Since its inception in 2001, Food Secure Canada (FSC) has been a strong voice for food security and sovereignty advancements in Canada. Through partnerships with projects like Community First: Impacts of Community Engagement (CFICE), FSC has brought their advocacy game to new heights.

In contrast with other community-based organizations that often lack capacity to conduct independent research, FSC has capitalized on partnering with organizations rooted in both academia and the community to conduct and produce unique, targeted research. The organization’s community-campus engagement (CCE) work has led to many pivotal wins including grants to conduct research on and . This recognition of FSC as a research-capable organization exhibits an important shift in Canadian culture towards valuing local research expertise and its contribution towards informing all levels of government during policy development.

So, who is FSC and what do they do?

(FSC) is a national network of organizations and individuals working together to bring food and farming issues to the forefront of Canadian policy. Throughout its existence, FSC has championed dialogue domestically and internationally regarding its three main goals: zero hunger, healthy and safe food, and sustainable food systems for all.

As a multi-faceted organization, FSC expedites conversation and action for a more equitable and community-driven food movement. Key components of FSC’s foci of action include: increasing access to food research and knowledge, supporting the development of food research and food-related projects, advocating for food policies at the federal level, and most notably, ensuring all Canadians are given a platform to engage with what a national food policy would do for the millions it intends to serve.

What is FSC’s relationship with CFICE?

In 2012, FSC partnered with CFICE to create the — a network of academics, non-profits and community organizers dedicated to strengthening partnerships between community and academic sectors. The Collaborative helps to increase the quantity and quality of sharp, progressive research that directly impacts the evolution of a more equitable and just food system.

Amanda Wilson, Assistant Professor at Saint Paul University

Amanda Wilson, Assistant Professor in the School of Social Innovation at Saint Paul University and former Post-Doctoral research fellow at FSC, says this collaborative effort between stakeholders isn’t a new phenomenon within food system work in Canada. “There has always been a close and collective relationship between academia and community work, both of which are supportive of each other within the food movement and between agri-food scholars,” Wilson says. While community-campus collaborations have been part of food security work for a while, the Collaborative represents a formal network dedicated to sharing knowledge. Within this knowledge base, FSC and Collaborative members can facilitate relationships between community and campus researchers and collaboratively create and mobilize food research for more informed policy.

Through the Collaborative, FSC has effectively bridged the relationship between front line service work and research faculties. This merger provides various food organizations with a wealth of knowledge, undoubtedly contributing to their advocacy and program facilitation across the country. In addition, the research produced is indispensable since it is driven and informed by community needs and expertise.

Attendees at the Ottawa Food Summit. ©Food Secure Canada

How does the Collaborative, and FSC’s relationship with CFICE, strengthen their advocacy work?

FSC’s partnership with CFICE through the Community Academic Collaborative, has supported FSC in claiming their rightful seat at the table when working with government officials. By bolstering its policy recommendations with comprehensive evidence-based reports, FSC is creating a Canada to be proud of in regards to accessing safe and nutritious food for all.

According to Wilson, FSC’s work has a direct impact on communities across the country: “The partnerships between the community and academic institutions builds a more collective and effective community. It gives [FSC] the chance to engage in research that we wouldn’t normally call research, like town halls or focus groups. We then use this research to create greater engagement for policy change, facilitate conferences and build the complex web of relationships and projects that hopefully moves towards building a better food system for everyone.”

Undeniably, the Collaborative has led to big wins for FSC and the rest of the food community in Canada.

For example, the Collaborative has given FSC the support it needs to continue to fight for a National Food Policy for Canada. This work is important; Despite Canada’s commitments to the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, FSC estimates that at least .

The capacity FSC has gained through the Collaborative has given them the ability to produce policy reports, conduct presentations and events, host conferences, and organize to present their research to those who can create change in Canada. FSC’s collaborative CCE efforts were recently rewarded as the release of the Standing Committee on Agriculture and Agri-food’s report, , thoroughly encompassed several of FSC’s key recommendations including recognizing food as a human right, and the importance of implementing a Food Policy Advisory Body.

FSC’s efforts have even led to recognition by international food organizations also working on national food policy initiatives, as well as another government research contract further increasing its recognition and legitimacy as a leader in food policy work.

