Alternative federal budget 2026-27: Food security

This is from a larger publication, Alternative federal budget 2026-27: Bridge to independence

Introduction

Canada’s food security is facing systemic failure. This is playing out at the household, community and national levels.

At the household level, food insecurity affects nearly 10 million people, including 2.4 million children.¹Despite a small decline in 2025, the current rate remains among the highest recorded in 20 years of monitoring.¹

At the community level, Indigenous and Black people face food insecurity at rates far exceeding the national average. This is driven by the lasting impacts of colonialism, land dispossession, structural racism, land access barriers and chronic underinvestment in community-led food systems.²

At the national level, heavy reliance on concentrated global commodity chains, underdeveloped regional infrastructure and a grocery retail sector where five chains control roughly 80 per cent of the market are all making food security fragile.³ An agricultural sector based on raw export and a high reliance on highly processed imports also leads to downstream effects like biodiversity loss and high carbon emissions from agriculture, low resilience to things like extreme weather and trade disruption, and some of the highest levels of diet-related diseases in the OECD.⁴

In January 2026, the federal government announced plans to develop a National Food Security Strategy. It also introduced new income supports such as the Grocery and Essentials Benefit and it promised to support the Competition Bureau and invest in food infrastructure.⁵ This is a promising recognition that food security spans household income, food supply chains and market concentration.

The AFB will take action across three linked areas: fulfilling the right to food through income supports; strengthening food system resilience through food sovereignty and infrastructure investments; and addressing corporate concentration across the food chain.

Overview

Canada’s food security crisis stems from three interconnected problems: an income floor with multiple structural gaps; a food system that is built for export rather than domestic markets; and corporate over-concentration.

1. Gaps in the income floor

There is clear evidence that adequate income supports are essential for eradicating household food insecurity. When low-income seniors began receiving Old Age Security and the Guaranteed Income Supplement at age 65, household food insecurity in Canada was cut in half.⁶ Food insecurity stabilized in 2020 and 2021 due to pandemic benefits, but it spiked in 2022 when those benefits were phased out.

Today, the income floor has significant structural gaps. Working-age adults between 18 and 64, especially those living alone, fall through nearly every current income support program, with only provincial social assistance sometimes available. One in three of these adults is food insecure.⁷ About 70 per cent of households on social assistance are food insecure.⁸ For many workers, wages cannot keep up with increasing rents. Almost 90 per cent of main income earners in food insecure households have permanent and full-time employment.⁹

People with disabilities face food insecurity at twice the national rate,¹⁰ yet the Canada Disability Benefit is set at $200 per month. The Disability Tax Credit, which is required to access the Canada Disability Benefit, remains inaccessible to many who need it.

Households earning below the poverty threshold are twice as common among Indigenous, Black and racialized people.¹²In Northern, rural and remote communities, the income problem is compounded by extreme cost-of-living gaps. In these regions, food costs are often two to three times higher than in the rest of Canada.¹¹

2. Canada’s food system is built for export markets, not Canadians

Decades of federal agricultural investment oriented towards raw exports have left Canada’s domestic food system thin and fragmented. We import most of our fresh produce and processed foods, while exporting bulk commodities. Our agricultural system produces plenty, but it’s not aligned with the nutritional or cultural needs of our population.

There is a “missing middle” of regional processing, cold storage and distribution infrastructure, particularly in Northern and remote areas. Small- and medium-scale producers face challenges accessing institutional markets without intermediaries that capture most of the value. The public funding used for procurement in hospitals, schools, correctional facilities and military bases remains almost entirely untapped as a tool for building regional food resilience.¹²

Canada is also facing a farmland crisis. With 40 per cent of farmers approaching retirement, new and/or equity-deserving farmers face high risk and insecurity due to the lack of protection of prime farmland from development, high debt burdens and increasing rents on farmland arising from speculation.¹³

For Indigenous and Black communities, the barriers are much bigger. Colonial policies have disrupted traditional food systems and severed ties to ancestral lands for Indigenous communities.¹⁴ Regulatory frameworks designed for industrial food production block their traditional harvesting practices and create structural barriers to the trade of wild game between communities. Indigenous food sovereignty initiatives face chronic underinvestment and funding models that are misaligned with seasonal harvesting cycles and Indigenous governance. Black food insecurity disparities are also connected to broader inequities in income, housing, employment, land and resource access.

