The Politics of Money: An IFSD Podcast

Welcome to the Politics of Money, the podcast of the Institute of Fiscal Studies and
Democracy at the University of Ottawa.

I'm Sahir Khan.

I'm joined with our managing director, Dr.

Helaina Gaspard.

Some of you may have noticed in the government's 2026 Economic and Fiscal Update, the
government announced a national strategy on food insecurity, something that the IFSD has

been studying along with the Maple Leaf Center for Food Security.

And today's podcast will feature experts on the subject.

And who do we have with us today, Helaina?

So we were really fortunate today to have a discussion with four colleagues

They're going to help us unpack food insecurity in Canada.

So what is food security and how is it measured here in Canada?

Who's impacted by food insecurity?

Because we know it's not consistent across the population.

Looking at the United States,

what responses

have been developed and what lessons can we extract for Canada?

So today we're joined by Sarah Stern, who runs the Maple Leaf Centre for Food Security.

Who has had a long career studying food security and responses to mitigating the impacts
of food insecurity.

We'll also hear from Jennifer Robson professor at Carleton University

She's done a lot of research and work on tax policy, program design, and transfer related
initiatives in Canada.

We're joined as well by Craig Gunderson, who's the Snee Family Endowed Chair at Baylor
University from Texas.

And he spent a great deal of time studying SNAP, studying the impacts of SNAP, its
construction, and also, too, looking at the promotion of food security in general across

populations, notably in...

wealthy countries like Canada and the United States.

And we also have Valerie Tarasuk, who is Professor Emerita from the University of Toronto.

And Valerie is really the Dean of food insecurity in Canada.

Someone put it earlier today, there are no discussions on food insecurity in Canada unless
Dr.

Tarasek is present.

And so very pleased to be joined by those four guests today and what will be, I'm sure, a
very engaging discussion.

So Sarah, why don't you tell us a little bit about food insecurity in Canada and what that
means relative to your work at the Maple Leaf Centre for Food Security.

Thank you so much, Helaina.

So the Maple Leaf Centre for Food Security is a registered charity that's really focused
on addressing and reducing food insecurity in the country.

We've been around for about 10 years and we launched with a big bold goal that we wanted
to see food insecurity reduced by 50% by 2030.

How's that going so far?

Well, it is not going well.

I think our work is going well, but for Canada, food insecurity has been a growing crisis.

And I use the term crisis because today in Canada, there are 10 million people who live in
a food insecure household.

And that includes one in three children in Canada.

And what that means is these households don't have the resources they need.

They don't have the financial resources they need to access the food that they need.

So they are making nutritional sacrifices or missing meals, and that has significant
impact for them and for our country.

So it sounds too, especially on that basis of population that you're really concerned
about, say, child development, you're worried about things like health outcomes, you're

worried about all of these knock-on effects of food insecurity.

Exactly.

All of these things have an impact for people.

If you think about people who are missing meals day after day or having nutritional
sacrifices,

that leads to significant health impacts.

Those people land within our healthcare system, creating additional backlogs in healthcare
and increasing our healthcare cost burden for the country as well.

Tell us maybe a little bit more about how food insecurity is experienced, because I'm
guessing it's got to be different for different people in different places, you know, with

different circumstances.

I think the way I would explain it is if you think about the money that you earn or the
money that comes through your wallet and think about how you prioritize your spending.

Chances are the first thing your money is going to is to keep a roof over your heads.

After that, you're looking to pay your utilities, your bills.

Today, you need a phone, you're paying for your phone.

If you have children in your household, you are paying for your children's activities.

Children grow, they need new clothes, they need new shoes.

After you have paid for all of those things, you look at how much money is left in your
wallet, and that's what you get to spend for food.

So for so many households in Canada today, there is not enough money left after they have
paid for all of the other essentials that they need.

to pay for food.

So your research is really showing that the trade-offs right now are consequential, that
we're not trading off between things or these households that are food insecure are making

real sacrifices and really having to trade off between fundamental necessities.

Exactly.

And as much as some households are having to trade off between paying for medication or
paying for food.

So Jennifer, I want to bring you into this conversation.

when we talk about these food insecure households,

Can you tell us from your work about who's being impacted by food insecurity?

Because I can say that from the data that we've looked at by income quintile and a few
other variables, you're looking at very specific segments of the population.

So what are you seeing?

Let me pick up on something that Sarah just said, which was about people who are
experiencing financial constraints such that they find it difficult to meet their food

needs.

And so, yeah, there is a relationship to income, obviously.

I'll talk more a bit about that.

It's an imperfect relationship, but obviously households that are at the lower end of the
distribution more at risk of food insecurity.

And then there are also other factors that we can use to identify likelihoods of food
insecurity.

So if you are a Canadian with a disability, your chances of being food insecure are
significantly higher.

If you're an Indigenous person in this country, your risks of food insecurity are
significantly higher.

And I think that there's an element here to bear in mind that disability is also
independently associated with poverty, right?

Unfortunately, in this country, still being an Indigenous person is also associated with
financial strain and poverty.