Food Secure Canada presents with CFICE as part of a panel on Food Policy Council models at the Common Food Policy Conference in Brussels.

The need for capacity to create opportunity

Community-based organizations like FSC evolving to become leaders in advocacy and research is a feat worthy of recognition. As Wilson notes, many organizations face a continuous struggle to nurture their advocacy and research work in the absence of support from strong community-campus partnerships. “In some ways it’s like a chicken and the egg debate. You need a strong baseline of capacity that allows you to go out and look for contracts and grants to begin with. Once you have that base, you are able to tackle the core concepts of our work, which is making sure the community is in the driver’s seat.”

Through FSC’s ability to capitalize on the support gained through community-campus partnerships like the one with CFICE, FSC has been able to produce research that brings to the table the importance of vibrant food systems. The impact they have had as a result spans from improved access to food in the North, increased environmental stewardship and more widespread sustainable production and harvesting practices, to improved health and safety, and more innovative food initiatives and governance.

As we patiently wait for a Canada with zero hunger, our job has to be supporting organizations and partnerships that fight for a safer, more equitable country for all.

Being ‘community first’ means engaging and involving community partners at all stages of the partnership, even the application process. When the CFICE team was putting together its SSHRC application several years ago, the application process presented one of the first opportunities to put the ‘community first’ ethos into action.

With so many partners involved in CFICE, (at least a dozen universities and 60+ community-based organizations), finding a project design, structure, and common goals across the project posed a challenge, but over the course of the six years of this project, CFICE leaders have learned to put community first through practice.

CFICE spoke to its current Principal Investigator, Peter Andrée, and one of the community partners from the Poverty Reduction Hub, Liz Weaver of Tamarack Institute in Waterloo, to gain their insight into how best to formulate a SSHRC partnership grant application while respectfully involving your community-based organization (CBO) partners.

Sharing ideas at the Ottawa CCE Regional Roundtable.

Start with existing relationships

Before you can think about submitting a SSHRC partnership grant application, you need to know who your partners will be. In CFICE’s case, most community partnerships arose out of pre-existing relationships and networks. CFICE’s original Principal Investigator (PI) Ted Jackson approached the Tamarack Institute, for instance, because he already had a relationship with them from his work in the community development sector.

CFICE Principal Investigator, Peter Andree.

Peter AndrĂ©e, the current PI for CFICE, was originally involved in the project as the academic co-lead for the Community Food Security hub. Through his academic research on food security, AndrĂ©e had an established network of contacts in that field, and it was through this network that he recruited to be a part of CFICE. AndrĂ©e said in an interview that connecting with partners in the early stages of the project “was a bit of an organic process” involving the lead academics and the Canadian Alliance for Community Service Learning (CACSL) drawing on their networks.

While you might begin with relationships you’ve already built, that does not mean that those you first approach will necessarily be the right fit. “The question then becomes how much you can ask of [the community partner],” AndrĂ©e says. “It’s often about your networks, but then don’t take that relationship for granted…really try and figure out if this is going to be of value [for them] or not.”

Community partners are often asked to write letters of support in the context of a partnership grant application, but AndrĂ©e says this isn’t something you want to ask them for right away. “Rather, you first have to have a conversation about what would be in this for you, and what would be in this for me, and how can we make sure that your time is valued and how can this be reciprocal?” he says.

Those initial conversations, of which there might be several, are the key to hashing out things like the responsibilities involved in the project and the potential benefits for each partner. If it’s a SSHRC partnership grant you’re applying for, don’t forget that the project is a research project at the end of the day.

“While it can serve other ends for community organizations, it ultimately needs to be this knowledge generation, synthesis project, so if that is not of interest to them, then you have to have those conversations early on” in order to determine if the partnership will be a good fit, says AndrĂ©e.

Consult partners from the get-go

Liz Weaver, the Co-CEO of the community-based organization the , was a community co-lead in CFICE’s Poverty Reduction hub in Phase I of the project. She says CFICE helped the folks at the Tamarack Institute feel respected and included in the application process by involving them in the initial design of the project.

