Canada’s grocery industry is in crisis.
In March 2023, corporate leadership of chain grocery stores such as Loblaws, Metro, and Sobeys were brought to parliament amid allegations of purposeful price inflation and profit-mongering.
These allegations surfaced as Canada’s grocery prices spiked to more than double the rate of inflation, meanwhile profits for corporate grocers were (and continue to be) staggeringly high.
Memes of million-dollar lettuce began appearing all over social media, as the everyday grocery trip became anxiety-inducing and sometimes impossible for working- and middle-class Canadians.
In short: food insecurity is spiking across Canada.
As with most social causes, efforts in fighting food insecurity has largely been at the community-level. Food co-ops, local farming, and food mutual aid efforts have provided alternatives to the existing reliance on money-making, big box grocery stores.
Nathan Pécout and Sofia Christow-Filleul are members of People’s Republic of Delicious (PRD). PRD is a community kitchen that prepares free plant-based meals using donated ingredients from local grocers for members of the University of Ottawa community, though they do not check affiliations and welcome whoever comes through their doors.
Although PRD is actively combatting food insecurity, they are clear that their food—and collective meal preparation—is not just for those who are food insecure.
“Many people come for accessible and free meals, but many also come for the community or for the food,” Pécout says. Indeed, while the free meal is a material gain, the sense of community that community kitchens provide can also be healing. Food insecurity is a spectrum. While many may think that they are “secure enough,” resorting to extremely minimalistic cooking out of financial necessity and experiencing grocery bill anxiety, is still food insecurity.
Both Pécout and Christow-Filleul re-affirmed that they do not ask anyone entering PRD about their reason for coming to the program or about their food security status.
“Community-building is a vehicle for education on food insecurity and de-stigmatizing community kitchens,” they affirm.
Isolation is another by-product of colonial and corporate food manufacturing. Recent studies suggest that community eating is an indicator of longer lifespan.
Currently, PRD is receiving donations from local grocers, rather than big box stores.
“We’re tried to reach out [larger corporations], but they have far stricter logistics and protocol for disposing of expired food. Many of them are engaged with larger food banks and are just less enthusiastic about engaging with local action groups,” says Pécout. “It’s difficult because when we reach out we are often passed up the chain, through bureaucratic hurdles, and it’s a timely process,” Christow-Filleul added.
While PRD is tackling community food preparation and serving the community, organizations like the Local Food and Farm Co-ops in Ontario (LFFC) are supporting the back end of community food systems. The LFFC describes itself as “a two-tier membership-based network dedicated to building local, sustainable food systems, equitable economies and resilient communities in Ontario.”
“The basic tenets of the co-op model are voluntary and open membership, democratic control between members, autonomy and independence, education and training, cooperation among co-ops, member economic participation, and concern for community,” says Michelle Chin-Dawe, the Administration Coordinator of the LCCF. The LCCF has members across Ontario, including growing members in Northern Ontario, and provides a community forum along with capacity-building programs, like training on how to package food to get into grocery stores. In efforts to keep organizations like this community centered, the co-op model is inherently skewed away from corporate monopoly and profit hoarding.
Although the LCCF is a growing initiative, Chin-Dawe explained that in the year that she has been in the organization, inflation and the inaccessible grocery market has absolutely put stress on LCCF members, with some of them discontinuing their membership, and some even shutting down. However, Chin-Dawe and LCCF are still in agreement that co-ops and local farming is the future of sustainable food, with community at its core.
Mutual aid, local farming, and food co-ops are not an invention of the 21st century, nor of settler colonialism. Indigenous food cultivation and preparation has long centred on community, respect for all beings, and sustainable consumption. For decades however, food insecurity has disproportionately impacted Indigenous communities, who represent large parts of rural and Northern Canada.
Chin-Dawe, Pécout, and Christow-Filleul consider themselves both political agents and community-builders. Neither group is a political actor per se, but their driving principles and impact are inherently anti-establishment.
Settler colonialism has created a recipe for food insecurity that has only been worsened by an inflated economy and a pandemic. Community kitchens and mutual aids, food co-ops (including neighbourhood community gardens) and local farms are revolutionary tools to reclaiming food for our families and communities. They are tipping control away from profit-motivated chain grocery stores. Not only is food more accessible under sustainable food governance, but our relationship to food is more direct, labour is more valued, the environmental impact is decreased, and community is at the centre.
The People’s Republic of Delicious operates every Thursday at Déjà Vu on the University of Ottawa Campus, with cooking beginning at 10AM and serving at 12PM. The Local Food and Farm Co-Op operates across Ontario and can be accessed here.
