In the third installment of The Stop's Food For Thought speaker series, we'll examine the different policy levers Canada should be considering for addressing poverty and food insecurity, including a basic income. Our panel will include The Stop's Rachel Gray, Dr. Danielle Martin of Women's College Hospital, and Valerie Tarasuk of PROOF. The event will be hosted and moderated by celebrated Toronto journalist Rachel Giese.

It's the election issue poverty experts say no one wants to discuss but it's costing the Niagara community $1.3 billion a year.

"Poverty doesn't get talked about," said Lori Kleinsmith, a health promotor with Bridges Community Health Centre in Port Colborne. "The P word is rarely mentioned."

She said the fact Canada doesn't have a national action plan on poverty is a big part of the problem.

A while back I attended a webinar about food security - or the lack thereof - in Canada. It was hosted by a well-known researcher on the subject, Valerie Tarasuk. I serve on the Food System's Roundtable Food Access working group and thought the information presented in the webinar made some interesting points about accessing food in Canada, which may help form conversations around how to address the issue of food insecurity in Waterloo Region.

Food security is a complicated concept that touches on, and is affected by every aspect of the food system, human health and beyond. Food security exists when all people, at all times, have physical, social and economic access to sufficient, safe, and nutritious food that meets their dietary needs and food preferences for an active and healthy life.

The health care costs associated with food insecurity are staggering. Dr. Valerie Tarasuk, well-known food insecurity researcher with the University of Toronto/PROOF project, will present the latest results of their research into the health care costs associated with food insecurity among working-aged adults in Ontario. The researchers documented a more than two-fold difference in health care costs among adults in severely food insecure households compared to those who were food secure.

The findings suggest that policy interventions to address food insecurity can be expected to offset considerable public expenditures in health care.

A national food policy for Canada should be a priority of any new government and is a matter of common sense. We need to urgently address the issues of hunger, unhealthy diets and unsustainable food production in Canada by breaking down the silos in government on health, environment, agriculture, education and the economy, among others.

Activist government is back in vogue.

Canada's opposition parties understand this. That's why Justin Trudeau's Liberals are touting a plan that would see the federal government incur more than $20 billion in new debt to build public infrastructure.

It's also why Tom Mulcair's NDP is promising government-funded child care, an ambitious scheme that, if it works, would be the most important federal social program since medicare.

Neither pledge would have been out of place a few decades ago. Indeed, a few decades ago even Canada's Conservatives were promising a national child-care program.

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