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Food insecurity is at crisis levels across Canada, including in our home province of Newfoundland and Labrador, where over 30% of people are food insecure. Our province has one of the highest rates of severe food insecurity in the country, with 8.3 % of the population going hungry [1]. Food insecurity directly undermines workforce participation, educational success, social cohesion and harmony, and the trust of a population in their government’s commitment to the social contract. As this crisis escalates, Canada’s strength, security, and economy weaken. However, there are evidence-based, financially prudent solutions that the federal government can implement immediately.
Our organization, Food First NL, is a provincial, non-profit organization with a 25-year history of advancing food security across Newfoundland and Labrador. We collaborate with communities and organizations across the Province and Canada. We have a mission to advance everyone’s right to food in Newfoundland and Labrador, and a vision of a province where everyone can eat with joy and dignity.
We have been doing this work for decades. We’ve seen both hope and hard times - but we can say that we have never seen hardship like we are seeing today. Between a cost-of-living crisis, a housing crisis, a climate crisis, and the economic uncertainty of an ongoing trade war, our communities and food systems are under incredible strain.
At the same time, we see efforts being made here in Newfoundland and Labrador to shift this dynamic. We now have three targeted basic income pilot projects happening in the province [2], an all-party committee studying basic income as a broader policy [3], a 10-year “Heath Accord” that recommends a basic income as the means to address costly downstream effects of poverty and food insecurity through moderate upstream investments in household incomes [4]. We have a newly-introduced disability benefit that will triple the benefit amount that folks receive from the Canada Disability Benefit [6]. School lunches will soon be universally available to children from Pre-Kindergarten to Grade 9 [7].
These are all valuable interventions, but no province can solve food insecurity without partnership from the federal government. The Government of Canada has many ways it can move this needle - most efficiently through direct cash transfers to low-income households, but also by setting evidence-based policy goals and gathering the data to understand progress. This submission lays out some of the most promising pathways for intervention, many of them drawn directly from the submissions of our national partner organizations and networks.
There is a remarkable consensus across the food movement in defining both the problem and solutions. In Budget 2025, the Government of Canada has an opportunity to show leadership. It has never been more needed.
Recommendation 1: Sustain federal investment, and make permanent the National School Food Program
As a member of The Coalition for Healthy School Food, Canada’s largest school food network, Food First NL welcomed with great enthusiasm the announcement by the Government of Canada of $1 billion over five years for a National School Food Program in the April 2024 Budget. We further applaud Prime Minister Carney’s election promise to make this program permanent and leverage the significant buying power of the federal government to support local food producers. This strategic investment will have long-term benefits for everyday Canadians as well as our food-system resilience and broader economy.
We echo the Coalition’s recommendations for Budget 2025, and call on the Government of Canada to:
Fulfill your committed investment of $1 billion over 5 years for the National School Food Program (NSFP), extend the School Food Infrastructure Fund by investing $20.2 million per year and make the Program permanent through legislation. Solidify Canada’s leadership by joining the 56 countries that have made the School Meals Coalition’s National Commitments.
Allocate $20 million per year for the Buy Canadian in School Foods Program, as promised in the Liberal Party’s 2025 platform.
Provide $500,000 per year to the National School Food Program Research Partnership, a group of 30+ Canada-wide academics, community partners, and the federal government who have developed a comprehensive, implementation-ready longitudinal research plan for monitoring and evaluation of the National School Food Program. This would ensure quality, cost-effective, and well-received community-based school food programs. This investment would be matched equally from non-governmental funders.
Expand your funding of the National School Food Program to align with cost-of-living growth, evaluation findings, and emerging needs to establish a Program that is consistent with the National School Food Policy's vision and objectives. Based on these considerations, and to at least match the $400 million combined annual investment from provinces, territories, and municipalities, we recommend that Canada plan to increase its contribution to a minimum of $400 million per year in subsequent years.
Recommendation 2: Enhance existing income supports
We echo Prime Minister Carney’s call for “fundamentally different approaches to governing” in our assertion that the only evidence-based way to address the increasingly dire crisis of food insecurity is through large-scale policy interventions that improve the incomes of Canadians. Investments in a national school food program and Canadian procurement strategies are excellent interventions to support childhood educational outcomes and resilient Canadian food systems. However, these are not policies designed nor proven to effectively lift households out of poverty. The most efficient, and only evidence-based way to support food-insecure households is by ensuring that they have enough money to buy the foods that they need.