But there's also, you know, there's some interesting trends in terms of who's not at risk
of food insecurity.

So if you make it to the magic age of 65, right, where you become eligible for certain,
you know, government pension programs, then your risks of food insecurity drop

significantly.

Right?

there's important factors in this data that I think are pointing us both to the nature of
the problem, but also potential solutions.

So I think that that's a really interesting way, I think, of framing it.

Because what I'm hearing from you is that there's a money problem, right?

There's a circumstantial or a localized problem, where certainly it's not just a question
of money, but a question of access, a question of, say, trauma, a question of

employability, a question of a whole series of factors.

that are impacting a person's ability to either access or find themselves in a food secure
versus insecure situation.

Can you tell us any more about household types?

Because I you mentioned Indigenous communities or Indigenous peoples, persons with
disabilities.

Do we see anything from a household perspective in Canada that might help us unpack what
food insecurity looks like in different places or for different people?

For sure.

So the work that I've been doing is looking at risks of food insecurity.

And obviously, single persons in this country are most likely to experience food
insecurity.

Single persons?

Yes.

Yes.

And this makes sense the minute that you think about the fact that we have a child benefit
for families with children, right?

We have seniors income programs for seniors.

What do we have for working age single adults in this country?

Not a whole heck of a lot.

Unless you're over 65.

Unless you're over 65.

And so then once we look at these others, so what I've done is look at the intersection of
income with other factors and what's really interesting is that some of these other

factors operate differently depending on your household size.

So if you are primarily dependent on government transfers, things like EI, things like
social assistance, the nature of your primary source of income doesn't matter all that

much if you're a single person, right?

What matters more it seems is the level of income or other characteristics that you have.

But when you get into larger households, then that source of income is really important.

There's a regional dimension to this as well.

So the work that I've done says there are risk factors of living in certain parts of the
country and also obviously on community size.

So we know up north, right?

Much greater risks of food insecurity.

So we're looking at a few different factors here.

So if you're single, you're at greater risk.

The sources of your income create different risk profiles based on your household type.

and your geography or locality matters a great deal.

So those, think, would be really helpful if we start to think about policy interventions
or potential mechanisms as imperfect as they might be to help mitigate the impacts of food

insecurity.

So I'd be really interested in hearing from you Sarah, from the work that you folks are
doing at the Centre about what your work is suggesting about ways of mitigating food

insecurity.

based on what Jennifer has just explained about specific groups, specific profiles, let's
say, of people or of households or of communities being impacted.

Thank you, Helaina.

think I'd like to just note two things that build on what Jennifer said.

I think for us at the center, we know that more money in people's income, more money in
people's wallets leads to less risk of food insecurity.

When we first launched the centre and we came out with this goal, I thought it was pretty
audacious of us and I didn't talk about it a lot.

And then Canada announced a poverty reduction strategy and a goal to reduce poverty by
50%.

And I thought, wow, if we reduce poverty by 50%, we will also have reduced food insecurity
by 50%.

And so I started talking about the goal again.

And then we got someone much smarter than me to do some analysis.

And we learned that 78% of people who are food insecure have incomes that put them above
the poverty line.

So therefore, just reducing poverty, which is measured in Canada by the amount of income
you have in a January to December time period, would not reduce food insecurity.

And so we started to have to think about, OK if, it's the standard poverty reduction
methods from a policy perspective that we use to reduce food insecurity, we're not going

to reach enough people.

What else can we be doing?

The other thing I think we realized early on is that food does not solve food insecurity.

And what I mean by that is just giving people food or telling people to go to a food bank,
that is not an answer to food insecurity.

In Canada, we have more than enough food for everyone in this country.

It's people's ability to access that food, either by paying for it within a store or
having the resources they need to get the food from the land.

It is an issue of

resources.

So you're talking about resources, you're talking that those resources are not necessarily
income only.

So then what other resources are we talking about if we're not talking about money?

We know that money will reduce risk.

I think when you look at Canada and you think about systemic policies, we know that, for
example, CCB has led to reductions in severe food insecurity in households.

So the Canada Child Benefit?

The Canada Child Benefit.

has led to reductions of severe food insecurity in children with households.

So you could say if you boosted that, would that make the difference?

I think what we have started to explore is to say, how can we protect money for people?

And what I mean by that is that we saw with the CERB, we've seen with different income
programs, the cost of living is rising so quickly.

that when incomes get boosted, that money is going straight into paying for shelter,
paying for transportation, paying for other costs.

It's not making it all the way down to pay for groceries.

So we worry that something like the grocery and essentials benefit, while really important
for households, those households need that money.

I don't think it's going to move the needle on household food insecurity.

So you're really talking about putting households in a situation where they're not forced
to trade off.

Between say utilities and food or shelter and food.

And so it's that issue of the trade off that you think policy needs to address or policy
tools need to address in their construction and in their targeting as well.

I think so.

And I would just add, I think one of the most important things when we think about this,
because so often food insecurity is treated as a food issue.

The response of governments has been to provide money for emergency food.

