

We'll begin with MP Duncan, please.

[Eric Duncan, Conservative, Stormont—Dundas—South Glengarry, ON]

Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.

Good morning to our witnesses. Thank you for joining us this morning.

My name is Eric Duncan. I serve as a Conservative member of Parliament from eastern Ontario, in the city of Cornwall and the significant rural area of Stormont—Dundas—South Glengarry and the community of Akwesasne.

Mr. Mayor, I'm going to start with some questions for you. I use to be a mayor in my previous life, so I think that we can relate on a few things and speak the language a little bit. I noted your comments in the introduction, and I would say a couple of things. I just want to get your feedback, perhaps, on a few parts.

We have a lot of gatekeepers at the municipal level. Having been there and done that, I would say that for rural municipalities, perhaps at different levels, getting infrastructure investment—water and sewer—ready to go and having investment for development would be a challenge. We have a lot of cities right now. When you look at transit projects, they aren't building density around there. Look at the city of Vancouver; to get a building permit, in government and permit fees, you're looking at $600,000. This is for a permit or a unit before a shovel goes into the ground for an individual.

I do think and have said, having been in municipal politics before, that there are three acronyms to remember in the line of work that we do when dealing with getting things done and making decisions on site plan control and then zoning. We have NIMBY, which everybody knows: “not in my backyard”. However, I introduced two others at the council table back in the day; I stole them from others. One is CAVE: “citizens against virtually everything”. Then sometimes you have BANANA: “build absolutely nothing anywhere near anything”.

Being able to get development projects moving forward in site planning control is a major issue. I will note, in the plan that Mr. Poilievre has in his private member's bill for building more homes, not bureaucracy, that it's actually with rural communities across the country, including the ones I represent in eastern Ontario. There would be no penalties for not meeting targets but actually only bonusing for those that actually meet targets and exceed them by doing that, by removing processes that exist there.

My question is on the federal programs. You referenced the housing accelerator fund. That program was announced two years ago. Can you tell me if you've even had a successful application or shovels in the ground in your municipality pertaining to that program?

[Andrew Black]

First off, thank you for the CAVE and BANANA acronyms. I will be using those as much as possible.

[Eric Duncan, Conservative, Stormont—Dundas—South Glengarry, ON]

Oh, oh!

[Andrew Black]

The answer for my municipality is no. Don't get me wrong, though. I think the housing accelerator fund is a significant funding opportunity for municipalities.

The reality in my community—and in many, many communities in New Brunswick—is that in order to access that funding, you are required to have a housing needs assessment. If you don't have that, the application is really not even looked at. Again, larger cities may have the capacity and the money to throw at a housing needs assessment. Most small municipalities do not have that.

I realize that you don't want to give money to municipalities for housing if you don't have some idea about what they need. However, it is a little prohibitive. It certainly is for my community, and it is for many communities across New Brunswick. There have been some successful applications within the province of New Brunswick that I'm aware of. There are things happening within the province, so we're trying to get a bunch of municipalities to do housing needs assessments all at once so that we can have access to that important funding stream.

[Eric Duncan, Conservative, Stormont—Dundas—South Glengarry, ON]

I said the housing accelerator fund, and maybe in some other programs. Where I'm going with that is here we are, two years into the program being announced, and the third announcement was just made yesterday. I just looked at the third news update. It's the third in the entire country.

The point is that it's taking an accelerator fund to accelerate housing two years on. Applications aren't even being approved and shovels aren't in the ground. Likely, with the climate we have here in the east coast, you won't be putting shovels in the ground until next year at least, but again, that depends on permitting, availability and so forth.

The point is that when we have these programs, it's A for an announcement all the time and an F for follow-through.

I take your point about paperwork in terms of what's needed. Today, in the midst of the housing crisis in every part of the country and having to do a study to prove the housing need, the irony is that it's probably quite broad everywhere, such that any form of housing would be welcome—obviously, in different forms and numbers in different communities, but having to do a study is just one of those extra added layers.

The Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation is a federal agency. I hear a lot of complaints from municipalities about added costs and timeline delays in doing that. I go back again to many municipalities lacking examples of being able to take federal programs and bring them down.

Could you advise the committee here on what applications have been successful in the region in, say, the last three or four years, as the housing crisis has been in its aggressive form?

[Andrew Black]

I would say the CMHC has been supportive in reaching out if a municipality like mine, for example, has some questions around how to do housing and how to help developers. There's been support in that way.

From what I've heard in my municipality and in some others in the province, a lot of the CMHC stuff has been helping developers. Maybe it's not particularly helping non-profits or having a direct impact on municipalities building housing, but certainly it has been helpful for some developers.

We have a $15-million dense apartment building going up in our community now. The ground has been broken, which is wonderful. That developer accessed the Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation. Now, I will say that the developer has worked with the CMHC before, so there's a precedent there, and it is easy for him to access that. I wouldn't say that it's exactly the same for every developer.

I hope that answers your question.