3. Corporate concentration has led to a market failure

Five chains control approximately 80 per cent of Canadian grocery retail. This is not a competitive market. It is an oligopoly that uses property controls, exclusionary contracting and market dominance to entrench itself, suppress alternatives and extract value from every part of the supply chain. Between 2020 and 2023, grocery prices increased by more than 30 per cent while mega-grocers more than doubled their profit margins and grew total profits by more than 120 per cent.¹⁵

The Nutrition North Canada program is the clearest case study of what happens when public money flows through a concentrated system without accountability. Since 2011, more than $1 billion in subsidies has flowed in great part to large retailers in the south rather than to Northern communities.¹⁶ Meanwhile, food insecurity in Nunavut affects 56.4 per cent of all residents and 67.6 per cent of children.¹⁷ Research has shown that the program has subsidized private monopoly retail while often not passing on the subsidy to lower grocery prices.¹⁸

We need a holistic National Food Security Strategy

Taking stock, we can see how Canada is failing to achieve five dimensions of food security as defined by the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) of the United Nations:

Availability: Canada produces sufficient food, but supply chains for domestically produced foods are fragile. There are critical gaps and access to made-in-Canada products is uneven.
Access: Inadequate income is the primary driver of household food insecurity.
Utilization: Even when food is available and affordable, communities may lack the infrastructure (such as accessible retail, kitchens, means of transport and clean water), and culturally appropriate options for using it well.
Stability: Supply chain shocks, climate change and corporate concentration all undermine the stability of food access over time.
Agency: Communities are systematically unable to participate in and shape the food systems they depend on.

These failures are intertwined and demand a simultaneous, multi-faceted response. Raising incomes without building food infrastructure such as processing, transport, storage and institutional kitchens means income supports will act as an indirect subsidy to private actors who have captured the market. Building food infrastructure without income supports means not reaching those most in need. Both will be undermined as long as corporate concentration captures public investment and Northern communities remain dependent on subsidized private monopolies.

Actions

1. Fulfilling the right to food

The AFB will legislate national food insecurity targets by fall 2027. It will cut household food insecurity by 50 per cent and eliminate severe food insecurity by 2030 (using 2021 as the baseline). These targets align with Canada’s Poverty Reduction Strategy and United Nations Sustainable Development Goals.

The AFB will establish an advisory Food Security Council modelled after Brazil’s National Food Council, which advised that country’s government on food security strategy and helped take it off the FAO’s hunger map.¹⁹ Accountability mechanisms will include participatory governance between civil society and delegates from government ministries. It will also convene national consultation processes. Progress will be tracked annually using disaggregated data by race, Indigeneity, age, gender, sexual orientation, disability and geography.

The AFB will strengthen income supports across people’s lifespans, including a new $9,000 Canada Livable Income for working-age adults living in poverty, a top-up for families with children in poverty, and major improvements in the Canada Disability benefit.

The AFB will introduce a $5,000 annual Northern Supplement for territorial recipients, recognizing that food costs two to three times more in many Northern communities. This will be shared along the Canada Disability Benefit, the Canada Child Benefit, and the Canada Grocery and Essentials Benefit, ensuring that no children or adults in Northern regions are excluded.

The AFB will expand income and other supports for land-based food providers. It will:

Expand the hunters and harvesters benefit, one of the most successful existing components of Nutrition North.
Fund permanent, salaried land-based positions, hunters, fishers and foragers as recognized community infrastructure, at $100 million over five years.
Explore pathways for hunting and harvesting to be recognized as skilled trades, providing workers access to training and professional recognition.

The AFB will mandate race-based data collection on land access, farming and food insecurity across all relevant federal programs. This addresses a critical gap that has limited the targeting of support to the communities that need it most.

2. Strengthening food system resilience

The AFB will invest in mechanisms that enhance food sovereignty and local food infrastructure because income alone cannot solve food insecurity when entire communities lack access to affordable, reliable and culturally appropriate food. It will prioritize Indigenous and Black food sovereignty, domestic procurement, regional infrastructure and a reformed Nutrition North.

The AFB will mandate a “Buy Canadian, Buy Local” policy across the federal government’s institutional food service market, comprising hospitals, schools, correctional facilities and other public institutions. This includes tiered regional sourcing targets for small and medium producers, dedicated procurement pathways for Indigenous food producers and traditional foods, and a requirement that 30 per cent of the food for the National School Food Program, correctional facilities and hospitals food is sourced locally or regionally. The AFB will also call for a renegotiation of CETA, which will enable local food procurement by public institutions. This policy creates a transformative demand signal for regional food economies at essentially no net cost.

The AFB will invest $200 million over five years in the regional aggregation, processing and distribution infrastructure that connects producers to institutional and community markets. This includes physical infrastructure (meat processing, fruit and vegetable preparation, cold and dry storage, commercial kitchens, refrigerated transport) and soft infrastructure (inter-hub trade facilitation, training and extension, traceability and safety compliance, co-operative marketing strategies, national food network organizations). Funding is to be for applicants that are small and medium businesses, co-operatives, social enterprises, non-profits and Indigenous organizations. Funding is to be flexible, outcome-oriented and accessible to organizations without large capital reserves. It must also link food hub development to institutional procurement commitments, creating the reliable anchor demand that makes hubs economically viable.

The AFB will undertake a comprehensive reform of Nutrition North Canada, in partnership with Indigenous leaders and communities. The program has spent more than a billion dollars in public subsidies since 2011, yet food insecurity in Northern territories remains extremely high. As such, the AFB will:

Adjust subsidy rates to reflect actual community needs, supported by a full independent audit of program outcomes conducted with Indigenous community oversight.
As stated above, significantly expand the hunters and harvesters benefit, recognizing land-based food provisioning as the foundation of Northern food sovereignty.
Introduce subsidy claw backs and accountability mechanisms for monopoly retailers that are not passing subsidies on to consumers, redirecting those funds to community-led alternatives.
Expand funding for alternatives to monopoly grocery in the North, including community buying alliances, co-operative stores, and community-owned retail models that keep value within communities.