“I think what was really important was the whole notion of community-first,” Weaver told CFICE in a recent interview. For CFICE, “community-first” means fostering equitable partnerships to co-create knowledge that can then be applied to benefit the community context.

“I felt I was informed at every stage of how the process was moving forward
there were lots of emails back and forth with community partners about where the proposal was at,” Weaver said. Then, when the CFICE project got to the interview stage of the SSHRC proposal, community partners were invited to be a part of that process as well.

As a community partner outside of the academic sphere, Weaver said the SSHRC application itself can be a bit “daunting,” but that “the people at ĐÓ°ÉÔ­ŽŽ [University] were quite helpful in terms of navigating [that].”

Exchanging as much information as possible and providing assistance with the application process when needed can make your CBO feel included and involved without feeling overwhelmed.

Align shared goals

As part of those early conversations, ensuring that partners are on the same page as to the broader goals of the project, and what they hope to get out of the project for their individual organization or research, is an important step in ensuring that expectations are aligned.

“Some of what’s implicit in how we work needs to be made explicit, so that everybody understands the parameters that everybody’s working with,” says AndrĂ©e. For instance, if an academic partner is looking to get tenure in the next five years, “that’s got to be on the table,” AndrĂ©e says. “What do you need to get tenure? If that’s a certain number of publications, how does that fit in with what you’re planning to do with your community partners?” Expectations that might seem like they are outside of the partnership, but that could influence one’s involvement in the project, need to be acknowledged.

Weaver said “the group has to buy into the shared agenda” of the research project, and thought maybe that was something that was lacking within CFICE’s Phase I. “I think we circled around the shared agenda a lot, and then each of the hubs did their own thing,” she said.

Both Weaver and Andrée identified the need to be in partnership with an organization as a whole, rather than just one person within that organization.

“Chances are people who are still doing the work five years later are not the people who started, and so there needs to be an institutional commitment to the value of the work for that organization,” AndrĂ©e says.

And, if you do have organizational or institutional support, and you have aligned goals and expectations, Weaver adds that something else to consider is your partners’ state of readiness. “If you want [the project] to get off the ground quickly, then you want to have groups that have good relationships and people who make decisions relatively quickly,” she said.

Negotiate power and governance

Over the course of CFICE, face-to-face meetings have been found to be integral to the success of partnership projects. These meetings allow honest and frank discussions to take place and can be helpful to address more difficult topics such as power imbalances. Weaver says the first face-to-face meeting for all CFICE partners did not happen until after the funding was secured and the logistics and structure of the project was already in place. She suggests that in hindsight, this might have been done differently, so that the main ‘hub’ structure of the CFICE project could have been better communicated to community partners.

While Weaver said community partners might have been more involved in deciding the overall project structure, when it came to the individual hubs, “we were able—both community and academic—to make decisions fairly quickly with the design of that project.” Weaver said the independence that was afforded to the hubs, in her case the Poverty Reduction hub, was helpful to the community partners and allowed them to have a driving voice behind the work.

Identifying areas where community partners will take the lead in terms of decision making and governance, and outlining areas that fall into the academic purview is important to ensure power dynamics are addressed and relationships are as equitable as possible.

For instance, within the SSHRC partnership grant, the PI, an academic, is ultimately responsible for budgeting and management of funds. That means that they will hold a certain degree of power and governance in the project. It is important to acknowledge this role and how it may impact the partnership in the context of these early conversations.

Sometimes it’s hard to trace the direct impact that government programs have on our communities. This is partly because on-the-ground projects leading to community change often receive funding from many sources, including private donors, industry partners, foundations, and various levels of government. In the end, the question remains: Who gets the (most) credit for project outcomes and impacts?

Listen to the podcast below, or continue scrolling to read the full story! Download a PDF of the podcast transcript.

The Food Secure Canada team poses for a picture. ©Abra Brynne

In Food Secure Canada’s (FSC) case, a partnership through the government-funded has had a direct impact on their ability to contribute to consultations on building a Food Policy for Canada. With the Government of Canada’s extremely short ·ÉŸ±ČÔ»ćŽÇ·É— to be exact—having a Mitacs Postdoctoral Fellow provided FSC with additional policy and research expertise at just the right time.

