Meaty motion amendments may signal shift in food security approach from Toronto City Council

Matt Johnstone, Executive Director

Fortunately for me, I don’t feel a need to sit through Toronto’s marathon city council meetings that often. This past Thursday was a notable exception.

Ever since then-candidate, now New York City Mayor, Zohran Mamdani, brought the idea of city-run grocery stores to wide public awareness last summer, the idea of the government getting into groceries has been percolating through the ether. It’s been showing up regularly in articles and op-eds, in panel discussions, national political party debate stages, and most recently in a member’s motion before Toronto City Council.

In an election year, when many residents are feeling the crunch of runaway grocery prices, it feels convenient that a high-profile approach like this is being explored. In late 2024, Mayor Chow and city council passed a motion declaring that Toronto was (once again) experiencing a food insecurity emergency. Since then, many including me and my colleagues at FoodShare, a non-profit dedicated to food justice, have been awaiting a signal from the City that they were serious about taking action toward food security, not simply for those suddenly alarmed about the cost in their shopping carts, but for the Torontonians who have long faced barriers to accessing the food they need to thrive. All through 2025, it seemed like municipal energies might lean entirely on school food programs as the tactic of choice. 

School food programs are useful, and have been recognized in a meaningful way with federal funding commitments, first for five years by the Trudeau government, then made permanent last year by Carney’s. Here in Toronto, the recent Bloomberg Mayors Challenge win was an achievement to be sure, demonstrating both the ingenuity of Toronto’s student nutrition program and that of its many collaborators. But many of us were left wondering if school food was going to be the only thing on the table.

Enter Councillors Anthony Perruzza and Michael Colle’s motion to launch a pilot for city-run grocery stores in Toronto. I’ll admit it, when I first learned of this motion a few weeks back, I thought this was sort of like a rink burger, generally not that satisfying, but mouth-watering and filling enough when you’re hungry.

The motion was skinny on details, citing increased food bank usage and the challenge of food deserts for many Toronto neighbourhoods as its rationale, with little in the way of practical grounding to make the case for state-run stores. Despite precedent for government operated grocery sales in Mexico, Bolivia, remote Greenland, Cuba (home to state-run everything), the United States (perhaps most substantially in Chicago), and growing interest from advocates here in Canada, there were only two letters attached to Perruzza’s motion, from the Daily Bread Food Bank and the Retail Council of Canada. Both were cautiously supportive in principle but skeptical on the economic practicalities.

Much like how a rink burger hits the spot when other options are scarce, for those of us who have been hungry to see Toronto advance the conversation on food access beyond student nutrition, it felt like a bite-size way to get the conversation rolling in another direction. 

So I expected my Thursday afternoon to involve casually monitoring the council agenda, with a few minutes of focused attention while this motion was considered. Instead I listened as Speaker Frances Nunziata read in more than 80 members’ motions, even pausing after more than an hour to ask if she could just say “ditto” to one of the many nearly identical statements. Around 8pm the motion finally came up for discussion and while it had its detractors, what I found most interesting was what was added to it. First, Perruzza’s own amendment expanding the scope of the motion around procurement, then Councillor Saxe’s direction to examine opportunities to support non-profit community food cooperatives–a welcome effort to de-commodify elements of the food economy–and Councillor Ainsley’s amendment to have City staff examine alternative food delivery options. 

Finally, there was Mayor Chow’s rather meaty amendment, that expanded and broadened the original motion, putting a renewed emphasis on already existing programs and efforts like the Toronto Food Charter (which FoodShare has been pushing for for years), community markets (a core part of our programming), and the Black Food Sovereignty Plan (the result of incredible advocacy by our friends at Afri-Can Food Basket), as well as a suite of tools available to the city including city procurement policies, advocacy to provincial and federal partners, price transparency, and restrictions on AI to reign in algorithmic pricing. The levers she included, if all pressed together, would have a genuine and meaningful impact on food insecurity in Toronto.

To me this signalled two things, first, that Mayor Chow is a savvy politician who knows not only how to craft an amendment, but when to use it, and second, that she’s listening. Listening to the experts on City staff, to food justice advocates, and to community members who all know full well that there is no single remedy for addressing food insecurity.

In the end, the amended motion received 21 votes and has the news media (and the mayor’s own socials) heralding Mamdani-esque city grocery stores as basically a done deal. Just like with school food programs, I wish those of us embedded in this work could be so excited. The truth is that it’s unclear whether the City of Toronto opening up shop will even happen, and if it does, if it will meaningfully transform the deeply flawed systems that have led to the crisis we face today. What we can hope is that the thoughtful amendments to this motion signal a municipal government willing to take leadership from existing community-led approaches. To listen, learn, and then enact policies that genuinely address the widespread and intersecting challenges that subject so many in our city to persistent poverty and food insecurity. 

I’m tuned in, I hope you’ll join me.