[The Chair, Liberal, Peter Fonseca]

Thank you, MP Duncan.

Thank you, Mayor Black.

Now we'll go over to the Liberals, and we're starting with MP Thompson.

[Joanne Thompson, Liberal, St. John's East, NL]

Thank you.

Good morning. I'm Joanne Thompson, the member of Parliament for St. John's East. I'm delighted to be in Fredericton today. I'm actually quite pleased to speak to both of you.

I may start with you, Mayor Black, and Mr. Boyd, I certainly want to circle to you.

I spent many years in the not-for-profit sector in housing, homelessness and wraparound health care support. I have to shout out that during COVID, when we were absolutely struggling for support, there was a centre in Fredericton that was absolutely phenomenal with the information it was able to provide to me on emergency shelter at that time.

I'm very familiar with the concerns that both of you have expressed, but I'll stay with you now, Mayor Black. It's almost as though we're speaking about the same place, even though they're clearly different provinces.

One of the concerns I have when we oversimplify and politicize this issue is that we really take away from the complexity of the current housing crisis, as well as the link—I thank you for making that link—to the health determinants and mental health addictions, which we know are challenging. COVID has created another space in terms of the drugs that we're seeing and the mental health crisis. If there was a simple fix, I don't think we'd be having this conversation today.

One of the things I learned very clearly in my years in this sector was that layers of federal-municipal and provincial-municipal collaboration are needed to move projects forward, and there's the community sector as well. What I haven't been able to find is a really smooth, collaborative spirit among all of those sectors.

What I continue to be challenged by is the lack of understanding that this is a continuum of need from what I call the entry point to the point of self-actualization, where you have market participation in housing. I think there are seven entry points. Some say nine, but let's say there are seven entry points in how we match an understanding of actual numbers within a province for housing needs.

Why are we still—and I believe we're in a crisis point with this—struggling with separate municipalities and provincial governments in one place? We're losing that coordinated response.

What's your sense of that, and what is it that we can do to pull it together? To tackle the problem, you have to have a comprehensive solution. Other than that, we're going to continue to apply band-aids.

[Andrew Black]

Do I have 20 minutes to answer that question?

As you say, it's complicated. I think part of the problem is in communication. Communication is always an issue, but communication between the three orders of government can sometimes be prohibitive, especially when you're talking about potential funding opportunities that would trickle down to municipalities.

It's not to say that the province doesn't have a role to play in funding opportunities, but oftentimes, if federal funding goes to the province and then it gets doled out to municipalities from the province, it bundles up the process. It makes it difficult sometimes. It has certainly been the case in New Brunswick, especially around infrastructure funding, for example. That has been problematic in the province of New Brunswick for the last little while.

Communication is one thing, but it's the complexity of the issue. In housing, or if you're talking about public health and safety, these aren't quick fixes, and it's difficult to know exactly how to approach those issues strategically and then through those three orders of government.

I don't know how to answer that question adequately, but I think the communication piece is an important one. Maybe if there was a funding opportunity that came directly from the federal government to municipalities, rather than through the province.... I know sometimes it has to happen, but anyway....

[Joanne Thompson, Liberal, St. John's East, NL]

On that note, I tend to agree with what you're saying, but I want to put it in the lens of accountability. I think we're missing data. I don't know that you can fix what you don't understand. I know there have been huge amounts of funding around data collection in the homelessness sector, yet we don't have that. We don't have the comprehensive understanding of what I call the current state.

How do we build that outcome metric that is able to determine that indeed the funding is going where it was intended and is able to evaluate the progress we're making?

[Andrew Black]

Again, that's a good question.

I would have to agree that data is incredibly important. I'll try not to get into it too much because I know I don't have a lot of time, but we have regional service commissions in the province. They're a level of government that's not a level of government. They're responsible for various mandated services. One of them is social community development that is looking at a Housing First approach at a regional level with municipalities being involved. Without any data to support the work that we do, we could be throwing money at issues that may not be an issue or that are being dealt with in a different way.

I think data collection is incredibly important. I don't know what that looks like, but I think, from a regional perspective and a provincial perspective, down to the local perspective and then federally, some stronger data collection and a coordinated effort would be appreciated.

[Joanne Thompson, Liberal, St. John's East, NL]

I'll circle back later.

[The Chair, Liberal, Peter Fonseca]

We'll have a number of chances, because we're going to go through a number of rounds here today.

We'll go over to the Bloc and MP Ste-Marie, please, for your questions.

[Gabriel Ste-Marie, Bloc, Joliette, QC]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Good morning, Mayor and Mr. Boyd. I'll be speaking French, so I'm glad to see you have your earpieces in.

I also want to say hello to my fellow members, including Mr. Stewart, who was on the Standing Committee on Finance for a good while. It's nice to see you.

Hello as well to Ms. Atwin, whose riding we are in today. Thank you for having us. Fredericton is quite a lovely city. It's a pleasure to be here.

I'm going to start with you, Mr. Boyd.