Things like the food security strategy that's being spoken about, if it sits solely within
Agriculture and Agri-food Canada and does not engage departments like Employment, Social

Development Canada, we won't have the policy tools that are required to address this as a
social issue, which is what it is.

So that strategy that just came out in the fiscal uh update that was released yesterday.

Agriculture Canada was mentioned, I believe Health Canada was mentioned.

So there are at least a few departments in there, but I take your point that this is not a
monolithic issue.

sometimes, I mean, in social policy in general, a lot of these challenges are expressions
of a confluence of factors or a confluence of challenges.

And we try to pretend that there are these siloed issues that fit neatly and cleanly into
boxes that can be, you know, addressed in those very specific and targeted ways when

really

It's a lot messier on the ground.

And I think, Jennifer, what you were talking about earlier about the nature of households
and the nature of vulnerability when it comes to food insecurity, I think lends itself

well to thinking about policy design and how that policy should be targeted.

So what advice would you have for, let's say, a government thinking about policy
interventions when it comes to food insecurity?

Yeah, look, I mean, uh there is no perfect marker or predictor for food insecurity, right?

People who are food insecure don't walk around with sort of flashing sign over their head
saying, you know, food insecurity.

We wouldn't want that.

So there's a challenge in designing policy interventions and trying to figure out who are
the eligible potential recipients of the program.

For better or for worse in this country and other countries that have interventions that
are focused on food insecurity, a lot of that comes down to a focus on income.

So some of the work I've been doing has been trying to figure out, uh you know, kind of
from the ground up or an empirical strategy for thinking about an intervention.

Because a lot of the time, and Helaina you and I have both seen this a lot, uh social
policy is designed sort of from a top-down approach.

Government decides they have...

you know, X billion dollars they're willing to invest in a particular issue, and then they
try and figure out, you know, how can they spread that around, right?

And in this approach instead, it's sort of starting from the premise of for each of these
different household sizes, taking account of as many of these other important variables

that we know about, income source, household size, region and so forth, can we identify

a point where your income has risen such that your odds of being at risk of food
insecurity have fallen significantly.

And absolutely to Sarah's earlier point, these sort of tipping points, are above our
traditional markers of poverty or measures of poverty in this country.

So once you've done that, and I would say that that's a much better way to design policy,
a much more sort of empirically sound approach.

Once you've done that, you can then also start to do your targeting.

You can also then start to think about, what do we know about the spending patterns of
households that are food secure versus food insecure to be able to identify, what is the

budget constraint, right, that we're trying to address here?

And then last but not least, I would just say in all of these exercises, there is a
trade-off, a fundamental trade-off.

between trying to design programs and interventions that will respond to a lot of the
important nuances of the experience of food insecurity versus having a program that is

designed in a way that is administratively simple enough that the administrative costs
will not be overly burdensome, right, because that's not a terribly efficient approach.

And that it's also not so intrusive into the lives of people who are experiencing this
difficulty, that it becomes stigmatizing for them to participate.

So I think it's such a complex issue when we think about what's contributing to food
insecurity.

given the complexity needs tools, right?

or needs responses that are sufficiently nuanced.

And it sounds like we have some data in Canada that would help us do that.

I'm assuming tax data would be really useful in this situation.

know, anything about household composition, all of those sorts of things, I'm sure would
be really helpful.

But it also sounds like it'll take time to actually get this right.

And I'm sure in political cycles, that's probably the least appetizing thing any
politician or any elected official wants to hear.

that you might do something broad-based, it may or may not work, but the more information
you have, the better your response can be.

Absolutely.

Absolutely.

And let me just give one concrete example of a data gap that we've got.

We know that persons with disabilities in this country are more likely to experience food
insecurity.

We do not have a terrific data source that allows us to also understand

What are the additional budgetary costs of meeting food, essential food needs if you are a
person with disabilities?

Right?

So like even our tools to be able to figure out like how much should go into an
intervention is hamstrung by our lack of understanding around what are the differences

between household needs depending on their composition and characteristics.

So we've got quite a lot of work to do

So to help us close off the discussion, what is one recommendation you would make to
government on the issue of food insecurity?

I would encourage governments to set a target to reduce food insecurity.

Because when we have a target, it drives and aligns action across ministries, across
departments, and across jurisdictions.

You're talking federally and provincially.

I am.

OK.

I think there is something to that idea of what gets measured gets minded.

I think that's important.

I would also add, though, don't let the perfect be the enemy of the good.

as much as we have talked about data gaps and the complexity of this issue, we shouldn't
let that be an excuse for inaction.

Well, big ambitions and hopefully really good solutions that come out of the dialogue
here.

Thank you both very much for joining us today.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Helena, very interesting to get how Sarah and Jennifer kind of break down who's affected,
how food security is measured, and how it's experienced by real people across Canada.

Absolutely.

So we appreciated Sarah and Jennifer laying out the parameters of food insecurity, who's
being impacted.

And now we're going to hear from Valerie Terasuk and Craig Gundersen.