“Being able to hire Amanda Wilson through Mitacs has given FSC the capacity to increase the number of voices being heard in the Government of Canada’s consultation process,” says Diana Bronson, Executive Director of FSC. “Amanda’s efforts, our partnerships with entities like and CFICE, along with the work of the FSC team as a whole, have lead to a much more robust engagement process around national food policy.”

According to the Mitacs website, the goal of the Accelerate program is to put “talent to work with an organization that needs it.” They do this by matching community or industry partner funding for research projects that include a postdoctoral student, a supervising professor and a partner organization. The project submitted by FSC, in collaboration with Amanda and supervising Lakehead University professor Charles Levkoe, was titled .

Amanda Wilson worked as a post-doctoral student for Food Secure Canada.

“Our goal with this project was to increase the capacity of community and academic partners to contribute to a national food policy process,” explains Amanda. “We wanted to experiment with different ways of collaborating and sharing resources for policy impact, all with the goal of pushing for more just, healthy and sustainable food policy.”

Through the project, Amanda has been able to take the lead on developing policy briefs (notably FSC’s and their ) and engaging with FSC members and academic partners to generate and refine policy recommendations. This included outreach to academic allies of FSC, as well as targeted engagement around New Farmers and Northern Food.

FSC has a long history of community-academic collaboration. A partner in CFICE since the beginning of Phase I, FSC creates space and opportunities for academics, non-profits, and community organizations to work together on research and advocacy for a just and sustainable food system.

“From day one, working with Food Secure Canada has been a bit of a whirlwind,” recalls Amanda. I’ve been involved in so many different events and processes. But it’s been a great opportunity to build relationships with community organizations and academics across Canada and to hopefully have a real impact on the government’s policy-building process.”

Attendees at the Ottawa Food Summit. ©Food Secure Canada

While the results of FSC’s advocacy efforts are not yet fully available—the first draft of A Food Policy for Canada won’t be out until mid-2018—the impact of having matching funds for Amanda’s position are clear.

“We wouldn’t have been able to generate the same depth and breadth of policy analysis, or connect with our members to the same degree without Amanda’s help,” says Diana. “The Mitacs funding has really increased our ability to meet our core goal of supporting the food movement to engage in meaningful policy change. The best part is that the funding lasts for two years, which allows us to breathe and really maximize Amanda’s contributions to our organization.”

As for Amanda, she’s happy she’s had the opportunity to work on such a high-profile policy process that incorporates so many of the crucial issues facing our food system. “Working in a community context, there’s a tangible impact of the work I’m doing that you don’t get in a strictly academic context, which is something I really appreciate.”

With another year of funding left for Amanda’s postdoctoral position, this collaboration is sure to continue generating important policy insight that contributes to a stronger food movement in Canada.

Become more community-first!

To learn more about how to make your work more community-first, check out our list of actions for all community-campus engagement practitioners!

Rhonda has joined the CFICE team as part of the Community-Campus Engagement Brokering (Food Sovereignty) working group.

Prior to her current position, Rhonda was a visiting postdoctoral fellow at the Nathanson Centre on Transnational Human Rights, Crime, and Security (Osgoode Hall Law School, York University), where she completed her first book on the right to food and agricultural trade rules.

She holds a doctoral degree in international human rights law from the Irish Centre for Human Rights at the National University of Ireland Galway (2017).

Rhonda has taught university courses on human rights and global health governance, completed an internship with the United Nations Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights, and worked with non-governmental organizations in Canada and Thailand.

We are happy to welcome her to the CFICE team!

If you missed out on the day-of presentation, not to worry. We’ve made it accessible below.

Please note: Audio issues were experienced during the start of the recording. The speakers are audible during the first 14 minutes of the video but the audio sounds crunched. The audio stabilizes 22min into the video and remains stable for the remainder of the video.

Speakers:

Larry McDermott A member of Shabot Obaadjiwan First Nation, Larry McDermott served as an Ontario municipal politician for 28 years including as the first national rural chair of FCM. He is currently Executive Director of Plenty Canada, a non-profit organization devoted to environmental protection and healthy communities, and Co-chair of the Canadian Environmental Network Biodiversity Caucus. He served as a commissioner of the Ontario Human Rights Commission from 2009-2016.

