Recommendations for a Poverty Reduction and Prevention Strategy
As a member of the Newfoundland and Labrador Anti-Poverty Coalition (NLAPC), Food First NL fully endorses the recommendations in the Coalition’s submission. Several recommendations in the NLAPC’s submission are particularly critical to advancing the right to food in Newfoundland and Labrador. This submission expands on those key recommendations.
Summary of Recommendations
Increase Income Support rates until they reach or exceed the Market Basket Measure (MBM) poverty line and index those benefits to inflation
Increase the minimum wage to a living wage
Create a Newfoundland and Labrador Groceries and Essentials Benefit (NLGEB) to match the Canadian Groceries and Essentials Benefit (CGEB)
Over the ten-year course of the Poverty Reduction Strategy, we recommend that the provincial government work with the federal government to institute a Guaranteed Basic Income (GBI).
Implement rent control policies
Invest in public transit both between and within communities across the province
Support the development and operation of non-profit grocery stores and wholesalers
Continue to expand $10/Day Childcare and the School Meal Program
Pass a Poverty Reduction Strategy Implementation Act into law
Establishing meaningful joint governance of key priorities
Providing secure multi-year funding indexed to inflation that allows community partners to plan for and address a growing crisis of poverty, while ensuring that the folks working to address this crisis are not also struggling to live on incomes below the poverty line
Establishing a shared data standard for community organizations to report impact data to government, with funding and resources available to support implementation
Introduction
Developing a new Poverty Reduction and Prevention Plan is a historic opportunity to advance human rights—including the right to food—in Newfoundland and Labrador.
As a signatory to the 1976 International Covenant on Economic, Social, and Cultural Rights, Canada has committed to ensuring an adequate standard of living for all. Importantly, this treaty obligates all levels of government, including provincial governments, to act towards the elimination of conditions of poverty, including guaranteeing access to food.
For too long, the responsibility for these basic rights has been downloaded onto community organizations. Developing this new strategy is a chance to change this, and to build a brighter future for all.
Recommendations: Poverty reduction and the right to food
As a member of the Newfoundland and Labrador Anti-Poverty Coalition (NLAPC), Food First NL fully endorses the recommendations made in the Coalition’s submission, accessible online at nlantipoverty.ca.
Broadly speaking, all work to reduce poverty will positively impact the right to food for Newfoundlanders and Labradorians. That said, several recommendations in the NLAPC’s submission are particularly critical to advancing the right to food in Newfoundland and Labrador. We highlight and expand on those here.
Increase Income Support rates until they reach or exceed the Market Basket Measure (MBM) poverty line and index those benefits to inflation
Food insecurity is (and has long been) at crisis levels for income support recipients. Almost 60% of income support recipients in Newfoundland and Labrador were food insecure as of 2022 (the most recent data with this breakdown). This is unsurprising given the mismatch between income support benefit rates and the cost of food. From 2021 through 2024, most families would have to spend more than their entire income support payment on the standardized basket of groceries used to cost the NL Nutritious Food Basket. Recent increases to income support rates mean that this ratio has improved, but even in the best-case scenario, a household would need to spend 75% of their benefit on food to afford the basket. This is clearly unrealistic. With income support rates not connected to inflation, people can also expect this ratio to worsen again in the future.
Raising income support rates and securing them against inflation is the most basic evidence-based lever available to advance the basic human right to food. This should be a prerequisite for any meaningful intervention.
Increase the minimum wage to a living wage
Food insecurity is not restricted to those reliant on government transfers. A majority of food-insecure Newfoundlanders and Labradorians rely on employment income. This is not surprising given the current minimum wage does not provide an adequate standard of living in the current cost environment. Raising the minimum wage is a critical lever that could increase incomes and reduce poverty and food insecurity without a large direct government expenditure.
Create a Newfoundland and Labrador Groceries and Essentials Benefit (NLGEB) to match the Canadian Groceries and Essentials Benefit (CGEB)
The Government of Canada recently announced the new Canada Groceries and Essentials Benefit (CGEB). Unfortunately, the dollar value of this benefit is low – less than half of what the Affordability Action Council originally proposed.
A dollar-for-dollar match to this benefit would help provide some immediate relief to households struggling with the cost of food while other long-term interventions from this strategy are implemented.
Over the ten-year course of the Poverty Reduction Strategy, we recommend that the provincial government work with the federal government to institute a Guaranteed Basic Income (GBI)
Food First NL is a longtime supporter of the implementation of a Guaranteed Basic Income (GBI). We believe the GBI is the single policy intervention that would do the most to advance the right to food in Newfoundland and Labrador.