They're actually going to dig into what

policies look like when you're trying to address food insecurity.

And they'll talk about examples, especially SNAP from the US, and highlight what's worked,
what hasn't, and also to start to point to a broader question about Canada's social

welfare state and whether or not we need to start rethinking aspects of that.

Valerie, since you're the Dean of food insecurity in Canada, why don't you start us off,
go back to the basics for us.

How do we understand food insecurity in Canada and how are we measuring it right now?

I want to start with the definition because, and the definition which for me is intimately
intertwined with the way that we're measuring food insecurity.

So when we talk about food insecurity in Canada, what we're talking about really is
household level food insecurity that is inadequate or insecure access to food due to

financial constraints.

We've been measuring this on population representative national surveys since 2004.

And we do it using the household food security survey module that we borrowed from the
United States.

And that's a very sophisticated measurement tool.

It has 18 items and that range in severity from somebody worrying about running out of
food for themselves and their family and not having money to buy more through to

people going whole days without eating or their children were still going whole days
without eating because of a lack of food and money for food.

And the spectrum of those questions enables us to scale out the continuum because what
we've come to understand very clearly is that food insecurity isn't one thing.

It isn't one experience.

It isn't one condition.

It's a spectrum.

And at its most extreme, we've got what in Canada we call severe food insecurity.

And those are people who have responded affirmatively to enough of those questions for us
to believe that people in those households have actually at times experienced absolute

food deprivation because of financial constraints.

Valerie, can you tell us about the consequences of food insecurity and why, as a country,
we should be paying attention to this issue?

Well, mean, there's a couple of different ways to answer that.

One is like,

because we're an affluent nation, what on earth are we doing talking about people not
having enough money to buy the food that they need?

So I mean, I remember when this measurement of food insecurity first got introduced.

It was shocking to think of us asking Canadians routinely on population health surveys if
they'd gone whole days with their eating because of a lack of money for food, right?

But that's what we've ended up doing.

Why?

Because people say yes to that.

among the reasons why it matters is that we've been able to look at health in conjunction
with food insecurity very well in Canada because of the way that it's been measured.

And we know that people in food insecure situations are more likely to have poor health,
their health is more likely to deteriorate, they're more likely to have been diagnosed

with chronic diseases, not be able to manage them, to develop mental health problems and
physical health problems.

So this is a very significant social determinant of health.

And I feel like that is extremely well evidenced in Canada right now, to have so many
members of our population in food insecure situations is a health issue.

So when we're talking about food insecurity, it's absolutely consequential for health.

But if we abstract, because we're at the Institute of Fiscal Studies and Democracy, what
we worry about too are the fiscal implications.

Absolutely.

That there are serious cost consequences when we talk about having large segments or
increasing or growing rather segments of the population that are expressing food

insecurity.

So Craig, I know you've spent a lot of time looking at these questions in the United
States from different

lenses, mainly economic.

But I'd like for you to start first on why addressing food insecurity beyond the issue of
health outcomes, beyond the mental health, the child development and the related

implications, why this is such a potent and critical policy issue.

Well, thank you, Helaina It's always a pleasure to on this podcast, especially with Val.

It's always an honor to be with her

I always tell people if it wasn't for Val, we wouldn't be having these conversations in
Canada It's really an honor to be here.

To your question is, and so Val just pointed out some of the health consequences and this
is true in United States as well.

A lot of wide array of health consequences associated with food insecurity just like in
Canada.

But I think the most fundamental reason as Val alluded to that we should be addressing
food insecurity is just in a high income countries is that there's just

no reason for us to be having food insecurity.

We have the resources to address these issues.

So I think just from an ethical perspective, we as a high-income country should be
addressing food insecurity.

And that's the main reason that I'm interested in this issue is that the fact that
children are going without enough food, fact that other people across the society are

going without enough food, that in and of itself is a serious enough issue we should be
addressing.

In the US, I there's been a lot of talk, a lot of analysis on the Supplemental Nutrition
Assistance Program or SNAP, right?

So tell us about SNAP and maybe tell us too what you've been finding in your work when
you're looking at SNAP and you're looking at the outcomes.

Okay, so as I tell people, I'm not a huge fan of all government programs.

Some are okay, some do more damage than good, but not SNAP.

SNAP is just the quintessential

successful government program.

Its central goal is to alleviate food insecurity and study after study after study as
shown that this is the case.

In fact, after controlling for non-random selection into SNAP, the SNAP recipients are 30%
less likely to be food insecure than eligible non-participants.

And is that simply because there's a boost in resources, a boost in income, or is it
coming from other,

other factors?

I think there's many strengths of SNAP.

The first is that it's well directed towards those who are most in need.

So it's well, it's an income based program where you have to have incomes below a certain
level to be eligible for the program.

And the amount of benefits you get is inversely related to income.

In other words, it's directed those who are most in need.

Second critical feature about this is this is

an entitlement program.

The government automatically increases expenditures or decreases expenditures, whether
it's a recession, whether it's during COVID or whatever the time, automatically.

You don't need a government to make a decision, we should increase this this year.