Pat Mooney has more than four decades experience working in international civil society, first addressing aid and development issues and then focusing on food, agriculture and commodity trade. In 1977 Mooney co-founded RAFI (Rural Advancement Fund International, renamed ETC Group in 2001). He received The Right Livelihood Award (the “Alternative Nobel Prize”) in the Swedish Parliament in 1985 and the Pearson Peace Prize from Canada’s Governor General in 1998. He has also received the American “Giraffe Award” given to people “who stick their necks out.” The author or co-author of several books on the politics of biotechnology and biodiversity, Pat Mooney is widely regarded as an authority on issues of global governance, corporate concentration, and intellectual property monopoly.

Lauren Baker, PhD, has over 20 years of experience working on food systems issues. Her experience ranges from researching agricultural biodiversity in Mexico to negotiating and developing municipal food policy and programs. Lauren has consulted on farm to fork initiatives and food systems policy development across Canada and globally.Lauren’s expertise lies in sustainable food systems, food systems policy, food security, city-region food policy and planning. Lauren has worked with diverse clients to develop strategic plans, feasibility studies, undertake research, program planning and evaluation, and advise on policy development

Dr. Donald E. Buckingham is the President and CEO of The Canadian Agri-Food Policy Institute (CAPI). He has been a member of the Law Society of Upper Canada since 1988. In his career, he acted as a private lawyer, government lawyer, law professor, author and consultant in the areas of agricultural law, food law and international trade in agricultural products. Dr. Buckingham’s previous roles include Chair of the Canada Agricultural Review Tribunal. He also worked as Legal Counsel at Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada (AAFC). Dr. Buckingham taught courses as a law professor at three universities and conducted research on agriculture law, food law, constitutional law, administrative law, international law and tort law. For the past three decades, Dr. Buckingham also provided legal counsel to both federal ministers and civil servants grappling with legislative and regulatory matters in the industry, as well as being a lawyer with the Halifax firm of Patterson Kitz.

Discussant:

Catherine L. Mah MD FRCPC PhD is an Associate Professor in the Faculty of Health at Dalhousie University. She is also appointed at the Dalla Lana School of Public Health at the University of Toronto. Dr. Mah directs the Food Policy Lab, a multidisciplinary program of research on environmental and policy determinants of healthier consumption, with a focus on health-promoting innovations in the food system. Her current research is supported by CIHR, the SSHRC-funded FLEdGE research partnership led by Wilfrid Laurier University, and the Australian National Health and Medical Research Council-funded Healthy Stores 2020 project led by Monash University. She is a former member of the Toronto Food Policy Council and was a founding member of the St. John’s Food Policy Council.

Co-hosts:

Peter Andree, PhD, is Associate Professor and Associate Chair in the Department of Political Science at ĐÓ°ÉÔ­ŽŽ University. Prof AndrĂ©e’s research focuses on the politics of food and the environment. He practices, and teaches, community-based participatory research methods.

Diana Bronson joined Food Secure Canada as Executive Director in March 2012 and has worked to strengthen FSC as the national voice of the Canadian food movement.  Diana is trained as a political scientist and sociologist and has a professional background in journalism (CBC radio) and international human rights (Rights & Democracy) as well as international climate and technology negotiations at the UN (ETC Group.)

Back in February, you may have seen the announcement that Food Secure Canada (FSC) won a government contract to coordinate a Northern Food Systems Study funded by the Department of Indigenous and Northern Affairs Canada (INAC).

Typically, government contracts are given to academic institutions rather than community organizations, which makes this announcement stand out. We asked Amanda Wilson, Coordinator of Policy and Community-Academic Engagement for Food Secure Canada, what motivated them to respond to this call for proposals.

FSC motivated to expand community-academic collaborations

According to Wilson, there were a few reasons that drove FSC to bid on this contract.

©The Arctic Institute of Community-Based Research, 2017.

First, the research contract would help FSC further their work around Northern food insecurity, an issue they’ve worked on before as part of their (FSC co-hosts this with the Arctic Institute of Community Based Research-AICBR).

Second, the research contract would advance FSC’s work in building community-academic collaborations and allow FSC to help prioritize community needs.

