Parliament has been back in session for two weeks, and there has been no shortage of debate around the struggles many Canadians face in putting food on the table.
With the latest estimate from Statistics Canada showing 1 in 4 people in the ten provinces live in food-insecure households, there is every reason for food insecurity to be a priority for policymakers.
However, the discussions in Parliament have been far from grounded in the decades worth of research on what it means for a household to be food-insecure and what kinds of policy interventions could reduce the rates. Sometimes it is not even clear that parliamentarians are talking about the right numbers.
PROOF founding investigators, Drs. Valerie Tarasuk and Lynn McIntyre participated in two systematic reviews of research on the efficacy of different kinds of interventions for food insecurity reduction in Canada by the Public Health Agency of Canada.
The reviews yielded two key findings: federal and provincial policies that improve the incomes of households in need are effective at reducing food insecurity, and food-based interventions fail to reduce food insecurity.
They reflected on these findings in a new commentary in Health Promotion and Chronic Disease Prevention, highlighting that the reason for the persistence and rise of food insecurity in Canada is this lack of accountability in the policy-making process.
“As the problem of household food insecurity continues to grow, effective evidence-informed responses are badly needed. The systematic reviews of evidence compiled by PHAC provide an important foundation for such action. But the results of these evidence reviews also lay bare the need for accountability, so that no more public funds are wasted on initiatives with no evidence of impact under the guise of addressing food insecurity.” (Tarasuk & McIntyre, 2025)
Evidence-supported policy levers, like the Canada Child Benefit, have not been revisited or adapted with food insecurity reduction as an explicit goal. Meanwhile, public funds continue to be spent on food-based interventions in the name of food insecurity reduction despite no supporting evidence or evaluation.
There needs to be accountability around policies set out to address food insecurity and plans for a path forward. That starts with explicit targets to eliminate severe food insecurity and halve the overall prevalence by 2030.
Leaders in the community response to food insecurity, like Right to Food and Food Banks Canada, have long acknowledged that the solutions to food insecurity are those that improve the financial resources of struggling Canadians and have called for these targets.
The measurement of food insecurity has provided important insight into the financial situations of Canadian households and whether their incomes are sufficient and stable enough to afford necessities and manage budget shocks like job loss or increases in the cost of living.
The high and rising rate of food insecurity shows that both employment and our social safety net are failing to ensure households can cover basic needs. Integrating this understanding of food insecurity into decision-making would lead to more effective and responsive policies that protect households from serious financial hardship.
There is plenty of evidence on how to reduce food insecurity: investments that strengthen the social safety net and raise household incomes.
We need the government to be accountable for the policy decisions that have led to this point and commit to evidence-based action with measurable goals for reducing food insecurity
Commentary
From Evidence to Accountability: Setting Targets to Reduce Food Insecurity
September 27, 2025
Parliament has been back in session for two weeks, and there has been no shortage of debate around the struggles many Canadians face in putting food on the table.
With the latest estimate from Statistics Canada showing 1 in 4 people in the ten provinces live in food-insecure households, there is every reason for food insecurity to be a priority for policymakers.
However, the discussions in Parliament have been far from grounded in the decades worth of research on what it means for a household to be food-insecure and what kinds of policy interventions could reduce the rates. Sometimes it is not even clear that parliamentarians are talking about the right numbers.
PROOF founding investigators, Drs. Valerie Tarasuk and Lynn McIntyre participated in two systematic reviews of research on the efficacy of different kinds of interventions for food insecurity reduction in Canada by the Public Health Agency of Canada.
The reviews yielded two key findings: federal and provincial policies that improve the incomes of households in need are effective at reducing food insecurity, and food-based interventions fail to reduce food insecurity.
They reflected on these findings in a new commentary in Health Promotion and Chronic Disease Prevention, highlighting that the reason for the persistence and rise of food insecurity in Canada is this lack of accountability in the policy-making process.
Evidence-supported policy levers, like the Canada Child Benefit, have not been revisited or adapted with food insecurity reduction as an explicit goal. Meanwhile, public funds continue to be spent on food-based interventions in the name of food insecurity reduction despite no supporting evidence or evaluation.
There needs to be accountability around policies set out to address food insecurity and plans for a path forward. That starts with explicit targets to eliminate severe food insecurity and halve the overall prevalence by 2030.
Leaders in the community response to food insecurity, like Right to Food and Food Banks Canada, have long acknowledged that the solutions to food insecurity are those that improve the financial resources of struggling Canadians and have called for these targets.
The measurement of food insecurity has provided important insight into the financial situations of Canadian households and whether their incomes are sufficient and stable enough to afford necessities and manage budget shocks like job loss or increases in the cost of living.
The high and rising rate of food insecurity shows that both employment and our social safety net are failing to ensure households can cover basic needs. Integrating this understanding of food insecurity into decision-making would lead to more effective and responsive policies that protect households from serious financial hardship.
There is plenty of evidence on how to reduce food insecurity: investments that strengthen the social safety net and raise household incomes.
We need the government to be accountable for the policy decisions that have led to this point and commit to evidence-based action with measurable goals for reducing food insecurity
Read: The evidence is in: accountability needs to be injected into the policy-making process for household food insecurity reduction