You don't need a province making a decision or something.

It's automatic.

I think that's really important.

Also in terms of entitlement, with a few exceptions we can talk about is if somebody needs
to on SNAP for 10 years, it's available to them.

If somebody with a severe disability, you can have it for 10 years.

The average length of time on SNAP is about 11 months, but you can be on it for an
extended time period as needed.

So I just want to pick up on that temporal aspect...

So are people going on the benefit and staying on the benefit for say...

years or extended periods or are they on the benefit for a matter of weeks or months?

And do we know if they're off of the benefit, are they coming back on at a later time?

So I think we could parse out this in a few different ways.

you said people going on and off the program.

So the way it works is I'm income eligible, then I go onto the program and the average
stay on the program is about 11 months, but there's some people who are on it for six

months.

There's some people who are on it for three years or some people on it for 10 years.

We don't see

a lot of going on the program for a year, leaving for six months and coming back on.

One of the great things about SNAP is it serves both of those roles.

It serves a role to help out those who are in long-term difficult situations by providing
them but it also serves as that short-term safety net program.

I think both are really critical.

And one other thing

in addition to all these other things I mentioned,

easy to get on, it's telemet programs and some of these other things.

It's very generous program for a family of four, the maximum benefit level for a year is
$11,000.

So we're not talking about an insubstantial amount of money that's being given to people.

And that's why it's such a successful program.

So even beyond addressing or mitigating the impacts of food insecurity, you're saying from
a policy design perspective, Snap got a few things right.

So Valerie, when we think about

a Canadian response and lessons from SNAP, is that something that in a Canadian context
that would have either similar benefits or even

better benefits potentially?

There are a few parts of SNAP that I think are really interesting for us to think about.

one is the responsiveness.

Craig's description, right, that, you know, if he qualified, he'd be almost immediately
receiving benefits.

What do we have in Canada?

If somebody falls upon hard times, imagine somebody loses work, somebody there's a family
structure that disintegrates for some reason and someone is left alone without a

breadwinner.

What do we have that kicks in?

Employment insurance isn't based on the same kinds of criteria that Craig described,
right?

It's a wage replacement program.

There's very little attention to the overall income of the household there, and it's
temporary.

And you know, you have to work for so many hours and a certain kind of work in order to
qualify in the first place.

But that's the best we can do.

Beyond that, what's our income support program of last resort?

Social assistance.

Well, you know, extremely low benefit levels, very, very high threshold for access.

No, in many parts of the country, no relationship between the amount of benefit and cost
of living.

Or very weak relationship, like no indexation or anything like that in provinces like this
one.

And to be on social assistance from a food insecurity perspective is basically to be
guaranteed of being food insecure.

The rates of food insecurity amongst people on social assistance in Canada are 60, 70%.

And if we were able to parse out the disability support part of that and just look at
straight welfare, I would suggest that those rates are closer to 100%.

I've talked about EI and I've talked about social since I actually can't talk about
anything else.

We have other social programs in Canada that we're very proud of for working aged adults
and their families like the Canada Child Benefit.

Yeah, great.

Great idea.

The Canada Child Benefit.

But let's imagine that scenario where someone's income plummets either because of job loss
or marital dissolution or whatever.

And that's also assuming that the family has children.

Well, yeah, but this is the best case scenario, right?

But it takes a very long time for that benefit to catch up with the drop in income of that
household.

I mean, it takes a tax year.

So, when Craig's talking about SNAP as something that could kick in.

maximum 30 days from the point of application until the point of the receipt of benefits.

The best case scenario we have is employment insurance, but it's not calibrated based on
the household income.

It's calibrated based on the worker who lost work.

And it's temporary.

So from your perspective, then, it's actually the responsiveness and the immediacy of the
benefit that is the best mitigating factor.

I think that's huge.

I think the other thing that's really important is the amount of that benefit.

Because we've got things being introduced all the time, like most recently this grocery is
an essentials benefit, but the trivial amounts of money.

When we talk about the amount of money that's transferred through SNAP, it's a much, much
bigger amount.

And so how is that amount calculated and is that amount indexed to anything in the US?

Because certainly here, right, when we break out CPI or the consumer price index, shelter
and food are growing at rates far higher than the average.

No, what's great about SNAP is it's indexed to inflation.

So that's a huge help in terms of keeping up with pace of inflation.

In fact, one thing that we saw, there's sharp increases in food insecurity in United
States in 2022 and 2023.

One group that was relatively immune to all this were SNAP recipients, because their
benefit levels increased along with inflation.

I mean, there's some improvements can be made.

But overall, it's very responsive to changes in prices.

And again, that's automatic.

You don't have to have the government say, OK, this year we're going to increase this by
the rate of inflation or something.

It's just automatically done.

So if we're thinking about lessons for Canada where would you target efforts?

Well, I mean, I would start by fixing what's broken in terms of our existing safety net,
because I think, you know, we've got the I spoke earlier about social assistance and EI.

Both of those things, I think, need a very, very careful overhaul that

looks at those programs through the lens of household food insecurity.

