A week ago I wrote about the warning issued by the United Way Bruce Grey about the growing food insecurity issue that has been festering not only in Grey and Bruce counties, but across the province. This week, Grey Bruce Public Health issued their 2024 Report on Food Affordability, and it highlights something we are all painfully aware of – it has become more and more expensive to put food on the table.
The report determined the cost of groceries for a family of four in Grey-Bruce in 2024 was $289 per week or $1,250 per month, representing a 1% increase from 2023. A single adult, meanwhile, must spend about $434 a month on food to meet Canada’s Food Guide recommendations, which is also a 1% increase from 2023.
A full time worker (40 hour week) earning minimum wage, which in Ontario is now $17.20 per hour, earns a gross monthly income of $2,752.
It is important to note that the cost of groceries included in the report is based on 61 food items that can be used to prepare meals from scratch. Not included are processed foods, snack foods, infant formula, take-out or restaurant foods, or any of the non-food items traditionally purchased along with food at the grocery store like cleaning supplies, bathroom tissue, or personal hygiene products, just the basics necessary to sustain life.
The 13-page report is packed with information, some of which might be surprising to some, but painfully obvious to others.
For example, “A little more than half of food-insecure households in Ontario (58.6%) earned their main source of income from wages, salaries, or self-employment incomes.” That tells us that even those who are working and earning wages are struggling to put nutritious food on the table each month.
Or, “Female-led single parent and lower income households are vulnerable to food insecurity. In 2022, 41.2% of households with children led by female lone parents were food-insecure.” That reminds us that children, who have no power to change their circumstances, are caught in the middle of the food affordability crisis.
Another fact to keep in mind: “Adults living in food insecure households account for more than 1 in 3 hospitalizations due to mental health problems.” A reminder that the cost of food insecurity impacts us all, in ways we might not expect.
If we are wondering if the problem is getting worse, the data certainly suggests that it is.
“Across Ontario, food insecurity is rising from 17% of households in 2019 to 24.5% in 2023,” the report notes. A reminder that today nearly a quarter of us in Ontario are dealing with the challenge of food insecurity, and nearly one third of children are impacted. And children and youth are being disproportionately affected. In 2023, 30.7% of Ontario children under 18 years of age in Ontario lived in households affected by some level of food insecurity.
As the report notes, “Basic needs are unaffordable for minimum wage earners or those receiving social assistance, even with the maximum tax credits and entitlements.”
Housing affordability, food affordability and availability, and the increasing abuse of opiates resulting in a number of societal problems, are three of the major challenges of our times. Add in the need to adapt to a changing climate, and it is clear that we have a tough road ahead of us.
Though, as Meaford Councillor Harley Greenfield noted during Monday’s council meeting, municipalities are increasingly being drawn into these sorts of social issues, largely due to pressure from the public, but municipalities aren’t equipped to address social issues, as they have always been outside of the scope of a municipal council. The largest, and likely most important role that municipalities can take on in order to help to find solutions to the housing crisis, or the food insecurity crisis, or the opioid crisis, is that of an advocate by pressuring upper levels of government, who are supposed to oversee such issues, and who are equipped and funded for such problems.
It would be nice to see municipalities play more of a role, provided they were properly funded to do so by upper levels of government, as municipal governments are the closest to the actual people that are struggling; they are more ‘boots on the ground’ than upper levels of government, but without funding and other resources, we can’t expect municipal governments to take on these sorts of burdens.
There are many opinions regarding the causes, and while I have come to believe that, in order to address issues like housing or food affordability, we need to be looking at implementing some sort of living wage solution, though as I often remind folks, I am no economist, and I fully appreciate those who challenge my personal view, often stating that providing everyone who works with an actual living wage would cause significant inflation that would impact everyone.
Grey-Bruce Public Health’s report urges action to be taken by the provincial and federal governments, including increasing minimum wages and social assistance programs to reflect the actual cost of living, lowering income tax rates for the lowest income households, developing poverty reduction strategies, along with a host of other suggestions that might help to lessen the problem.
While it irritates some just to hear it, I firmly believe that we can’t keep paying people less than what it costs to survive – we need to grapple with just how workers can be appropriately compensated for their hard work in a way that allows them to go to bed each night confident that their children won’t be going to school hungry in the morning.
If we can’t agree as a society that if someone works a full-time job, or the equivalent by cobbling together two or three part-time jobs, they should earn enough to actually live and function in our economy, then what is the solution? We can’t keep asking folks, particularly the younger generations just entering the workforce to work 40 hours per week for wages that can’t sustain the basic needs of survival.
