The ofpc sent me a rather lengthy and heavy weight questionnaire about food security. These are my responses.
Food security and food policy have not been directly addressed in my published posts so far so I post them here now.⁸
Commitments to Good Food and the priorities highlighted help to develop sustainable food systems for all in the City of Ottawa.
As individuals who care deeply about the health and sustainability of our community for all residents equitably, we will be happy to work with you to realize these goals.
Good Food is defined as: fresh, accessible, affordable, culturally relevant, minimally processed, as local as possible, ecologically produced, and processed by people with sustainable livelihoods.
- Enhancing City supports for community food sharing programs (i.e. access to City facilities for food programming; increased mobile community markets and farmers’ markets; increased community kitchens, etc)
- Increasing deeply affordable, viable housing for individuals and families
- Expanding public active, deeply affordable, and accessible transportation
- Increasing municipal financial support - indexed to inflation and need - to social and community services, understanding it as a critical and under-resourced sector in Ottawa, which also serves as prevention
- Leading advocacy at the provincial and federal levels for sufficient, income-based solutions to meet the cost of viable housing and daily access to adequate food , which are not being met at current levels of financial assistance
- Establishing needs-based funding models (based on food insecurity indicators) rather than performance-based metrics, ensuring that operational efficiencies or cost-saving efforts do not result in future budget reductions
- Working to increase funding for community agencies that work towards ending food insecurity, particularly with economically marginalized communities
- Increasing access to affordable, nutritionally & culturally relevant, food particularly in food deserts and/or priority neighbourhoods, as part of work towards 15 minute neighbourhoods
Based on my blog, peterKarwacki.blogspot.com
My analytical framework now includes food security and food policy.
My consistent approach to governance is as follows:
Increasing municipal financial support indexed to inflation and need
Real accountability requires sustained resourcing. Budget levels themselves must be recalibrated to match actual delivery requirements.
I am skeptical of purely performative expansions (community food sharing programs, markets, kitchens) without the underlying funding structure and accountability mechanisms to sustain them.
What changes if these programs don't actually reduce food insecurity? What's the feedback loop?
I focus on municipal structural accountability, not provincial/federal advocacy. So "leading advocacy at the provincial level" would matter only if it's tied to a municipal accountability mechanism for what Ottawa actually delivers.
Will any councillor commit to publishing quarterly food insecurity metrics (by neighborhood), tied to the actual funding allocated, with public reporting on whether the gap is closing?
That's is my test for commitment vs. theater.
Actively support City policies that Increasing the ability of residents and communities to grow, produce, and harvest their own food?
Based on my blog, peterKarwacki.blogspot.com
• Establishing needs-based funding models (based on food insecurity indicators) rather than performance-based metrics — This directly mirrors my critique of institutional incentive structures. I've repeatedly shown that when systems are designed to optimize for outputs rather than outcomes, they fail residents.
A needs-based model aligns funding to actual deprivation, not operational efficiency metrics, which is exactly the kind of structural fix you which I would advocate.
• Increasing municipal financial support indexed to inflation and need — I've emphasized that real accountability requires sustained resourcing. My transit post highlighted that voting for $938.7 million while the system deteriorates shows budget levels themselves must be recalibrated to match actual delivery requirements.
Less likely alignment:
• I am skeptical of purely performative expansions (community food sharing programs, markets, kitchens) without the underlying funding structure and accountability mechanisms to sustain them. I want to know: what changes if these programs don't actually reduce food insecurity? What's the feedback loop?
The missing piece: I focus on municipal structural accountability, not provincial/federal advocacy. So "leading advocacy at the provincial level" would matter only if it's tied to a municipal accountability mechanism for what Ottawa actually delivers.
Will the councillor commit to publishing quarterly food insecurity metrics (by neighborhood), tied to the actual funding allocated, with public reporting on whether the gap is closing?
That's your test for commitment vs. theater.
I would likely actively support all of these—but with a crucial caveat about framing.
Here's why they align with my platform:
Strong alignment:
These policies share my core critique: they remove institutional barriers and distribute agency rather than centralizing services.
I have consistently opposed institutional inertia dressed as prudence. For example, my Patrick/Vanier blog item made this explicit: the city can build roundabouts (St. Joseph proof), but resists reopening past decisions without data justification.
• Gatineau and Carleton Place already have residential poultry policies. That's precedent. No innovation risk.
• If "Ottawa says no": "publish the actual constraint or it's bureaucratic inertia."
• Fruit trees on City land cost almost nothing after planting. This isn't a major budget decision. Resistance is purely bureaucratic friction.
