The Food and Hunger Action Committee was not re-established. The following information is provided for archival purposes.

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The Growing Season

Phase II Report of the Food and Hunger Action Committee
Toronto's Food Charter

The Food and Hunger Action Committee was formed by Toronto City Council in December 1999, following a recommendation put forward by Hunger Watch (a coalition of emergency food organizations) and endorsed by the City's Millennium Task Force. In July 2000, the Food and Hunger Action Committee presented their Phase I Report to Council. The report identified serious food security issues in Toronto:

• 120,000 people in the GTA rely on food banks - 40 per cent of them are children.
• Toronto's seniors and families must rely on 1,250,000 hot meals served every year.
• 50 per cent of food bank users now run out of food at least once each week.
• One Toronto resident in five has too little money to meet their basic food needs.

Toronto City Council unanimously endorsed the report and adopted its recommendations. Council asked the Committee to create a food charter for the City and to present an action plan to improve Torontonians' access to safe, affordable and nutritious food, and enhance the coordination and delivery of services related to food and hunger.

• High rents and low incomes impose hunger on Toronto's poorest residents.
• Food programs provided by City and community groups are proving effective and merit continued support.
• Existing programs are not available in all areas of the city. The former suburbs are less likely to have programs that meet local needs, although the problems in those communities are as severe as they are downtown.
• Food security initiatives offer the City an opportunity to save money, create jobs, strengthen local communities, and stimulate the economy.
• The volunteer and charitable sector currently provide most of the food relief services in Toronto but they cannot handle the ever-increasing demands for food assistance resulting from cutbacks to federal and provincial social programs.
• Food security measures can help Toronto reduce the amount of food and organic material it sends to landfill.
• Food security measures can be revenue-neutral, because food security is both a motivation and a vehicle for the productive use of resources that are now wasted, and because it offers the opportunity for the City to get full value from existing assets that are currently underused.

The Action Plan is organized according to the roles that the City can play: as an advocate to other levels of government, a coordinator of community initiatives, a supporter of food access through its own programs, and an innovator in using food security initiatives to meet the city's economic and environmental goals.