And how can we rejig those income supports to better protect households from food
insecurity?

Right now, what we know is to be dependent on either one of those is to be at increased
likelihood of food insecurity above and beyond having lost your job.

So I think there's that.

I also need to go back to the Canada Child Benefit, another benefit that needs to be, I
think, rethought.

through the lens of household food insecurity, because if we rethought it that way, we
would be giving a bigger benefit to low income families.

So we wouldn't have such a huge number of children now living in food insecure households.

so we've got existing benefit programs that I think badly need to be tweaked, but tweaked
through the lens of food insecurity, so to say, what can we do with the Canada Child

Benefit?

To make it more protective for families, to help them, to enable them to feed themselves
and their children.

Like, how can we not want that to be the case for the Canada Child Benefit?

Why wasn't that a goal from the beginning?

I don't know.

But that, I think we need to load that goal onto the Canada Child Benefit and see what it
looks like.

Because right now in Canada, and this has been true for a long time, if we look at data
from these population health surveys that are measuring household food insecurity, the

mere fact that there is someone in the household under the age of 18,

is enough to increase the likelihood of that household being food insecure.

Like that is outrageous.

And yet we're sitting in the land of the Canada Child Benefit.

Well, let's fix that equation, right?

recently we've seen a

profound rise in food insecurity in Canada.

I think part of that has been uh households struggling to recoup after a serious negative
income shock related probably to the pandemic and to job loss and things that happened

through that period because it's post that period where we've seen this spike.

We didn't have very much that was an income smoothing program for a household that
experienced an income shock.

Yes, we had.

CERB and CRB, but those were relatively small programs and not very well targeted.

You know, I say small from the perspective of the amount of money that any one household
received.

At the time, they were talked about as if they were giant infusions of cash.

And yes, at a gross level, they were, but nothing compared to the rapid fire of uh SNAP
saying, let's evaluate the household circumstances and, know, what can happen now?

I think one of the things that's really struck me about, you know, past discussions with
you was that we track

the incidence of food insecurity in Canada and in the US, very wealthy countries, because
in other places, say parts of Western Europe, or say the Nordic countries, they actually

don't have to track it because it's not an issue in the same way or not a broad based
issue across the population in the same way.

Craig, when we think about the impacts from the US, know, Valerie's points about the
immediacy, the responsiveness of the benefit.

What are we looking at in fiscal terms about the cost of the benefit

And what have you seen in terms of the benefit?

Can we calculate a return Yeah.

So I guess I would say just one quick comment.

I think you're right about the Nordic countries not having to track food insecurity.

But there's a lot of countries in Western Europe

Yeah, face problems worse than Canada and worse United States.

I think it's for whatever reason, they're not tracking it.

So let's not let the Frances and the Germanys off the hook.

They have a problem.

or the Portuguese or the Portuguese or especially the Brits don't let them off the hook.

Yeah.

your question about the size of the program.

I mean, this is a large program at its peak was was about $120 billion a year.

and you know, it's down to about $95 billion a year.

So it's a substantial portion of the overall budget.

there's actually a decrease in the expenditure related to SNAP.

Right.

So there was a surge initially and then demand declined?

there's, there's a during, during the first Trump administration in 2020 is everybody's
benefits at the outset of COVID jumped up to the maximum.

So in other words, remember earlier I mentioned that your benefit levels inversely related
to your income everybody was bumped up to the maximum, which greatly expanded

expenditures.

That was one reason why it expanded.

There was actually a surprisingly small uptick in the number of people receiving SNAP at
this time period.

But the most, the biggest reason why it reached eventually 110 billion dollars roughly was
that there was in 2021, there was a permanent 20% increase in benefit levels.

And so that really drove up the benefit, because you're increasing benefits by 20% over a
base of $85 billion.

So you're getting up to a hundred and some billion.

But again, this program is countercyclical.

So as the economy improves over different dimensions, you're to have a slight decline.

And so after the peak problems in like 2022 and 2023, we saw some decline.

So now it's about $95 billion to $100 billion.

It's a slight decline, but not a lot.

So this is an expensive program.

And the United States has said this is

we're going to spend a lot of money on this program and then we're going to implement it.

And it's received bipartisan support.

In terms of its impact, as I mentioned before, is that SNAP recipients are about 30% less
likely to be food insecure than eligible non-participants after controlling selection.

That's an amazing, amazing successful government program.

So I don't know if we want to quantify that but you know that means that there's
approximately you know three to five million less Americans who are food insecure because

they're getting SNAP which I think is a huge amount

As as I talked about before I think the main reason why we need to be concerned about food
insecurity there's something wrong with a wealthy country having so many food insecure

people so I'd be reluctant to put a monetary benefit of that and said I would say look
there's three to five million more Americans who are better today than they otherwise

would because you're getting SNAP.

And moreover even out of those who are on SNAP

but are still food insecure.

The depth of their food insecurity is not as much.