• Community gardens on City land = distributed food production (resident agency), not another City program to fund and defend.
• New Farmer support = you're enabling economic producers, not creating dependency on council.
Why this matters to my governance framework:
These are the opposite of what I critiicized with 24 Sussex and OC Transpo: they don't create long-term institutional debt or require perpetual budget justification.
A planter box that grows food doesn't need an audit three years later. A resident with chickens doesn't require ongoing council oversight.
The caveat—and this matters:
These things are all necessary but insufficient.
A resident with a backyard garden still can't afford housing. Fruit trees don't solve income inequality. New Farmer programs don't address zoning costs that prevent commercial food production.
These are enablers, not solutions to structural food insecurity.
They're what residents can do for themselves. They're not a replacement for the systemic fixes (needs-based funding, housing affordability, municipal resource allocation)
"Will councillors remove these barriers because it's the right policy, or as performative gesture while avoiding the harder structural questions about housing, income support, and long-term food security funding?"
1. Reducing and diverting food waste while increasing composting and recycling?
I'd likely support these proposals, but with some important qualifications that reflect your accountability-focused framework.
1. Structural incentive alignment: These create positive feedback loops rather than relying on individual behavior change or bureaucratic mandates. Waste becomes a resource that benefits residents directly—that's a structural solution, not exhortation.
2. Decentralized over centralized: Neighbourhood composting and community gardens resist the "warehouse solution" approach that often masks institutional failure. They require the City to actually enable community action rather than outsource the problem.
3. Accountability via City practice: The City modeling its own waste and producing compost is the clearest test—it forces the institution to prove the system works. If the City can't manage its own cafeteria waste into viable compost, the whole framework is performative.
4. Measurable outcomes: Unlike vague sustainability commitments, these have tangible outputs: compost volume, garden productivity, diversion rates. Easy to track success or failure.
• Is the land actually available? Neighbourhood composting "on City land" only matters if the City isn't just designating a small corner nobody uses. How many sites, where, and who gets access?
• What's the accountability structure? Who reports annually on compost produced vs. food waste diverted? Or does this become another initiative that launches with fanfare and quietly fades?
• Is this actually reducing landfill burden? Or are these programs symbolic while 80% of residential food waste still goes to the $95M landfill?
• Why hasn't this happened already? What institutional resistance are you removing, or are you just asking the same bureaucracy that failed on these items before to suddenly succeed?
The farmland/sprawl issue is exactly the kind of structural incentive problem with which I'd engage. It's not about individual choices—it's about whether the City's growth model profits from sprawl or discourages it. Densification + farmland protection are genuinely incompatible with endless sprawl, so there's real teeth here, not just rhetoric.
The Indigenous Food Sovereignty piece would probably resonate most strongly—it's about removing restrictions rather than launching another program. That's structural reform. It says: stop criminalizing or regulating Indigenous food practices and let sovereignty function.
1. What removes farmland in practice?
◦ The "unassailable embargo" sounds strong, but Ottawa's Greenbelt failed. What actually stops developers from lobbying Council to reclassify Agricultural Resource Area land? Is this policy or fantasy? What happens when a developer comes to Council with a proposal—does the embargo hold or does it get negotiated away?
2. Densification vs. Farmland:
◦ These can conflict. If you're densifying everywhere, where's the farmland? And in Ward 13 (Rideau-Rockcliffe), how does densification actually get managed—in the urban core only, or are rural wards being pressured to accept it too? (This ties to your ward boundary analysis: does farmland protection favor rural power hoarding, or is it genuine?)
3. Farmers' markets and "local food promotion":
◦ Are these subsidizing farmers, or subsidizing affluent neighborhoods' feel-good Saturday mornings? Do they help farmers compete against industrial agriculture, or are they prestige projects? What's the actual economic impact on working farmers vs. hobbyist producers?
4. Training/opportunity for "new farmers":
◦ Who becomes a farmer if you need to buy or lease land in an inflated market? Is this program actually enabling working people to farm, or is it aspirational messaging? How many people graduate and actually farm vs. decide it's not viable?
5. Indigenous Food Sovereignty—implementation:
◦ Which policies actually restrict Indigenous practices? Are you revoking hunting bans in urban parks, allowing traplines on City land, changing property regs to allow traditional practices? Or is this a proclamation without enforcement mechanism?
Property tax models and development cost recovery incentivize sprawl and farmland conversion. If the City is funded partly by development charges and property taxes, farmland protection policies conflict with the revenue model. So you'd ask: What's being changed about the actual incentive structure, or is this policy just a brake on an accelerating process?