“As a result of our work with CFICE, we’ve been thinking about, and reflecting on, how Food Secure Canada can broker and better support community-academic collaborations within the food movement and food sector,” says Wilson.

Through the contract, FSC has been able to coordinate a strong research team of Northern community organizations such as the Arctic Institute of Community Based Research, Ecology North and the Northern Farm Training Institute, and academics experienced in Northern and Sustainable Food Systems.

Members and supporters of Ecology North. ©Bill Braden, 2012.

“FSC was in a unique position to coordinate this study in a way that would put the needs and perspectives of the community front and centre,” says Wilson.

Finally, the INAC project strongly aligned with FSC’s initiatives, one of which is “to build the capacity of the food movement to engage in public advocacy.” Since the contract had a strong focus on developing policy and program recommendations, it provided an opportunity for FSC’s academic research and analysis to be brought directly into the public policy and advocacy realm.

FSC’s strengths fit INAC’s evaluation criteria

As mentioned before, a government granting this sort of contract to a community organization is not common. However, when FSC saw the evaluation criteria for the Call for Proposals, they felt they would be a great fit to carry out the study.

Masterclasses taught at the Northern Farm Training Institute. ©NFTI

The proposal was geared to be evaluated on the basis of applicants’ academic orientation, which is common for government contracts. Wilson suggested that FSC’s proposal was attractive to INAC because, “we were able to put together an impressive academic team, while also proposing community-based research methods that would bring in the voices and perspectives of Northerners themselves.”

During the application process, INAC representatives indicated they were not looking for community consultation or engagement as part of the study. However, FSC kept community consultation as part of their application. As Wilson notes, “Community-academic collaboration and community-based research are valuable data collection and analysis strategies.”

FSC shares tips for other community organizations to bid on contracts

When asked if other community organizations should try to take advantage of government Calls for Proposals, Wilson provided some helpful tips.

She highlighted that a major precondition for FSC being able to take advantage of this funding opportunity was their capacity to build and coordinate community-academic collaboration, specifically through their involvement in CFICE and the MITACS Postdoctoral funding. Wilson emphasized the importance of building strong, and mutually beneficial relationships with academics if you are interested in harnessing these opportunities.

Another key pre-condition to FSC being ideal for this funding was their strong relationships with organizational members and partners in the North.

“We didn’t want this to be another academic study where a bunch of academic researchers from the South did a bunch of research on the North,” Wilson explained. “We wanted to work with community organizations in the North to synthesize research reflecting their experiences as well as community knowledge and to co-develop policy and program recommendations to support their work moving forward.”

After hearing about Food Secure Canada’s successful response to this Call for Proposals, do you think your community organization will seek a government contract? Let us know in the comment section below!

• Ending Generational Poverty through CCE – Cathy Wright
  • How benefitted from CFICE support in developing a city-wide collective impact initiative
• Building a national food movement – Diana Bronson
  • How (FSC) worked in partnership with CFICE to advocate for a National Food Policy
• Advancing Rights for Women with Disabilities – Bonnie Brayton
  • How the (DAWN) worked with CFICE to build tools for critical policy work in Canada
• On a Journey of Reconciliation – Colleen Christopherson-Cote
  • How the prioritizes reconciliation and decolonization in its community work

Video Link

If you missed out on the day-of presentation, not to worry. We’ve made it accessible below.

Presenters

For the past thirteen years, Cathy Wright has been a key catalyst in the poverty reduction efforts in Saint John, New Brunswick.  Prior to moving into semi-retirement, she served as executive director of Living SJ, a dynamic network of leaders from business, government, non-profits and low income neighbourhoods, focused on ending generational poverty.  She supported the development and implementation of this growing network as it applied a collective impact approach to four game changing priorities – education, health, employment and neighbourhoods –  impacting the lives of individuals and families living in poverty. As both a professional and a volunteer, Cathy has contributed to changing social issues at the local, provincial and national levels.  Her work, primarily in the non-profit sector in poverty reduction, social planning, and adult literacy, is guided by the necessity of diverse partners working and learning together. Cathy is a recipient of the 2017 Vibrant Communities Canada Legacy Award and the Canada Volunteer Award.