The AFB will commit $50 million to fully implement the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples and co-develop an Indigenous Food Sovereignty Act, affirming Indigenous jurisdiction over food systems through land access, resource rights and climate-resilient strategies. Indigenous governing bodies will have co-governance roles in all national food security architecture.

The AFB will provide $200 million over 10 years in unrestricted, multi-year, community-controlled core funding for Indigenous-led food sovereignty initiatives, aligned with Indigenous governance protocols and seasonal harvesting cycles.

The AFB will allocate $50 million over five years to reform food safety regulations that currently block traditional food practices from participating in formal food systems, and to address the interprovincial and territorial regulatory barriers that prevent wild game from being traded and shared between communities. Indigenous food producers will have dedicated pathways in all institutional procurement streams.

The AFB will fund $50 million to co-develop a National Black Food Sovereignty Strategy with Black-led organizations, covering land access, food infrastructure and culturally rooted food systems. Black Canadians experience household food insecurity at a rate of 41.3 per cent, double the national rate. This reflects structural racism in income, employment, housing and land access accumulated over generations. Dedicated, sustained investment is required.

The AFB will also invest $200 million over 10 years in unrestricted funding for Black-led food systems; commit $200 million over five years to support equitable land access for Black farmers; allocate $100 million over five years to strengthen Black-led food infrastructure through the Local Food Infrastructure Fund; and invest $50 million over five years in Black-led food sovereignty research.

The AFB will invest $100 million over three years in grants, loans and training for non-profit, co-operative and solidarity grocery models. This includes community-owned stores in food deserts and in Northern communities. These models will be connected to regional food hub networks as priority distribution outlets.

The AFB will invest $5 million into research and consultation on a national public grocery network. The infrastructure that moves food from producer to consumer is dominated by the same concentrated corporate interests that have made Canadian groceries among the most expensive in the OECD. Without public intervention, investment in local food infrastructure will continue to be absorbed or marginalized by monopolies, while public funds such as school food programs will go straight to private monopolies.²⁰

3. Increasing competition in food retail and community control over it

The AFB will pursue public interest regulation to address corporate concentration. Competition reforms can help improve food affordability and security by regulating anti-consumer practices such as mergers and consolidation, price fixing, price gouging, property controls in grocery retail, exclusivity arrangements and algorithmic pricing.²¹ These all limit the power of the consumer and small players in the face of a highly concentrated and unfair playing field. They increase unaffordability for the wider population.

The AFB will develop a regulatory framework that supports small- and medium-sized producers and makes those enterprises eligible for public support, funded by windfall taxes on concentrated corporate profits. The AFB Implementation Act will legislate an exemption to trade agreements enabling progressive tariffs on processed foods and commodities used for domestic food processing so that domestic food processing, storage and distribution enterprises can develop without pressure from global competition. This will increase food security, shorten and strengthen supply chains, increase employment, and promote the development of a Canadian food culture. Non-profit and co-operative models are the preferred vehicle for this as surplus will stay within the enterprise and cannot be extracted by shareholders.

The AFB will increase the Competition Bureau’s budget by 25 per cent to $93 million and strengthen its powers to block mergers, dismantle property controls and exclusionary contracting, regulate deceptive practices, and enforce pricing transparency across the grocery sector. The AFB will allow the Competition Bureau to track corporate profits and price gouging, and will mandate transparent shareholder reports every quarter. The AFB will make it easier to file complaints with the Competition Bureau, including through dedicated support for navigating the complaints process, a simplified online intake system, and funded consumer and food sector advocacy organizations.

The AFB will extend windfall taxation to excess profits across the food supply chain, including in oil, fertilizer, machinery, seed, processing, slaughterhouses, distribution and retail, directing revenues to fund local food system support. Unit price labelling will be mandated across all grocery and food retail formats.

The Monitor

Our Schools/Our Selves

Alternative federal budget 2026-27: Food security

Introduction

Overview

1. Gaps in the income floor

2. Canada’s food system is built for export markets, not Canadians

3. Corporate concentration has led to a market failure

We need a holistic National Food Security Strategy

Actions

1. Fulfilling the right to food

2. Strengthening food system resilience

3. Increasing competition in food retail and community control over it

About the author

Alternative Federal Budget Working Group

Alternative federal budget 2026-27: Health care

Alternative federal budget 2026-27: First Nations

Alternative federal budget 2026-27: Health care

Alternative federal budget 2026-27: First Nations

Alternative federal budget 2026-27: Veterans

Alternative federal budget 2026: Food security

We’re fighting for change and your donation helps!

Contact Us

News & Resources

Regions

Projects

About Us

Contact Us

Ways to Give