First, I'd like to hear your take on the situation. We can see that the level of poverty has grown since the pandemic. Inflation is high. As the other witness pointed out, and both of you said this, more and more people are experiencing mental illness and distress. On top of that, even when people have jobs, some families aren't able to make ends meet without help.

I'd like to hear more about the circumstances the people you work with are facing.

[Alex Boyd]

Thank you, Mr. Chair, for that question.

I think the challenge we're seeing is that there has been an increase in both the depth and breadth of food insecurity, meaning that we are seeing significantly more people in our community who are relying on our food bank to make ends meet. That means that this year, until the end of September, demand has been about 35.7% higher than in the previous year. The previous year it was a bit more than 34% higher than in the year before that. Those sorts of increases year over year are challenging. Maybe a better word would be “frightening”, because that's a very large increase in overall demand.

What we're also seeing within that demand is a depth issue, meaning that we are experiencing about one-fifth—17%—of the people who we have conversations with reporting a net negative income for the month before they've made any consideration for having to purchase food for the month. What they are on is a destitution track. If that trend continues for that family, they will end up without a home; they will end up with nothing and they will end up I don't even know where, because there are not a lot of resources for whole families who are in that position.

We are seeing people with mental health challenges, with addiction issues and all of those things, but we have a lot of families who, at this time two years ago, were living paycheque to paycheque but were doing okay. Now, when prices rise by double-digit percentages very quickly, they are no longer treading water; they are now fully under it. That number is continuing to climb.

We're seeing higher-than-ever percentages of people who have full-time employment accessing the food bank simply because they can't keep up with inflation. Their wages aren't keeping up with inflation, and they're just not able to make ends meet.

Certainly it's a challenging time for the food bank network all the way across the country. I've had multiple conversations with colleagues as far west as Vancouver and those in Mississauga. All the way through, the food bank network is seeing the same thing: a significant increase in demand and a significant increase in the number of people who are severely food insecure.

[Gabriel Ste-Marie, Bloc, Joliette, QC]

I was going to thank you, but the situation is so bad that I'm shocked. I'm glad to find out what's happening, but I wish this wasn't the reality.

You gave a figure that really shocked me. You said that, for the past two years, demand for your food bank's services had gone up 34% and 35% annually. If my math is right, that's a total increase of 80% in two years.

Has your organization's funding gone up by 80% to keep pace with the 80% increase in demand?

[Alex Boyd]

I wish I could say yes, but the reality is that the answer is no. What it has meant for us is a significant increase in investment in staffing, in food and in facilities to be able to continue to meet that demand. It has led to our needing to accomplish more fundraising. We've had to become much more intentional in speaking with our community, in approaching large funders, in writing grant applications and in approaching foundations. What it's meant is a significant increase in workload for my staff overall to try to continue to secure the resources we need to make sure that no family goes hungry.

At the end of the day, if a family has come to the food bank and they need help from the food bank, our responsibility is to make sure that they walk out of the food bank with the resources they need to take care of their family. If that means that we have to invest more money to buy food because the food donations aren't as strong as they were or we have to spend more time doing fundraising so we can make sure that we have the resources to do that, that's what we're consistently doing.

[Gabriel Ste-Marie, Bloc, Joliette, QC]

Thank you. I commend you and your entire team. You are absolutely making a difference in people's lives. The work you're doing is very important.

In Quebec—in my riding, for instance—organizations like yours are recognized by the Quebec government and receive funding to support their mission. What they struggle with is accessing more funding to keep up with inflation every year.

Do you receive similar support from the provincial or federal government, to help you carry out your mission?

[Alex Boyd]

Yes. There is a small grant available to food banks from our provincial government to help cover operating expenses. Unfortunately that grant, for us, equates to less than 5% of what we need to operate—not even including the food donations side of things—so it's certainly not the government's help that enables us to continue to operate.

What I mentioned in my opening remarks is that many food banks are saying they know this problem is unsustainable. We're not going to be able to continue to meet 35% increases year over year, so we have to evolve and adapt. The challenge with evolving and adapting is that it requires even more investment from the agency.

At times, government funding is hard to navigate, and there isn't necessarily a pocket of money available to say, “Hey, food charities: Apply here, and this will help you to develop,” so what we do is chase agriculture funding, because it's somewhat applicable. We're trying to make ourselves fit into these buckets of funding that are available, but it's very challenging to be able to unlock those. When we can't unlock the government money, it's hard to unlock the private philanthropic money that we're working on as well. It's certainly a challenge from a funding perspective for food banks.

I'd say of our $1.5-million budget, almost 80% is private donations from people in the community who say, “We don't want hungry people in our community and we're going to support agencies that are doing something to make sure it doesn't happen.” It is a critical time for the food bank network overall and for our agency to have government support and government teamwork at the table.

[The Chair, Liberal, Peter Fonseca]

Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Ste‑Marie.

We'll now go to the NDP and MP Blaikie, please.