To address food insecurity, we recommend the establishment of a Basic Income Guarantee for all Canadians (see Recommendation 3). In the short term, the Government of Canada has many viable options for immediate action that would not conflict with establishing a basic income. A particular focus should be on Canadians aged 18-64, where our social safety net is the weakest. With an increased uptake of gig work and precarious/part-time jobs, the nature of employment is rapidly changing. Many working Canadians cannot rely on wages alone to meet their basic needs. On top of a tariff war that threatens the economic security of millions of households, Canadians need an income-floor that no one will fall below.
Specifically, we join our colleagues from around the country in recommending:
An expanded and strengthened Canada Disability Benefit. This would mean:
Increasing the amount from the current $200/month to lift recipients out of poverty
Streamlining the application process and widening CDB eligibility criteria to improve accessibility and uptake
Individualizing the benefit rather than means-testing against family income. This would align the benefit with a GBA+ framework by increasing the financial autonomy of people with disabilities, especially women and gender-diverse people who are most at risk of gender-based violence
Reverse Bill C-4’s tax changes that reduce the value of the DTC. In its current form, Bill C-4 reduces the DTC value by approximately $51 in 2025 and $101 in 2026, negatively impacting 963,000 disabled Canadians and raising significant equality concerns under section 15 of the Charter.
Transforming the GST/HST credit into a Groceries and Essentials Benefit as recommended by the Affordability Action Council. This would mean:
Moving to monthly, rather than quarterly, payments
Providing a monthly benefit of up to $150 per adult aged 18-64 and $50 per child.
Phasing out the GEB at an annual income of $24,824 (down from $42,335 with the current GST/HST credit) to most efficiently direct the benefit to those who need it most
Transforming the Canada Workers Benefit into an enhanced Canada Working-Age Supplement. This would entail:
Removing the minimum requirement for employment earnings and increasing the maximum earning limit to best assist individuals who are underemployed or facing barriers to employment
Enhancing Employment Insurance to support all workers. This would mean:
Reducing the qualifying hours to 300 for all workers
Ensuring access for all workers, including:
self-employed people, gig, and migrant workers
people working multiple jobs who lose one of their jobs
workers who voluntarily leave low-paying, precarious work to seek better employment.
Increasing benefit rates to 85% of previously earned income for low-wage workers and 75% for all other workers.
Recommendation 3: Resource and engage with the movement to create a basic income in Canada
Establishing a Basic Income Guarantee would equip this country and its people to meet an uncertain economic future with security, safety, and good health. Ample evidence exists around the efficacy of unconditional cash transfers [8], and popular support for basic income is high [9].
Here in Atlantic Canada, provincial governments are laying the groundwork for implementation. There is a suite of targeted programs moving ahead alongside an all-party committee process in Newfoundland and Labrador. In PEI there is an all-party consensus and a detailed Proposal for a Guaranteed Basic Income Benefit in Prince Edward Island that leverages existing tax infrastructure, has a reduced net cost by ~40%, and has negligible impact on labour supply (−1.6%, or ~0.5 hrs/week).
The Government of Canada has a critical role to play in enabling this work and in bringing the conversation to a national level. With that in mind, we recommend that the Government of Canada:
Renew and Expand Federal Commitment to the PEI Working Group. The Working Group has already enabled productive cooperation between Statistics Canada, the CRA, and PEI’s Department of Social Development. Renewed federal leadership is essential to advance this collaboration into implementation. The implementation of this project would also provide an incredibly valuable source of data for other provinces (like our own) that are moving towards basic income models.
Fund the Demonstration Project on Prince Edward Island in the 2025 Budget. This proposal presents a basic income model for a fully funded 5-7 year demonstration program in PEI estimated to reduce the poverty rate for Islanders aged 18-64 from almost 10% to nearly 2%, and ensure that no Islander lives in deep poverty. In alignment with the mandate outlined by Prime Minister Carney, the demonstration project supports evidence-based innovation, a modernized national social infrastructure, increased economic resilience, gender equity and reconciliation, and expanded labour force participation.