Establishing a basic income guarantee would transform this province and equip its people to meet the future with security, safety, and good health. There is ample evidence supporting the feasibility and impact of basic income. This evidence is well-known to the Government of Newfoundland and Labrador thanks to the work of the All-Party Committee on Basic Income. We urge the Government to integrate the recommendations from that committee as a core element of the Poverty Reduction and Prevention Strategy.
Implement rent control policies
The previous items cited in this submission all have to do with increasing incomes for those who struggle the most with access to food. While that is vital work, it could be put at risk without simultaneously instituting a stronger regime of rent controls to prevent landlords from raising rents and capturing this increased income. Food First NL supports a Lived and Living Experience Advisory Group that is particularly adamant on the importance of measures that protect people's incomes from profiteering, such as rent control. We echo this call.
Invest in public transit both between and within communities across the province
In public consultations that Food First NL held across the province, we have consistently heard that, other than income, the primary barrier to people’s access to food is transportation. All over this province, people struggle to get themselves to food or to get food to them. For example, when Food First NL surveyed St. John’s residents during a citywide “food assessment” process, 75% indicated that their own motor vehicle was the most common way to obtain food. However, for people living on less than $20,000 annually, that falls to 25%. This leaves them reliant on walking or wheeling in often inclement weather and on unsafe sidewalks, depending on public transportation that inadequately serves many people’s schedules and locations, or incurring expensive taxi costs. All of these transportation issues impact people’s ability to access food they want and need in a manner that is timely, adequate, and dignified.
Support the development and operation of non-profit grocery stores and wholesalers
As an operator of three non-profit food retail businesses, Food First NL has seen the many ways in which non-profit businesses can strengthen local food systems. Most directly, these models can make food accessible at a lower price point by removing profits from the business model. This allows household incomes to be diverted to other basic needs. Non-profits can fill important gaps, particularly in rural Newfoundland and Labrador where there may not be a for-profit business case for food retail. Investing in this kind of infrastructure would also be an opportunity to align with and leverage investments from Canada’s National Food Security Strategy, whose timeline aligns closely with that of the upcoming Poverty Reduction and Prevention Strategy.
Continue to expand $10/Day Childcare and the School Meal Program
Food First NL has seen firsthand the impact of school meal programs in this province. Through our long engagement with this sector and our “Next Steps for School Meals” consultation and planning process, the importance of affordable school meals to lower-income households has only become clearer. Research highlights several direct benefits, like providing immediate relief to household budgets and improving students’ learning outcomes. Research has also shown that school meals programs increase students’ lifetime earnings, reduce social inequalities, increase maternal workforce participation, create jobs, strengthen local food systems, improve health and food security, and strengthen Indigenous communities.
Pass a Poverty Reduction Strategy Implementation Act into law
Food organizations across Canada (including Food First NL) have long advocated for the creation of a national food insecurity reduction target. To quote our partners at Right to Food, a target would “galvanize action, create accountability, drive focus, sustain momentum, and foster dignity and inclusion”. Our organization has been on the ground long enough to remember the last Poverty Reduction Strategy in the early 2010s, which was nationally recognized as a success and led to one of the only documented declines in food insecurity ever seen in Canada. One of the key dimensions to that successful strategy was the extensive reporting and accountability infrastructure set up around it. More recently, Prince Edward Island has passed a Poverty Reduction Strategy Implementation Act. As an organization that engages regularly with colleagues in that province, we have seen how effective this has been in creating accountability and trust.
Establishing meaningful joint governance of key priorities
Poverty reduction and the right to food are not issues that can be addressed by government or the community sector alone. It is obvious that any successful strategy will involve sustained and coordinated efforts by both sectors. With that in mind, we strongly support the concept of shared governance, in which community organizations are brought together with government at the same table to guide and coordinate the work. In our own experience as co-chairs (with the Government of NL) of the provincial Food Security Working Group, we have seen how much more effective and impactful these groups can be when they are truly multi-sectoral.
Providing secure multi-year funding indexed to inflation that allows community partners to plan for and address a growing crisis of poverty, while ensuring that the folks working to address this crisis are not also struggling to live on incomes below the poverty line
At Food First NL, we have repeatedly seen that our best, most impactful work comes when we have access to multi-year funds that allow us to plan and think strategically about our work. Sadly, this is rare. We have also worked hard to prioritize an adequate standard of living for our own staff, and have seen how hard that can be for community organizations in this province. Adequately resourcing this work is a critical complement to the idea of shared governance mentioned above.
Establishing a shared data standard for community organizations to report impact data to government, with funding and resources available to support implementation
Our organization, and the organizations we partner with, have close connections to community and the potential to be vital conduits for data that could inform true shared governance in the work to end poverty. We have, wherever possible, invested in our own capacity to work with data, but there is no common framework we can work toward with our colleagues that would facilitate a truly collective understanding of the impact of all of our work. That could and should change.
August 28, 2026