Earlier this week, Simcoe County Council voted in favour of funding a new community co-ordinator position to oversee food security county-wide, based on a report outlining a new Simcoe County Food Security Framework from Eco-Ethonomics Inc.
The new position is good news, said a local food bank official. However, he and others lament they had little to no input on the framework.
Three area food banks contacted by OrilliaMatters this week claim they weren't notified of the framework’s completion, and received little to no contact from the consultant.
Chris Peacock, executive director of The Sharing Place food bank in Orillia says he sat in on consultations about six months ago.
He says one of the key ideas he brought to the table was coming up with one clear direction for all food services across Simcoe County.
“There’s a fragmented group of social service programs that exist within our community. We could all be pushed toward the same goals and better partnerships. If we have this framework that we can all reference, we can have those stronger partnerships,” said Peacock.
“The organizations that exist, not just in Orillia but also in Barrie and Midland, they can all pull together and start to work as one, making sure that we’re not working in our own silos, doing our own thing,” he added.
Household food insecurity is experienced when an individual or household lacks the financial resources to access food.
Community food security is a measure of food access and availability at the community level; it studies the local food system to measure the production and provision of food available to the public through retailers, farmer’s markets, community gardens, food programs and emergency food services.
“The general statistic is that about 12 per cent of residents in Simcoe County are food insecure,” said Peacock. “It’s a significant problem that’s tightly tied to income.”
According to the framework, the role of the new community co-ordinator is not to project manage, but to do "light-touch co-ordination."
The role involves politely prompting stakeholders to complete the work they have committed to, circulating documents, hosting meetings, taking notes and documenting the work. Other roles are to co-ordinate the writing of grants by members and making sure that evaluation data is being collected.
Peacock says he’s delighted the county is funding the position.
“This is great,” said Peacock. “That gives us an individual person to talk to and make connections. Sometimes, we are inundated with policies, documents and processes.
"Having a living, breathing person who will be able to articulate that and connect people, it’s going to help us in a better way," he said. “Now, I’ll be able to give someone a call and they’ll be able to educate me on potential leaders within our county and processes that maybe I should be learning more about,” he added.
Helping Hands Food Bank in Bradford said they weren’t contacted at all to consult on the framework, even though they were listed as a participating organization.
“I think, possibly it’s because we are a small, independent food bank, they missed us because we are all volunteers. We have no desire to pay someone to look after us,” said Anne Silvey, president of Helping Hands Food Bank.
“My philosophy is, if one of our residents gives us some money, I will spend that on food. I will not spend that money on anything but food.”
Silvey says this isn’t the first time the more rural municipalities are left out of the discussion on county-wide issues.
“In the southern part of the county, especially,” she said. “It’s difficult because we have clients on ODSP, and they have to take a bus to Barrie to get to social services. As far as I’m concerned, that’s unreasonable.”
Silvey says Bradford council has always been very supportive of Helping Hands.
“We are very fortunate that the Town of Bradford West Gwillimbury council is 100 per cent behind us,” she said. “They even have a representative on our board.”
In total, more than 150 different community groups, organizations, politicians and advocates across Simcoe County are listed as being consulted over the past year and a half to come up with the framework.
“My contact on that was the Simcoe County District Health Unit. They contacted me a year or two ago about creating this network, and they did. A couple of years ago we were asked to sign a charter, so we did. In terms of our participation, that’s where we’re at,” said Peter Sundborg, executive director of the Barrie Food Bank when reached this week for an interview.
Sundborg said the numbers at the Barrie Food Bank have been stable for the past five years, with about 32,000 people walking through the doors annually.
He says the Barrie Food Bank, along with other food banks in Simcoe County, are members of the Ontario Association of Food Banks.
He says the Barrie Food Bank specifically is seen as a “hub,” and is therefore already responsible to distribute some resources around the county.
“So, for example, the Ontario Dairy Farmers donate milk to the association, as the parent organization. They distribute that milk to us with the understanding that I’m then going to distribute some of that milk to, say, Orillia, Alliston and other area food banks,” said Sundborg. “The only (current) co-ordination of food banks, from my perspective, is relationships I have built, or others have built with us.”
“If there is going to be a person co-ordinating food services across the county, then that’s fantastic,” said Sundborg, adding that it was the first time he had been told about the suggestion.
The food security framework, which was presented to county council by Ryan Turnbull, president of Eco-Ethonomics Inc., identifies three main goals for the project:
- To facilitate more presentations in the community to raise awareness and understanding food security;
- To further develop and support initiative in South Georgian Bay to build community gardens at the new Wasaga Beach Affordable Housing Unit as a pilot for future affordable housing projects; and
- To raise awareness around available community level asset maps in Simcoe County to promote greater access to physical food and programming.
Barrie Mayor Jeff Lehman raised a question about what early wins could come out of the creation of the framework.
“I’m a huge supporter of the idea of the county moving into this role,” said Lehman. “My hesitation around the framework and the staff report that’s in front of the house is that, the action today is to hire a co-ordinator. Two of the three goals are about ... presentations, communication and framework development. It would be my hope that if the house supports this approach... that the next steps should be more action-oriented.”
“To me, the most important thing is getting more fresh food in the hands of those who struggle to get it,” he added, while clarifying that he would vote in support of the motion. “I would hate to see us spend a year hiring a person and forming a council to promote awareness and not getting to supportive projects that are ready to go today.”
Some council members expressed concern that the funding would be handed over indefinitely.
“With the funding of a co-ordinator, can we have a time limit put on that as far as our funding goes and have results from a year down the road come before this council... before we continue funding this project?” asked Adjala-Tosorontio Township Deputy Mayor Bob Meadows.
“We can certainly do that, but that’s kind of the philosophy of every program we do. We evaluate every initiative and program and if it doesn’t have results, we would cease and desist,” responded Greg Bishop, general manager of social and community services with the county.
County council voted to approve the funding to hire a community co-ordinator and to endorse the community-based Simcoe County Food Council.
To read the Simcoe County Food Security Framework in full, click here.
