Food Nation campaign tries to get issue into mayoral candidates’ heads

Group members and passers-by lobbed fruit-shaped bags at holes above pictures of the city’s three leading mayoral candidates - trying to get food "into their heads" as a campaign issue.

"Food is often left off the table" when Doug Ford, John Tory and Olivia Chow sit down to debate, Food Forward founder Darcy Higgins said.

Food issues shouldn’t be ignored, he added, because food bank use in Toronto’s inner suburbs is up 38 per cent in the last two years, and many city residents either cannot walk to the nearest grocery store or cannot afford to buy healthy food there.

Food Forward believes its platform, calling for poverty reduction and the creation of "healthy food neighbourhoods" and 1,000 "good food jobs" across Toronto for young and marginalized people, can make a difference by 2018, Higgins said.

Chow, 15 incumbent councillors and other a few dozen other candidates for mayor and council, as well as more than 1,000 Toronto residents, have signed on.

"Food security is security," Himy Syed, who is running for mayor, said at the event.

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• Dec 31, 1969
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In Baltimore, people can go to libraries, order food and pick it up the next day, said Syed who proposed using Toronto’s 99 library branches the same way.

"It’s made food deserts into food oases," and will save seniors a round trip on the TTC, he said.

"Food is a right. It shouldn’t be a challenge," said D!ONNE Rene, another mayoral candidate, who added Food Nation fits her plan to create more community wellness in the city.

Paul Bocking, running for councillor in Scarborough’s Ward 35, said he thought signing on to Food Nation "was a no-brainer."

At a debate in Warden Woods Community Centre last week, food security was a top issue, Bocking said, noting the area doesn’t have a grocery store within walking distance and more than half of children in Oakridges, a neighbourhood in the ward, live in poverty.

It would be fantastic if everyone in the city could do something to make the program a reality, Stephanie Carty-Kesel, a council candidate in Ward 20 Trinity-Spadina.

Food Forward, which formed during the last municipal campaign in 2010, has a full list of the endorsing candidates at www.foodnationTO.com.

Adriana Pelayo, a community support and outreach worker at Nellie’s, a Queen Street shelter for women, said she hopes the next city council is more generous.

The 36-bed shelter, which also serves thousands of meals in outreach program to women and children, recently lost some government grants and has fewer private donors. Pelayo said Nellie’s can no longer afford to serve meat with its meals one day a week or add any of the cultural foods which offer comfort to its clients.

"Sometimes when you’re a newcomer (to Canada), you miss so much what you’re used to," she said.