Diana Bronson joined Food Secure Canada as Executive Director in March 2012 and has worked to strengthen FSC as the national voice of the Canadian food movement.  Diana is trained as a political scientist and sociologist and has a professional background in journalism (CBC radio) and international human rights (Rights & Democracy) as well as international climate and technology negotiations at the UN (ETC Group). Diana’s research, policy and advocacy work has centered on supporting social movements around the world, critically reviewing and educating around international trade and investment agreements, looking at the impacts of Canadian mining companies, and assessing the social and environmental impacts of emerging technologies. She has participated in many international negotiations on human rights, climate change, biodiversity, technology and sustainable development over the past two decades. She also worked in a senior position on Parliament Hill from 2006-2008. She lives and works in Montreal.

Bonnie Brayton has been the National Executive Director of the DisAbled Women’s Network of Canada (DAWN) since 2007 when she established a national head office in Montreal. This national, cross-disability feminist organization has focused on advancing the rights of women with disabilities and deaf women in Canada and Internationally for the past 30 years. Through DAWN, Bonnie helps highlight key issues and advocate for policy changes for women with disabilities in the employment sector to the justice sector, and everything in between. In 2014, as part of Canada’s 150th year Celebration of the Charlottetown Conference Ms. Brayton was named a Visionary, one of 23 Women in Canada, and in January 2015 was named one of Canada’s 40 Women Change Makers by Canadian Living Magazine. In 2016, she was appointed for a two-year term as a member of the Federal Status of Women Minister’s Advisory Council on Gender-Based Violence. Bonnie is also the President of Coup de Balai – Clean Sweepers, an innovative social economy organization providing home care services to people with disabilities and seniors in her Montreal community. Bonnie has also served as the Vice-Chair of the Feminist Alliance for International Action and was a member of the Steering Committee of La Maison Parent-Roback, a Quebec feminist collective in Montreal from 2008-15. Ms. Brayton lives in Montreal with her partner Delmar Medford. She has two adult daughters, Leah and Virginia.

Colleen Christopherson-Cote is the coordinator for the Saskatoon Poverty Reduction Partnership and the community co-lead for the Evaluation and Analysis working group of CFICE. She lives and works within Saskatoon, Treaty 6 territory and the homeland of the Métis. The interconnect between all three partnerships provides her with the opportunity to catalyze, convene and coordinate community-based work to drive change and build capacity around improving the lives of vulnerable people in Saskatoon. Fostering new and existing community-campus relationships is a core priority of her work, understanding that engaging community throughout research processes is integral to successfully reducing poverty. Colleen is committed to the implementation of UNDRIP and the TRC Calls to Action in both her professional and personal life, recognizing that reconciliation is essential for an equitable, just society.

Moderator: David Peacock is the Executive Director of Community Service-Learning in the Faculty of Arts at the University of Alberta, Canada. His research encompasses global service-learning, student equity policy and practices in higher education, curriculum theory, community-university engagement and ‘first generation’ university students’ participation in experiential learning programming. David is active in developing Canadian networks for community-engaged learning and research.

Food Secure Canada, in collaboration with a pan-Canadian network of researchers and community partners with expertise in Northern food security and sustainable food systems, is undertaking a study to synthesize research and knowledge on the state of food systems and food security in the North and identify concrete policy and program recommendations to work towards vibrant, resilient and sustainable food system and food security in the North. Through this study we plan to:

• Review and synthesize academic and community-based research on Northern food systems
• Map key food system assets and infrastructure in the North
  Generate policy and program recommendations
• Produce an economic impact analysis of the current Northern food system and proposed policy and program recommendations.

Stay tuned for ways to get involved and contribute to the research!

A public report and food system inventory will be posted to Food Secure Canada’s website following completion of the study, expected in late April/early May.

The study is funded by the Department of Indigenous Affairs and Northern Development in response to a Call for Proposals.

For more information contact Amanda at community@foodsecurecanada.org.

This report is timely with the announcement of the 2017 Federal Budget which prioritizes procurement opportunities for small vendors as a way to foster innovation and support the growth of Canadian businesses, and the Barton Report which has identified agriculture as a key growth sector.

