This is an op-ed published in The Gazette by The Depot and co-signed by 16 other food security organizations from across Quebec
Our grocery store shelves are full. Yet more and more Quebecers are leaving without everything they need.
People put items back after seeing the total at the checkout. Parents cut their own portions to feed their children. Others skip meals to make groceries last until the next paycheck.
According to a 2025 Léger Omniweb survey, 36% of Quebecers are now experiencing food insecurity. Among those aged 18 to 34, that number is 49%. Severe food insecurity has doubled in five years.
Nearly half of the Quebecers experiencing food insecurity have a job. Read that again: having a job no longer protects you from hunger. This isn’t a fringe problem. It’s widespread, and it’s getting worse.
At food banks, collective kitchens and food literacy workshops, we see it every day. Food meets an essential need, but it does much more than nourish us – it brings us together. Around a table, relationships are built, differences fade, listening comes easier and community takes shape. Whatever our politics, one thing unites us: we all need to eat.
Quebec does not lack food. Too many people simply lack the income to buy it — and a grocery market concentrated in the hands of a few major players only makes it worse.
Eating is not just an individual act of survival, or economic transaction. It is a fundamental human right — one we can build a different kind of society around.
A right that remains far from guaranteed
Canada and Quebec recognized the right to food in 1976. Fifty years later, that right is still not guaranteed. Other countries, such as Brazil, have chosen to prioritize the right to food in concrete ways.
Everyone should be able to access sufficient, nutritious food in a way that is dignified and respectful of their culture, traditions and environment. Instead, food insecurity keeps climbing. When someone who is working still has to choose between rent, medication and groceries, the problem is not a personal failure —it’s proof that incomes are too low, housing is unaffordable, and our systems aren’t built to meet people’s basic needs.
From recognition to action
A framework law would make the right to food a genuine collective responsibility. It would require and support the government to develop and coordinate cross-sectoral policies ensuring sustainable access to sufficient, healthy, culturally diverse food — access that upholds dignity and respects both the land and people who work it.
It would force us to stop treating food as a siloed issue. It touches health, environment, education, regional vitality, the economy, and given today’s geopolitical instability, national security.
And it would recognize what too often we ignore: better food systems can’t rest solely on community organizations or individual generosity alone. They require real policy decisions that fix what is broken in our systems, so that they can do their actual job: feeding communities and supporting local economies.
Across Quebec, community organizations are stretched thin, trying to meet growing demand on funding that is often too limited and too precarious. Their work is essential, and it cannot substitute for political action.
Building a food system that works for everyone
We already know much of what needs to happen.
People need enough income to meet their basic needs and keep pace with the cost of living. Funding for programs that improve access to quality food and prioritize local procurement needs to be stable, not handed out year-to-year or project-to-project. That includes a universal school food program. Every child deserves a nutritious meal at school; it supports their education, success, eases financial pressure on families and invests in the generation that comes after us.
We also need stronger local food systems. Backing local sourcing supports local producers and processors, protects farmland, shortens food supply chains and builds Quebec’s economic, environmental, and food resilience.
As long as households don’t have enough income, people will go hungry. We need both a sustainable, local food system and stronger income supports. One without the other is half a solution.
Fifty years later, it’s time to make it real
A society where everyone has enough to eat is healthier, more resilient and more prosperous. Income supports, school food, accessible local food systems — these aren’t simply expenses. They’re investments in a stronger economy, a more just society, and in avoiding far greater costs down the road.
As the next election approaches, we’re calling on every political party: make food a real priority. Adopt the six proposals put forward through the Together to Nourish Our Territories campaign.
A framework law on the right to food. Adequate incomes. Lasting, universal school food. Investment in local food systems. These are not competing priorities — they are one vision: a Quebec where everyone can exercise their right to food with dignity.
The right to food has waited fifty years. It’s time to make it real.