Five days a week, a guest at one of the Sault’s meal programs leaves home on Breton Road to get a hot meal. Since the bus routes changed, the trip starts with a walk out of the neighbourhood just to reach a stop. Getting there and back takes four hours a day and $35 a week in fare. In January, that walk happens on packed snow and ice, and some of the people making it lean on a cane or push a walker.
None of that shows up on a grocery receipt, but it is part of what food costs in Algoma.
A quarter of households
In 2023-2024, one in four Algoma households could not afford the food they needed. Algoma Public Health’s food costing shows why. A single adult on Ontario Works receives $916 a month once every benefit and credit is counted. Rent and a basic healthy diet cost $1,365. That leaves the person $449 short every month before paying for a phone, a bus pass or a winter coat. The basic Ontario Works rate for a single adult is $733 a month, unchanged since 2018.
Municipal councils don’t set social assistance rates or the price of milk. They do decide where bus routes run, what the town pays its own part-time and seasonal staff, what happens to surplus municipal land, how much a family pays to use the pool or the arena, and who qualifies for property tax relief. Councils can also pass resolutions asking the province to raise rates, and many Ontario councils already have.
The survey
Today the Algoma Food Security Network sent the same seven questions to every candidate for mayor, reeve and council across Algoma’s 22 municipalities, from Hornepayne to Hilton Beach. Harvest Algoma is a member of the network. The questions ask candidates:
- What food insecurity is, and what causes it in their municipality.
- Their top three priorities on the cost of living.
- How they would help low-income residents get to food, health care and services, especially in winter.
- Whether they support paying all municipal workers at least the northern Ontario living wage.
- Whether they support requiring affordable units when municipal land is sold or housing grants are given.
- Whether they support a council resolution asking the province to raise Ontario Works and ODSP rates.
- Whether they support expanding property tax relief for low-income seniors and people with disabilities, and how their plans would reach renters.
Each answer is capped at 200 words. Starting Friday, October 9, answers will be added to the bottom of this post as candidates send them in, exactly as written and grouped by municipality and ward. Candidates who don’t respond will be listed too. Neither the network nor Harvest Algoma rates, ranks or endorses anyone.
What you can do
Check back here (starting on Friday Oct 9th) for answers from your municipality, and compare them with what you hear at the door. The background paper the network sent to candidates has the local numbers behind each question.
Read the background paper here to learn more about the issues and local food security data behind the questions.
Check your municipality’s website for how and when to vote, since some Algoma municipalities offer online or phone voting before election day on Monday, October 26.
The Algoma Food Security Network is a collaboration of organizations across the district that feed people and run meal and food programs, including Harvest Algoma, Algoma Family Services, St. Vincent Place, the Soup Kitchen Community Centre, The Salvation Army Sault Ste. Marie, Niigaaniin Services, Algoma Public Health and the Wawa Food Strategy.
If a candidate knocks on your door this month, ask what they would do about the four-hour trip from Breton Road.