Two years in, Our Food Future hits key targets and broadens scope
Guelph, Ont., January 27, 2022 – On February 7, the Smart Cities Office will provide Guelph City Council with an update on how Guelph-Wellington’s Our Food Future program is exceeding its goals as it builds a local circular food economy, expanding with new funding, and attracting attention as the worldwide circular economy movement gains momentum.
Our Food Future launched in 2020 supported by $10 million from Infrastructure Canada’s Smart Cities Challenge, a national competition that declared Guelph-Wellington a winner in May 2019. The proposal was an ambitious undertaking to reimagine how our community produces, distributes, sells, and consumes food.
The initiative is currently overseeing more than 60 active projects. Notable achievements at the two-year mark of this work include:
Supporting economic and social recovery efforts during COVID-19 through Grow Back Better, an initiative which provided grants, interest-free loans and mentoring for food sector businesses, invested in emergency food delivery exceeding 77,000 meals, and helped 740 families learn about growing food at home
Prevented 1,769 tonnes of greenhouse gas emissions by diverting 6,479 tonnes of food waste from landfill
These activities are making food more accessible, giving families options in their neighbourhoods that they can afford, and allowing for businesses to contribute to the circular economy rather than landfill.
They are also positioning Guelph-Wellington as a circular economy innovation hub and attracting more funding. Since announcing the initial $10 million prize, the project has secured an additional $14.2 million to support the work of City, County, and community collaborators.
This includes nearly $5 million from the Federal Economic Development Agency for Southern Ontario (FedDev Ontario) in April 2021 to launch the Circular Opportunity Innovation Launchpad (COIL). COIL is a business acceleration platform that pioneers new, sustainable approaches aimed at creating, proving, and scaling transformative solutions across the food and environment sectors in southern Ontario. More than 40 businesses or collaborations are already working with COIL in its first phase.
Since Our Food Future launched, adopting more circular practices and changing our food systems has emerged as a critical global movement. In August 2020, the United Nations’ Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change released a landmark report warning that the world cannot avert a climate crisis unless we rapidly transform our food systems. In November 2021 the Glasgow Food and Climate Declaration formalized commitments from local and regional authorities from across the world to put into practice integrated food policies to tackle the climate emergency. Recently, City joined the Milan Urban Food Policy Pact, an international agreement on urban food policies signed by over 200 cities from all over the world.
Additional information about the project’s progress, upcoming initiatives and how community members can get involved is available at foodfuture.ca.
Quotes
“The innovations tested here, and lessons learned, are informing and inspiring change locally, and globally. Our example has been shared on world stages as nations commit to adopt circular principles that take us closer to our goals to tackle climate change and food insecurity. Project leaders and partners from Our Food Future have presented at more than 115 broadcasts and events, locally, nationally, and internationally, reaching an audience of more than one million people.”
Barbara Swartzentruber, Executive Director, Smart Cities Office
“We’ve had a lot of early success, completed many research studies, and analyzed a ton of data to help bring more precision to our understanding of critical areas we want to address: where businesses need to focus to support sustainability as well as profitability, where food waste hotspots occur across the entire food industry, the kinds of food we’re throwing away at home that can be saved, the barriers to people in our community accessing nutritious foods, and more. With all we have learned, we will be able to share and engage with our community and industry stakeholders to define the most effective interventions to create significant and permanent change.”
Jana Burns, Director of Museum, Archives and Economic Development with Wellington County
“Our Food Future is powering, building, and sustaining our future. These efforts are making a permanent contribution to address critical social issues and support a community where everyone has a chance to thrive. I couldn’t be happier with the progress and the impact we’ve seen to date in the community.”
Scott Stewart, Chief Administrative Officer, City of Guelph
About Our Food Future
Inspired by the planet’s natural cycles, a circular food economy reimagines and regenerates the systems that feed us, eliminating waste, sharing economic prosperity, and nourishing our communities. In Guelph-Wellington, we are working to build Canada’s first tech-enabled circular food economy that will increase access to affordable nutritious food, create new circular economy businesses and collaborations, increase circular economic benefit by unlocking the value of waste, and enable the systems change required for a circular regional food system through collective knowledge and action.
Our Food Future demonstrates one of the ways the City of Guelph and County of Wellington are contributing to a sustainable, creative and smart local economy that is connected to regional and global markets and supports shared prosperity for everyone.
Barbara Swartzentruber, Executive Director Smart Cities Office, Office of the Chief Administrative Officer City of Guelph 519-822-1260 extension 3066 [email protected]
Jana Burns Museum, Archives and Economic Development County of Wellington 519-846-0916 extension 5222 [email protected]
OTTAWA – Canada’s unemployment rate held steady at 6.5 per cent last month as hiring remained weak across the economy.
Statistics Canada’s labour force survey on Friday said employment rose by a modest 15,000 jobs in October.
Business, building and support services saw the largest gain in employment.
