CHARLEBOIS: Canada — food powerhouse with empty plates

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World Food Day falls on Friday, Oct.16. For Canada, the occasion exposes an uncomfortable contradiction. We are an agricultural powerhouse, with productive farms, extensive trade networks and internationally respected research. Yet millions of Canadians struggle to afford the food our economy helps produce.

The latest global agri-food benchmarking from MNP and Dalhousie University places Canada seventh among the G20 countries assessed. Meanwhile, Statistics Canada reports that 24% of Canadians lived in households experiencing some form of food insecurity in 2024. Agricultural influence clearly does not guarantee affordable meals at home.

How can a wealthy food-producing country tolerate such widespread financial difficulty around something as fundamental as eating?

Answering that question requires looking beyond grocery prices. Food affordability depends on what households earn, what governments transfer and tax, and what remains after other expenses. The grocery receipt captures only one part of a much larger household-budget problem.

Calculations reveal pressures

Our calculations, using 2015 as a baseline, reveal two distinct pressures.

Among households in the lowest income quintile, average disposable income increased by 43.4% between 2015 and 2025. Grocery prices increased by 37%. On this comparison alone, the lowest-income households appear to have gained ground.

But disposable income is not the same as wages. It includes government transfers and is measured after taxes. Benefits and tax credits therefore form part of the explanation. These figures cannot support the claim that the poorest Canadians received wage increases exceeding grocery inflation.

Nor does faster income growth mean their budgets are adequate. A large percentage increase from a very low starting point can still leave households unable to cover basic expenses. Their financial position also depends heavily on housing, utilities, transportation and other costs.

To illustrate that pressure, we subtracted selected non-food expenses from average disposable income for the bottom quintile. These expenses include housing and utilities, transportation, health and communications.

The resulting annual balance turned negative in 2023 and reached a shortfall of $979 per household in 2025, before groceries and other omitted expenses. An illustrative 2026 scenario produces an annual shortfall of $742.

These estimates require careful interpretation. They are accounting proxies, rather than literal household cash budgets, and include imputed rent and vehicle purchases. They also describe averages, concealing considerable differences between households.

Nevertheless, they illustrate why income growth can coexist with hunger. When other costs absorb available resources, food purchases become difficult even if income has risen faster than grocery prices.

Households can’t shop their way out of an inadequate budget

Households can postpone purchases, choose cheaper products or reduce portions. They cannot indefinitely shop their way out of an inadequate budget.

For the middle class, the squeeze takes another form. We define this group as the middle 60% of households by income, excluding the highest and lowest quintiles. In 2025, that represented approximately 10.34 million households.

Between 2015 and 2025, their average disposable income increased by 32.3%, from $68,098 to $90,096. Grocery prices increased by 37%, leaving a gap of 4.7 percentage points.

Their incomes bought less against the grocery-price benchmark, while other household obligations continued competing for the same dollars. Many middle-income households receive less targeted support than those at the bottom, without enjoying the financial flexibility of those at the top.

This does not establish that all middle-class households are food insecure. It does explain why affordability anxiety extends well beyond households traditionally associated with poverty.

Employment alone cannot guarantee financial security. Working households can still face difficult choices between food and other bills. That vulnerability deserves attention before financial strain becomes a crisis.

A resilient economy needs a middle class capable of saving, absorbing emergencies and spending beyond necessities. When essential expenses consume more income, businesses and communities feel the consequences.

Governments therefore need to address food security through the entire household budget.

Grocery competition, productive food manufacturing and efficient supply chains remain essential. So does sustained income growth. But slowing inflation will not erase the price increases Canadians have already absorbed.

More purchasing power

Policy should also leave households with more purchasing power. Targeted tax relief, effective income supports and fewer punitive benefit clawbacks can help. Housing supply, transportation efficiency and stronger productivity require sustained action across governments.

Measures should be judged by the dollars households retain after unavoidable expenses. Relief that disappears into another rising bill offers little lasting security.

Canada’s agricultural strength gives us an advantage many countries would welcome. Turning that advantage into better lives requires households with enough money to purchase nutritious food consistently and with dignity.

On World Food Day, celebrating our capacity to feed the world is appropriate. Governments must also answer a question much closer to home: after Canadians have paid their other essential bills, how much is actually left for dinner?

– Sylvain Charlebois is director of the Agri-Food Analytics Lab at Dalhousie University, co-host of The Food Professor Podcast.

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