Recommendation 4: Set targets for food insecurity reduction
Targets to measure against are a critical element of progress and a necessary step towards building an effective, fiscally prudent strategy to support food-insecure Canadians. Food First NL has repeatedly joined partners from across the country in calling for a national target for food insecurity reduction. We once again join the call to set a target of reducing food insecurity by 50% and eliminating severe food insecurity by 2030, relative to 2021 levels.
Recommendation 5: Support and strengthen Black and Indigenous food sovereignty
Indigenous organizations and governments all over Canada are taking action to restore sovereignty over their food systems. This work can and should be supported by the Government of Canada, indeed Indigenous food sovereignty is very much in line with the “Indigenous-led processes for advancing self-determination” that are outlined in the Canada Strong Liberal Party Platform.
The Government of Canada can and should support this work. While the shape of this support must be decided in conversation with Indigenous communities themselves, we join calls for the Government of Canada to:
Uphold joint custodianship of Canada. The government must honour its commitments under Nation-to-Nation agreements to share responsibilities with Indigenous peoples in caring for all natural resources in Canada.
Collect and publish timely and actionable race-based data and fund Indigenous and Black-led research on food insecurity to ensure that land access, agriculture, and food security policies equitably reflect Indigenous and Black experiences.
Improve access to land. The government can:
designate land for exclusive hunting, fishing, and gathering for Indigenous peoples and fund permanent, salaried positions for hunters, fishers, foragers, and knowledge-keepers.
adequately fund B3 (Black-led, Black-serving, and Black-mandated) organizations to access land for Black-led food sovereignty programs.
Increase funding to the Local Food Infrastructure Fund (LFIF) and allocate 40% of LFIF funds to initiatives that enhance food sovereignty and food security in Indigenous and Black communities.
Co-develop evidence-based food security approaches to replace Nutrition North Canada with Inuit and Northern Indigenous leaders. The affordability crisis that all Canadians are feeling is even more extreme in Northern communities. Concrete action that brings real results must be taken to bring down prices and increase access.
References
1. PROOF. (2025). New data on household food insecurity in 2024. https://proof.utoronto.ca/2025/new-data-on-household-food-insecurity-in-2024/
2. Government of Newfoundland and Labrador. (2022). Provincial government announces new basic income program for youth receiving residential services. https://www.gov.nl.ca/releases/2022/cssd/1025n03/; Government of Newfoundland and Labrador. (2023). Provincial government announces a new poverty reduction plan for Newfoundland and Labrador. https://www.gov.nl.ca/releases/2023/exec/1108n01/; Government of Newfoundland and Labrador. (2024). Public advisory: Child benefits to be paid on wednesday; payment part of 300 per cent increase in child benefit. https://www.gov.nl.ca/releases/2024/cssd/0319n09/
3. Government of Newfoundland and Labrador. (2022). Members of all-party committee on basic income holds first meeting. https://www.gov.nl.ca/releases/2022/cssd/1212n03/
4. Health Accord for Newfoundland & Labrador. A basic income for Newfoundland and Labrador: Opportunities, options, and analysis. https://www.healthaccordnl.ca/evidence/a-basic-income-for-newfoundland-and-labrador-opportunities-options-and-analysis/
5. Cole, A. (2024). Basic income the answer to food insecurity. https://theindependent.ca/news/basic-income-the-answer-to-food-insecurity/
6. Government of Newfoundland and Labrador. (2024). Provincial government announces a Newfoundland and Labrador disability benefit to achieve a basic income for persons with disabilities. https://www.gov.nl.ca/releases/2024/exec/0607n03/
7. Government of Newfoundland and Labrador. (2024).Child care, education, and growing communities. https://www.gov.nl.ca/budget/2024/what-you-need-to-know/child-care-education-and-growing-communities/
8. See for example, Martin, M.A., Favreau, J. (2023). The case for basic income for food security. https://basicincomecoalition.ca/wp-content/uploads/2023/09/Case-for-BI-and-Food-Security.pdf; Tarasuk, V. (2017). Implications of a basic income guarantee for household food insecurity. https://proof.utoronto.ca/resource/implications-of-a-basic-income-guarantee-for-household-food-insecurity/
9. Narrative Research. (2022). The majority of Canadians would support a Guaranteed Basic Income. https://narrativeresearch.ca/while-the-majority-of-canadians-would-support-a-guaranteed-basic-income-for-low-income-individuals-opinions-are-mixed-towards-the-idea-of-a-universal-basic-income-for-all/
Posted: August 26, 2025
