Household food insecurity (HFI) is a persistent public health problem affecting 3.8 million Canadians. While the causes of HFI are rooted in income insecurity, solutions to HFI have been primarily food-based, with the bulk of activity occurring at the municipal level across Canada. We conceptualize these municipal-level actions as falling within three models: "charitable", "household improvements and supports" and "community food systems". Many initiatives, especially non-charitable ones, generate widespread support, as they aim to increase participants' food security using an empowering and dignified approach. While these initiatives may offer some benefits to their participants, preliminary research suggests that any food-based solution to an income-based problem will have limited reach to food-insecure households and limited impact on participants' experience of HFI. We suspect that widespread support for the local-level food-based approach to HFI has impeded critical judgement of the true potential of these activities to reduce HFI. As these initiatives grow in number across Canada, we are in urgent need of comprehensive and comparative research to evaluate their impact on HFI and to ensure that municipal-level action on HFI is evidence-based.
Food insecurity is an urgent public health problem in Canada, affecting 4 million Canadians in 2012, including 1.15 million children, and associated with significant health concerns. With little political will to address this significant policy issue, it has been suggested that perhaps it is time for Canada to try a food stamp-style program. Such a program could reduce rates of food insecurity and improve the nutritional health of low-income Canadians. In this article, we explore the history of the US food stamp program; the key impetus of which was to support farmers and agricultural interests, not to look after the needs of people living in poverty. Though the US program has moved away from its roots, its history has had a lasting legacy, cementing an understanding of the problem as one of lack of food, not lack of income. While the contemporary food stamp program, now called Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), reduces rates of poverty and food insecurity, food insecurity rates in the USA are significantly higher than those in Canada, suggesting a food stamp-style program per se will not eliminate the problem of food insecurity. Moreover, a food stamp-style program is inherently paternalistic and would create harm by reducing the autonomy of participants and generating stigma, which in itself has adverse health effects. Consequently, it is ethically problematic for health promoters to advocate for such a program, even if it could improve diet quality.
[The opinions expressed in this paper are those of the authors only and do not represent the opinions of the Ontario Legal Aid Plan.] How do we understand the state's need to police the social and sexual lives of single mothers? To what extent has this policy changed over time in its regulation of single mothers' relationships? This paper explains how the state determines who is and who is not worthy for Mothers' Allowance based on a mother's associations with men — and how this has been contested by those subject to it. Following a brief historical examination of the policy's determination of moral worthiness, we pay particular attention to a 1995 change to the definition of "spouse" in the social assistance system, which has meant a return to the practice of intense surveillance of poor mothers' relationships and contacts with men, after an eight-year period in which the state withdrew somewhat — although never entirely - from this scrutiny. Thoses who police these relationships have been nicknamed the "Pecker Detectors." The paper concludes that low-income single mothers have become a target for moral scrutiny and blame in the 1990s. This not only impacts upon single mothers on welfare but it affects all women. Condemning single mothers to abject poverty and moral scrutiny deters other women from leaving unhappy or abusive relationships, impeding the ability of all women to become full and equal citizens in Ontario society.
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.