Meanwhile, finance, insurance, real estate, rental and leasing experienced the largest decline.
Many economists see weakness in the job market continuing in the short term, before the Bank of Canada’s interest rate cuts spark a rebound in economic growth next year.
Despite ongoing softness in the labour market, however, strong wage growth has raged on in Canada. Average hourly wages in October grew 4.9 per cent from a year ago, reaching $35.76.
Friday’s report also shed some light on the financial health of households.
According to the agency, 28.8 per cent of Canadians aged 15 or older were living in a household that had difficulty meeting financial needs – like food and housing – in the previous four weeks.
That was down from 33.1 per cent in October 2023 and 35.5 per cent in October 2022, but still above the 20.4 per cent figure recorded in October 2020.
People living in a rented home were more likely to report difficulty meeting financial needs, with nearly four in 10 reporting that was the case.
That compares with just under a quarter of those living in an owned home by a household member.
Immigrants were also more likely to report facing financial strain last month, with about four out of 10 immigrants who landed in the last year doing so.
That compares with about three in 10 more established immigrants and one in four of people born in Canada.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Nov. 8, 2024.
The Canadian Institute for Health Information says health-care spending in Canada is projected to reach a new high in 2024.
The annual report released Thursday says total health spending is expected to hit $372 billion, or $9,054 per Canadian.
CIHI’s national analysis predicts expenditures will rise by 5.7 per cent in 2024, compared to 4.5 per cent in 2023 and 1.7 per cent in 2022.
This year’s health spending is estimated to represent 12.4 per cent of Canada’s gross domestic product. Excluding two years of the pandemic, it would be the highest ratio in the country’s history.
While it’s not unusual for health expenditures to outpace economic growth, the report says this could be the case for the next several years due to Canada’s growing population and its aging demographic.
Canada’s per capita spending on health care in 2022 was among the highest in the world, but still less than countries such as the United States and Sweden.
The report notes that the Canadian dental and pharmacare plans could push health-care spending even further as more people who previously couldn’t afford these services start using them.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Nov. 7, 2024.
Canadian Press health coverage receives support through a partnership with the Canadian Medical Association. CP is solely responsible for this content.
As Canadians wake up to news that Donald Trump will return to the White House, the president-elect’s protectionist stance is casting a spotlight on what effect his second term will have on Canada-U.S. economic ties.
Some Canadian business leaders have expressed worry over Trump’s promise to introduce a universal 10 per cent tariff on all American imports.
A Canadian Chamber of Commerce report released last month suggested those tariffs would shrink the Canadian economy, resulting in around $30 billion per year in economic costs.
More than 77 per cent of Canadian exports go to the U.S.
Canada’s manufacturing sector faces the biggest risk should Trump push forward on imposing broad tariffs, said Canadian Manufacturers and Exporters president and CEO Dennis Darby. He said the sector is the “most trade-exposed” within Canada.
“It’s in the U.S.’s best interest, it’s in our best interest, but most importantly for consumers across North America, that we’re able to trade goods, materials, ingredients, as we have under the trade agreements,” Darby said in an interview.
“It’s a more complex or complicated outcome than it would have been with the Democrats, but we’ve had to deal with this before and we’re going to do our best to deal with it again.”
American economists have also warned Trump’s plan could cause inflation and possibly a recession, which could have ripple effects in Canada.
It’s consumers who will ultimately feel the burden of any inflationary effect caused by broad tariffs, said Darby.
“A tariff tends to raise costs, and it ultimately raises prices, so that’s something that we have to be prepared for,” he said.
“It could tilt production mandates. A tariff makes goods more expensive, but on the same token, it also will make inputs for the U.S. more expensive.”
A report last month by TD economist Marc Ercolao said research shows a full-scale implementation of Trump’s tariff plan could lead to a near-five per cent reduction in Canadian export volumes to the U.S. by early-2027, relative to current baseline forecasts.
Retaliation by Canada would also increase costs for domestic producers, and push import volumes lower in the process.
“Slowing import activity mitigates some of the negative net trade impact on total GDP enough to avoid a technical recession, but still produces a period of extended stagnation through 2025 and 2026,” Ercolao said.
Since the Canada-United States-Mexico Agreement came into effect in 2020, trade between Canada and the U.S. has surged by 46 per cent, according to the Toronto Region Board of Trade.
With that deal is up for review in 2026, Canadian Chamber of Commerce president and CEO Candace Laing said the Canadian government “must collaborate effectively with the Trump administration to preserve and strengthen our bilateral economic partnership.”
“With an impressive $3.6 billion in daily trade, Canada and the United States are each other’s closest international partners. The secure and efficient flow of goods and people across our border … remains essential for the economies of both countries,” she said in a statement.
“By resisting tariffs and trade barriers that will only raise prices and hurt consumers in both countries, Canada and the United States can strengthen resilient cross-border supply chains that enhance our shared economic security.”
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Nov. 6, 2024.
