City of Brantford Council agreed to set aside $100,000 to support the Food Security Community Action Plan during its regular Council meeting on Tuesday, September 23, 2025.
The decision comes after Council members pre-approved the Food Security Community Action Plan during the Committee of the Whole, planning and administration meeting on Tuesday, September 16.
The plan not only includes increasing community awareness and education, but has the City committing to work alongside local school boards and social service organizations to increase long-term funding for school nutrition programs, ensuring that students have access to high quality and more varied food options.
As part of the recommendation from last week’s meeting, Council also agreed to advocate for federal and provincial governments to take direct action against food insecurity by rescinding or reducing policies and programs that increase inflation, and increase costs to young and low-income Canadian families.
The City’s push to address food insecurity began earlier this year when Councillor Mandy Samwell introduced a resolution to declare a food insecurity emergency in Brantford back in March.
Her resolution highlighted that the maximum Ontario Works benefit for a single person is just $733 per month ($343 for basic needs and $390 for shelter). Given that the Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation (CMHC) Average Market Rent (AMR) for a bachelor apartment in Brantford is $984 and a one bedroom is $1,215, the discrepancy was clear.
The resolution also noted that the number of individuals using the Brantford Food Bank has increased by 86 per cent over the past four years. Whereas 5,543 individuals used the Food Bank in 2021, that number jumped to 10,332 individuals in 2024, 34 per cent of which were children.
During the September 16 meeting, Heather Vanner, Executive Director of the Community Resource Service (Brantford Food Bank), said that after 20 years on the job, she never thought that the community would get to the point of declaring a food insecurity emergency.
“The Food Bank has been providing emergency food to our community for years, but it is only now that we have recognized we have a crisis… that hunger must be taken as a serious problem and that we need to find ways to address it,” she said. “We see a number of challenges being faced by our organization and food programs in our community. We know that Ontario Works case loads and unemployment are expected to grow, and with that, we can only expect that our client numbers will grow as well. …Hunger does not stem from local food shortages, the inability to cook or from a lack of nutritional education. It comes from a lack of money in individual households. It comes from not having enough money at the end of the month.”
During the Council meeting on September 23, Mayor Kevin Davis moved to have $50,000 allocated from the Council priorities reserve to support the Food Security Community Action Plan.
As part of the amendment, staff were directed to come back with a report by the end of the year with recommendations on how the funds can enhance food security measures in alignment with health and housing programs that are being planned for 389 West St. (the former Fox Ridge Care Community).
“So this is using funds that are available in our Council priorities reserve fund,” said Davis. “Our City treasurer told me that there was some monies for this this year, but I wasn’t quite sure exactly what this money should go towards, because there’s a lot of different elements within the community’s food distribution system, whether it’s the food bank or the churches.”
Samwell later thanked the Mayor for bringing his amendment forward.
“With all of the work that we’ve been doing around food insecurity, I think this is going to be really helpful, and that we will be able to use this in a very meaningful way,” she said.
Afterwards, Councillor Dan McCreary moved to have the $50,000 doubled, bumping the allocation to $100,000.
“We often tend to be going off in all directions supporting things which really don’t address the core needs and desires of the folks who we represent in the community,” he said. “…I think we really need to redouble our efforts to make sure that we provide for the needs of our community, including supporting people who are about to lose jobs or have lost jobs. I think we need to stick to our knitting; we’ve got a lot of potholes, we’ve got a lot of hungry folks in the city, and I believe we should redouble our efforts to concentrate on the things that are important to our taxpayers and not the things that we tend to wander off into from time to time.”
The item, as amended, was then carried unanimously.
Kimberly De Jong’s reporting is funded by the Canadian government through its Local Journalism Initiative.The funding allows her to report rural and agricultural stories from Blandford-Blenheim and Brant County. Reach her at kimberly.dejong@brantbeacon.ca.
