Links, ladders, and levers

Ample literature describes the limits of the charitable food sector in meeting the food security needs of individuals. Nascent work now highlights diverse and innovative approaches in the sector in the absence of the right to food. Given the cost-of-living crisis and intensifying food insecurity in Canada, efforts towards greater diversification and innovation may be slowing, and in some cases, advocacy for systems change has been deprioritized in favour of a return to meeting immediate food needs. The evidence is replete with calls for rights-based approaches to hunger; these have often been anchored to demands for greater income security, given that poverty is one of the principal causes of food insecurity. Yet while such calls have languished in a policy climate that appears unresponsive and impervious to human need, practitioners working in the charitable food sector have actively been working towards interim solutions that promote greater dignity, autonomy, and choice for their clients. Using Canada as a case study, this conceptual paper explores the merits, limitations, and tensions of advancing incremental and/or temporary improvements within the charitable food model as we champion and wait for the right to food to finally be enacted. In so doing, the paper examines innovations in the charitable food sector and tests them against the core principles and criteria of a robust basic income guarantee (BIG). We highlight shifts and consider their impacts as interventions that are philosophically sound, practical, and policy-oriented. The paper concludes that while certain shifts and changes in the sector may offer greater degrees of autonomy, dignity, and universality than others, none meet all the core BIG criteria and thus none offer the potential to combat food insecurity in a substantive way. We underscore that a BIG would be the only viable intervention to advance an income-oriented, rights-based approach to food.