So for example, coming back to what Val was talking about earlier, in terms of severe food
insecurity in the United States, there's fewer people in those more severe categories

because we have SNAP.

can I say one other thing about SNAP before turning, can I just say and make one more
comment about this?

So oftentimes when I speak to our neighbors to the north in Canada, one of the criticisms
of SNAP is that you can only use it to purchase food.

And I think that on the surface, that seems like a pretty big limitation.

And the reality, though, is that 90 plus percent of SNAP recipients are what we call
inframarginal.

They spend more on food than they do get in SNAP benefits.

What that means then is that SNAP, in essence, is like cash for them.

If I had my druthers we would switch it over to completely a cash program, but that's for
various other reasons.

So I do want to emphasize that aspect of SNAP is that it really acts like a cash
assistance program.

if you're getting $11,000 more a year in SNAP benefits for a family of four, that makes
paying the rent a lot easier.

It makes buying school supplies a lot easier.

It makes buying all these other necessities a lot easier for these families.

Well, I think it's really good that you name the issue, Craig, of the fact that SNAP is
tied to food purchasing because when I've mentioned to other people my interest in SNAP,

they immediately drift into talking about food cards, you know, grocery cards.

And we've seen in Canada organizations or charities move forward with food cards, know,
grocery cards.

And this isn't what Craig's talking about, right?

It's, in my head, it's the responsiveness and the income smoothing, the fact that it's
means tested.

We haven't talked about the means testing aspect of it, I looked a bit into that.

And I mean, you know, I'm still very much an amateur when it comes to mastering SNAP.

But, you know, when you think about social assistance,

We expect people to liquidate absolutely everything before they receive social assistance,
right?

You know, there's no way they can own a home.

Even owning a car only is allowed under very, very specific circumstances.

No savings, investments.

Everything has to go.

SNAP doesn't do that.

they're allowing somebody to maintain some of the asset base

So there was a former Senator Hugh Siegel used to have this wonderful line about if you
want someone to pull themselves up by their bootstraps, they first need boots.

And it sounds like Val, what you're trying to get at is don't punish people if they're
already in a precarious or really challenging situation and use the opportunity of means

testing or of responsiveness to actually create a little bit of a buffer.

There's a prof out in the US, Joseph Ewoodzie wrote this book, Getting Something to Eat in
Jackson.

And he goes through the series of case studies of people in different parts of the
socioeconomic strata of Jackson.

And one of the things that really stuck with me about his book was he talks about the
cyclicality of food insecurity and how you are so preoccupied throughout your day if

you're food insecure or

severely food insecure that you actually can't get to the next step.

And so your ability to actually get yourself out of that situation is completely reliant
on your ability to pause scarcity.

And so what I'm hearing actually from both of you is that if you want to pause scarcity
when you're talking about food insecurity, you have to do it in a way that's accessible.

You have to do it in a way that's responsive.

Otherwise, you let people continue to say fall down a far more complicated, steeper
decline, if you will.

Okay.

Let me add a couple of things on to this.

think that so I would ruin it for us.

So...

so the, guess I would to what you've just said is first of all, I always describe SNAP as
a hand up, not a handout because it genuinely is true.

You talk to a lot of people in the States.

Whenever I tell them, you know, I'm working on food insecurity and valuation of SNAP your
story after story of people who are doing well today and no longer need SNAP, but they're

like, you know,

When I was a teenager and my dad lost work, this was there for us to have the money.

I mean, it was really, really important.

see, it's a source of pride for America that we have a program like SNAP.

I think that's really great.

As Val mentioned is one of the nice things about SNAP is you don't have to get rid of all
your assets.

Most states have waived the asset test.

Even with states that do have the asset test, the value of a home doesn't count.

Most of the value of a car doesn't count.

You're not saying to people you have to get rid of everything.

But it's also, and I'm not sure how much this comes about in debates in Canada, but we
have a lot of programs in the United States which, for lack of a better term, discourage

work.

you're not saying to people, you can't work or anything.

You're saying, yeah, work.

You're going to lose some of your benefits, but at the same time, you're going to come out
ahead.

SNAP doesn't discourage work.

And I think that's really a critical thing.

If these discussions are being held in Canada about whether or not some of your welfare
programs discourage work, SNAP doesn't.

So I think the actual design or the construction of these programs is really interesting
because I think

at an aggregate national level, right?

We see certain trends in Canada, arguably likely also in the US, right?

Wages are increasing, you know, inflation's keeping pace with wage growth.

And then as soon as you look under the hood, everything starts to break down and you're
looking at very specific household types, very specific vulnerable communities.

And I can't help but wonder if we were to build something out like this in Canada, and I'm
asking this as the researcher now, how do you blend, right?

How do you mix those quantitative

know, empirical questions with some of the qualitative matters that impact implementation,
that are the real individual or local ramifications of the way food insecurity is

experienced in different parts of the country and by different people?

So I think that there's a lot of people struggling with food insecurity who we need more
specific interventions.

For example, the United States, the big issue is people who are recently incarcerated
coming back in the communities.

More needs to be done to welcome them and just giving more assistance isn't one of the
things that necessarily go.

