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Join us on June 15th at 1pm-2pm (ADT) for our webinar with Food For All NB as part of their “What the Food?!” series.

Dr.Tarasuk will be returning to the series to share an update on the state of household food insecurity in New Brunswick in 2021 and discuss how governments have recently responded to this problem. During this event, attendees will learn more about what’s changed since 2018, what the record inflation means for food insecurity moving forward, and what is needed to protect people from food insecurity.

Simultaneous FR/ENG Interpretation will be available to attendees. This event will be recorded. Registration is required.

Register here

PROOF investigators Dr.Tarasuk and Dr.Emery presented at the very first webinar of Food For All NB’s What the Food?! series in 2020 on the drivers of household food insecurity and the potential for a guaranteed annual income to address household food insecurity in Canada.

Household Food Insecurity & New Brunswick (May 2020)

Please join us for a 2-part webinar series on household food insecurity in Canada, hosted by the Canadian Nutrition Society on February 10th and 17th at 1-2pm ET. The two webinars, presented by PROOF investigators Drs. Valerie Tarasuk and Herb Emery, will provide an opportunity to discuss the relationship between household food insecurity and food, nutrition, and health, as well as the implications for policy and practice.

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PROOF, a Canadian Institutes of Health Research (CIHR)-funded interdisciplinary research program studying policy interventions to household food insecurity in Canada, invites applications for two (2) post-doctoral fellowships.

Successful candidates will join a team of accomplished researchers and examine economic predictors of food insecurity in Canada and changes in households’ vulnerability to food insecurity during the COVID-19 pandemic, working with large microdata files accessed through the Statistics Canada Research Data Centres under the supervision of PROOF principal investigator, Dr. Valerie Tarasuk.

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As part of the federal Poverty Reduction Strategy, the government identified household food insecurity as a key indicator for its Official Poverty Dashboard. Statistics Canada’s new report, Canadian Income Survey: Food insecurity and unmet health care needs, 2018 and 2019, marks the release of new data on food insecurity — the first from Canadian Income Survey (CIS) — and an important step forward in food insecurity monitoring in Canada.

The inclusion of food insecurity monitoring on the CIS now ensures systematic, annual evaluations of food insecurity. Consistent monitoring was not achieved through the Canadian Community Health Survey (CCHS) because jurisdictions could opt out of measuring food insecurity in some years.

Having consistent monitoring of food insecurity as part of the Poverty Reduction Strategy is important for the development of its policy interventions and the evaluation of its impact. We applaud Statistics Canada’s commitment and progress in the annual tracking and reporting of food insecurity.

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Read our new op-ed in The Hill Times, published on on December 28, 2021.

Every holiday season, Canadians are reminded to donate to their local food banks. The support shown over the 40-year history of food banks in this country is a testament to the compassion we have for each other. But food banks will be the first to tell you that they aren’t the solution for food insecurity.

Food insecurity is a policy decision. It exists because people do not have adequate financial resources to meet basic needs and our current policies fail to ensure that they do. We know this from having over 20 years of Statistics Canada data on food insecurity.

Twenty-seven years ago, the first questions about households’ inability to meet their food needs due to financial constraint appeared on national surveys. Sixteen years ago, Statistics Canada began systematically monitoring household food insecurity. Ten years ago, we formed the research program, PROOF, bringing together researchers from universities across North America to examine this data and identify effective solutions to this problem.

Continue reading at: https://www.hilltimes.com/2021/12/28/a-decade-of-proof-on-how-to-tackle-food-insecurity-in-canada?i=6cc848e2ab3e45de94d9d51ce9e06abe

Download PDF version

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Food insecurity in Newfoundland and Labrador had gotten worse, even before the pandemic. Our new study, published in the Canadian Journal of Public Health, compared food insecurity in the province in 2011-2012 and 2017-2018. The provincial government should act swiftly and deliberately with evidence-based solutions to address the increasing food insecurity.

In this study, we analyzed how the odds of being food-insecure in province differed between the two periods. The odds of being food-insecure in 2017-2018 rose by 49% from 2011-2012, meaning that Newfoundlanders and Labradorians became substantially more vulnerable in that time.

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Originally published in Healthy Debate on October 26, 2021.

By Tim Li

This article is based on interviews from PROOF’s special podcast presentation, “Why eliminating food insecurity requires dismantling anti-Black racism.” Listen below or visit here for the full presentation, transcript, and show notes.

We’ve known for a while that Black households in Canada are more likely to experience inadequate or insecure access to food due to financial constraints, but little has been done to better understand this disparity.

Collaborating with FoodShare, a leading food justice organization, we recently completed the first focused study on the racial disparities in food insecurity in Canada.

“When it comes to food insecurity, I feel like we’re often footnotes,” says Paul Taylor, the executive director of Food Share, who was astounded that there had been no prior research to further understand the high rate of food insecurity among Black Canadians.

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In episode 7 of the Healthy Cities in the SDG Era podcast, Dr. Valerie Tarasuk, spoke with host Dr. Erica Di Ruggiero about food insecurity in Canada in the context of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDG), a set of 17 goals tackling social, economic, and environmental challenges for UN Member States to deliver on by 2030. Sustainable Development Goal 2 is Zero Hunger, meaning Canada has committed to ending hunger and ensuring all Canadians have access to food. Later in the episode, Dr. Erica Di Ruggiero also speaks with PhD Candidate, Allison Daniel, about SDG 2 in the global context.

Listen to the full episode here and check out our highlights below:

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PROOF principal investigator, Dr. Valerie Tarasuk, recently discussed food insecurity in Canada with the Global Solidarity Alliance for Food, Health and Social Justice as part of their Rights Not Charity podcast series. Through Canada’s monitoring of food insecurity over the past 15 years, it’s become clear that our social safety net needs to be strengthened to protect Canadians from being food-insecure.

Show highlights:

• How food insecurity is defined and measured in Canada
• The extent of household food insecurity in Canada and who is most impacted
• How food insecurity is rooted in social and economic disadvantage, systemic racism, and the legacy of colonialism
• What food insecurity says about Canada’s social safety net and the need to strengthen it so that it is accountable for ensuring all Canadians have enough money to afford basic needs

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