So I support the direction of these policies as principles, but I'd run them through my accountability filter. My platform position would be: "Farmland protection and Indigenous sovereignty yes—but only if we're actually removing the institutional incentives for sprawl and respecting sovereignty in policy, not just rhetoric. Show me the amendment that stops reclassification. Show me which hunting/fishing restrictions are being struck. Otherwise, this is a garden plot poster that looks good while development marches on."
likely I would say "Yes, but conditional on clarity about what 'leading' means and whether this is the best use of your political capital as a Ward councillor."
The case for investing time:
1. Feasibility study already in motion – You don't start from zero. The motion exists, the study is funded. That means someone has already cleared initial bureaucratic resistance. The decision is whether to execute something that's already been deemed feasible.
1. 23 cities as proof of concept – Toronto, Montreal, Vancouver all have strategies. This isn't experimental. Point to outcomes, compare results. That's my kind of evidence.
2. Existing evaluation infrastructure – FLOW Partnership is already measuring impact. We're not inventing accountability from scratch; we're plugging into a system that works. That passes my structural test.
3. Emergency Food Security Response Plan formalization – Moving from "draft" to "policy" is a concrete governance outcome you can track. Not aspirational.
But the complicating questions:
1. What's your role as Ward 13 councillor?
◦ Is "leading investment in Food Strategy" a city-wide initiative (which belongs to whoever has the portfolio—maybe not me) or is it something I own because Rideau-Rockcliffe residents are demanding it? If it's the former, I might be volunteering for work that dilutes my ward focus. If it's the latter, I'd do it because constituents are driving it.
2. What was the motion's timeline?
◦ When was the feasibility study supposed to complete? What was the deadline? If the study is due in 6 months and we're 3 months in, investing now makes sense. If it's delayed 18 months already, why? ( what institutional dysfunction is blocking progress?)
3. "Formalization" of the Emergency Food Security Plan –
◦ Why is it still in draft mode? Food security is urgent. If it's not formalized by now, what are the barriers? Political resistance? Resource constraints? Unclear jurisdiction? Naming the barrier tells me whether my effort will actually move it forward or get stuck in the same place.
4. Whose priority is this?
◦ Are we supporting a staff proposal, a community coalition demand, or a political opening? The political energy behind it matters. If it's genuinely community-driven (food banks, community gardens orgs, Indigenous groups), investing my time signals we are listening. If it's bureaucratic-led, it might not have teeth.
Given that I am building a campaign around structural governance failures and accountability, a Food Strategy could serve my narrative if:
• We are closing the loop between the $95M landfill, food waste diversion, and circular economy (
• Formalization of the Emergency Plan is a concrete governance reform, not just a program
• We can show measurable outcomes against FLOW's metrics within the term
But it could also distract if:
• It becomes a feel-good initiative that absorbs my time without addressing structural ward issues
• The feasibility study already sets the direction and I am just executing someone else's plan
• The real work is systemic (farmland policy, Indigenous sovereignty) and a Food Strategy becomes substitute activism
• "I'll lead this if the feasibility study shows it's a priority for food-insecure residents in this ward, and if we're using it to address the circular economy failures identified in my landfill analysis, and if the Emergency Plan formalization is real reform, not bureaucratic busy-work."
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The request fyi
Dear Candidate:
We would like to introduce the Ottawa Food Policy Council (OFPC) as a resource and ask you to demonstrate your commitment to Good Food in your campaign and in your future work as Councillor or Mayor by completing the following brief survey.
Ottawa residents need a Mayor and Councillors who will champion Good Food in our communities and on City Council. With continued rising food insecurity as a serious issue, we strongly encourage you to incorporate a Good Food lens into your platform and to champion policy and decision-making that prioritizes Good Food for all.
Good Food is defined as: fresh, accessible, affordable, culturally relevant, minimally processed, as local as possible, ecologically produced, and processed by people with sustainable livelihoods.
our ofpc-cpao.ca website.
If you have a video containing information related to these questions, we can post a link to that.
The OFPC aims to hold the newly-formed City Council accountable to their commitments to Good Food and the priorities highlighted above, as they will help to develop sustainable food systems for all in the City of Ottawa.
As individuals who care deeply about the health and sustainability of our community for all residents equitably, we will be happy to work with you to realize these goals.
The Ottawa Food Policy Council
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This time around, inform yourselves, vote differently, vote wisely. Vote for Peter Karwacki for Rideau Rockcliffe
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