But one of the beauties of SNAP from my perspective is it doesn't matter, it benefits
everybody.

In other words, to some extent, to use your language, we don't have to look under the hood
of what they're facing.

We have this program, we know it works, we know it's successful, boom, if you're eligible,
we'll figure out how much benefit you go.

I think that's one of the beauties of the program.

It's not says this is your condition, this is your condition.

Instead it says here's

Here's what you're facing.

Here's what you get.

There's a certain efficiency in its universality.

Yeah.

If we were to get to that place and, you know, whether we do that through the introduction
of something new or whether we do that

by cleaning up some of what already exists.

I mean, we know we've got this very tight association in Canada with mental health
problems.

And often when I've talked about food insecurity with people, say, yeah, yeah, you keep
talking about income, but there's other things, right?

There's other things.

But at this stage, I don't even know how much we need to be intervening on mental health
issues.

people stand a fighting chance of being food secure, we can't figure out what else is
blocking it, right?

And right now we've got a system set up where we've got literally millions of Canadians
where they don't have any chance to achieve food security.

So for us to be coming in and saying, you know,

we need to load on another service or patch on another support here.

Like, I don't even know how we start that.

How do we even find that?

Because so much of what we're seeing right now, we don't know how much, like, is it just
about the fact that somebody couldn't be food secure if they wanted?

Right, and so this idea of food insecurity almost as a manifestation of a series of other
problems or compounding factors.

but if we were ever to get to a point where...

We wanted to reduce this problem like where we, mean, obviously Craig and I do, but were
we ever to get to a point where we had the federal government at the table wanting to

intervene to reduce food insecurity, then we could start to see a measurable decrease in
who's left behind.

For whom has the income support been insufficient?

Let's take a good long close look at those households and figure out what else we need

So really being able to unpack what is being perceived as a broad affordability crisis?

Well, except that I wouldn't go near the language of affordability crisis right now
because I would fear that that would be conflated with the broader um experience of

Canadians right now, which is higher food prices or gas prices or housing prices.

The food insecurity that we're seeing in Canada right now, I don't think is an
affordability crisis.

I think it's a food insecurity crisis.

And that, it happens to be happening in tandem with food inflation.

But is this happening because of food inflation?

I doubt very much if that's the root of this problem.

What this advantage to SNAP is it lets us to be able to say, look, we at least have
persons have this minimum amount of money and that's really critical.

Then let's address other problems.

Don't reverse that.

I don't want people to be saying, oh, let's first address these other issues.

Then we'll talk about money.

No, let's talk about money first and then recognize that there's other issues to be
talking about.

the immediacy of it for you is the benefit?

The immediacy, but also giving people this money.

The amount.

The amount, the amount.

The immediacy and the amount.

But still in the United States and also Canada, we have a large proportion of people who
are food insecure.

I don't want to speak for Canadians, but it's a tragedy even if you have 8% of the
population doing this.

So I think what Val I are talking about today, these are policies that we should be
pursuing, strongly pursuing, even in times when food insecurity rates were lower.

In other words, this is not something we should just be talking about today.

This is one of my frustrations during COVID, reporters would be like, what's really
important we address these issues.

Like, yeah, where were you three months ago when I was talking about this issue?

Yeah, exactly.

I think in Canada, this is going to be an issue five years from now.

It was an issue from five years before.

Let's start figuring out solutions to it and put these into place permanently.

So stop waiting for exogenous shocks or other major crises to bring this issue back to the
fore to actually start.

addressing or mitigating.

Yeah, stop waiting for exogenous shocks and keep on doing this even when people no longer
are talking about it.

That'll be a tough one for the political for the political class.

But thank you both very much.

This was a really interesting.

Thank you.

Exchange.

Thank you so much.

You made it interesting.

So food insecurity in Canada.

is affecting millions of people.

It's widespread.

But what the conversation for me really helped me to focus on was the fact that there are
groups in this country that are severely targeted.

And when we want to understand impacts and we want to understand repercussions, we can
look very easily to, let's say, cost to the healthcare system or developmental impacts on

children, let alone the daily stressors of food insecurity.

So when when we're thinking about this, and hopefully if if there are, you know,
discussions on intervention and the like, I think we are going to have to, as a country,

figure out how to balance that question of.

Targeting and targeted measures for specific populations that are especially vulnerable,
with, I would say, after today's discussion, taking a step back and starting to reflect on

those major planks in the welfare system that are, of course, not designed, nor are they
intended, to address food insecurity specifically.

So a big thanks to to Sarah Stern, to Jennifer Robson, to Valerie Tarasuk and to Greg
Gundersen for sharing their insights with us today.

I think a great discussion.

I think really timely.

This is a hot button political issue.

And I'm glad we were able to really dig in deeply to it.

Now, if you're interested in hearing more, uh we do invite you to check out our foods
insecurity event.

It was recorded live at the University of Ottawa.

So just follow the link in the description.

Thanks for joining us and thanks for watching The Politics of Money, the official podcast
of the IFSD.