“We need to change our narrow understanding of “best value” from buying food based only on lowest price, and to instead create a broader understanding of value that includes where food was sourced, how it was grown, and how it is served to people where they go to learn, heal, and work everyday.” Jennifer Reynolds, Institutional Food Program Manager, Food Secure Canada

We cannot afford any longer to overlook the opportunity to leverage the food purchasing power of schools, hospitals and campuses to stimulate innovation and long-term growth of the Canadian economy, and benefit our health. Although national data has not been compiled, as a benchmark the Greenbelt Fund estimates that public sector spend on food was .

“Often there are cost-neutral ways to start purchasing local and sustainable food. This can include measures to cut waste, purchase directly from farmers and fishers, or simply identify local products in existing supply chains.” Beth Hunter, Program Director, J.W. McConnell Family Foundation

In particular, local, sustainable food purchasing can help healthcare institutions more fully achieve their missions. Growing rates of diet-related disease are putting increasing pressure on health care and yet there is often very little fresh, local, sustainable food available in healthcare facilities for patients, families or staff.

Building on these lessons and the realization of the significant needs and opportunities to reconnect food and health care, was created. A national group of innovators from Gander to Haida Gwaii have come together to build a future where the impact of food on health is understood and valued. To learn more about Nourish, the innovators and their projects visit , sign-up for the newsletter, and follow .

The agriculture and agri-food sector is enjoying a moment of exceptional attention. First, Canada’s Economic Growth Advisory Committee pinpointed the sector as a promising area of growth in the so-called . Then, the and the organized a series of meetings across the country, bringing together food-industry leaders and a handful of others to discuss what the report meant for Canada and what could be done to seize the opportunity. Finally, in a no-news budget, Finance Minister Bill Morneau identified agriculture and agri-food as key areas for growth and innovation.

What do we mean by innovation?

Central to all these conversations is the question of innovation and what we mean by it. In the budget and the Barton report, innovation is quite narrowly defined as the development of technologies that will give large corporate entities a competitive edge on the international marketplace. There is often talk of “climate smart agriculture”, for example, which can be interpreted as market intensification of fertilizers and pesticides, rather than any reference to more agroecological and sustainable farming methods. Ignored in such limited views is the kind of innovation that farmers and small businesses are piloting right across the country.

Innovation was a central theme of Food Secure Canada’s y. An was devoted to the topic, during which we looked not only at technological novelties but also at social innovation, and at which we profiled farmers demonstrating low-tech, high-yield, strong-livelihood techniques.

Shaun Loney, author of , spoke eloquently about this topic at a recent session in Toronto convened by the Lawson Foundation and Community Foundations of Canada. In the Garden Hill First Nation of Manitoba, a thriving vegetable farm provides healthy food to the community, as well as jobs and training. Despite this, it receives no support from the government program intended to make food more affordable in the north. Instead, all public dollars are flowing through small retailers selling mostly unhealthy food or the Northern Store, which has a virtual monopoly in many northern communities and is anything but innovative when it comes to supporting Indigenous food security and food sovereignty.

While the Economic Advisory Council has rightly taken note of food as an economic sector – it provides one in eight jobs in this country – Food Secure Canada has also been holding various meetings on national food policy. We have been in discussions with federal government officials from several departments, academic allies and our organizational membership to outline our public engagement plan and seek the support and involvement of our members, funders and all those who think that citizens have something to contribute to make our food system more healthy, equitable and resilient. Recently, we brought businesses, government officials and policy experts together at Guelph University to look for common ground on national food policy.

We have also been circulating a draft discussion paper among our membership that aims to frame the debate around national food policy as something that puts health, food insecurity and environmental protection on equal footing with concerns around economic growth. (Not a member? The paper will be available soon, but if you wish to see it now while it is still in draft form, you can .)

An innovative national food policy

Let’s make sure that, in thinking about innovation, we do not forget some of the people who really hold the keys to a more sustainable food system.

Over the coming months, there will be many opportunities to discuss these issues and the policy options before us. National food policy can marry issues of growth and innovation with health, equity and sustainability. Food Secure Canada is hopeful that the federal government will support an innovative public engagement exercise around national food policy in which the full spectrum of ideas can be heard. We have submitted a proposal to offer our collaboration.