Our Food Dream
Vision
We imagine a shared space for community integration, interaction, learning and engagement centered around food sovereignty in Peter McGill, Montreal. We imagine Churches, Community Organizations and Community Members engaging with others in their neighborhood. We envision a movement starting with good food as the central heartbeat of the neighborhood, creating a space for interaction and connection and for telling the story of the neighborhood. We dream of community members, organizations and churches providing solutions for themselves instead of relying on outside corporations. We envision a central ground for integration of newcomers, with community serving community. We dream of good food as a catalyst for community development around food, culture, security, health and economics.
Healthy Food Policy
We define “healthy” food as food that meets at least two of the following criteria:
Nutritionally valuable
Locally grown/produced
Organic or grown/produced with minimal additives
Culturally significant or emotionally nourishing (e.g. comfort foods)
Varied (e.g. not just the same three items!)
We are in the process of developing a more extensive healthy food policy, in line with the Community Food Centres Canada Good Food Principles!
Dreaming Food Justice
Food Justice Dreaming Toolkit
Expansions (1, 2)
National conversations about food focus on “food security,” which tends to focus on counting the number of calories a healthy adult needs. Food banks, which have been around in Canada only since the 1980s, are part of this “security” conversation, although they are by no means the answer to the problem of hunger {see the CFCC’s Beyond Hunger report}.
But here at Innovation Assistance, we don’t think “food security,” or having enough calories, is enough. We dream of a world in which there is food autonomy, food sovereignty, and food justice.
Food autonomy
We follow the definition offered by the Regroupement de cuisines collectives du Québec, which says that food autonomy is “the access any time and in the long term” to food at a reasonable cost, accompanied by “the power to choose, in dignity and by having access to clear and reliable information, a healthy diet.” Food autonomy is the result of collective action for the welfare of a whole community, including its future members.
Food sovereignty
We follow the definition offered by Linda Black Elk, which says that food sovereignty means “you know and understand where your food comes from...from seed to plate...and you can make decisions about all aspects of the food you consume.” Linda Black Elk specifically talks about Indigenous food sovereignty, which is an outgrowth of the work done by Via Campesina, a global organisation of peasant farmers that coined “food sovereignty” as a phrase in 1996.
Food justice
our definition of Just Food is only beginning to take shape, but we start with five basic principles:
Just Food means…
good quality food that is affordable for you and easy for you to access.
Just Food means…
food you know how to prepare, know how to harvest, know where it comes from. Just Food means you are in a healthy relationship with what you’re eating!
Just Food means…
food you want to eat, whether that’s food that meets your specific dietary needs, food that reminds you of your childhood, food that satisfies your taste buds, or food that makes you feel good.
Just Food means…
food that is produced in a way that is respectful to the soil, to plants, and to the humans, animals, and insects who take care of both.
Just Food means…
food you get a say in: food you choose, whether based on taste or health concerns or the way its producers are treated.
So what are we doing about that dream? Meet the
Just Food Charter Project
Taking inspiration from the Buffalo Urban Growers’ Safe Soil Pledge, Innovation Assistance is entering the first stages of creating a Just Food Charter for Peter-McGill. This charter will reflect the community’s understanding of and desire for a just food system in the neighbourhood (and perhaps provincially, nationally, or even globally), and will represent a commitment that signatories take on to respect this vision and work toward its fulfillment.
Project Goals:
The Just Food Charter project has the tangible goal of producing a document that will outline a vision of the food system in Peter-McGill that aligns with how the community understands food justice. The document will be framed as a charter onto which individuals, businesses, and community groups can sign as a way of declaring both their beliefs in terms of food justice and their commitments to engaging in certain practices and rejecting others. In the production of this document, the project also aims to:
Get members of the community talking to each other about what “food justice” and “just food” mean to them (including discussions about culturally significant foods, “healthy” foods, food production standards, food accessibility, the ethics of food labour, etc.)
Encourage community organisations, small businesses, and other groups in the neighbourhood to consider how their practices align or could align with principles of food justice
Uncover the ways in which the Peter-McGill’s food system is unjust, and identify the actors who need to be involved in rectifying those injustices
Inspire other neighbourhoods to similarly take stock of what “just food” means to them and what a just neighbourhood food system could look like
Project Phases:
This timeline is tentative only; we anticipate that each of these phases may take significantly longer than the dates outlined here. Our aim is to produce a document that truly reflects community consensus, which means the project will go as slowly and carefully as it needs to.
Phase One (Dreaming the Future): May 2021-May 2022
Collective sessions: once a season, Innovation Assistance will facilitate a group discussion on food justice – what it means, how we can approach it, what does “just food” look like in general and in Peter-McGill specifically
Dreaming toolkits: once a month, at the Innovation Assistance Farmer’s Markets (and between markets through the Innovation Youth Children’s Library), creative prompts and materials will be available for community members of all ages. Prompts will include: “Imagine everything on your table was grown in your own backyard,” “What would it look like if your pantry was stocked with the perfect food to feed your family?”, etc. Participants will be encouraged to send in photos, artist’s statements, thoughts, etc. to Innovation Assistance, and to tag Innovation Assistance when they share the products of their dreaming on social media.
Online resources: the Innovation Assistance website will host digital versions (without materials) of the dreaming toolkits, recordings of the collective sessions, and accessible informational resources on “just food” and related concepts.
Phase Two (Building Consensus): May-December 2022
Based on the collective sessions and dreaming toolkit submissions, the Innovation Assistance team will produce a draft Just Food Charter
Over the course of the summer and fall, Innovation Assistance will host feedback sessions, collective refining/editing sessions, etc. on a variety of platforms with a variety of age-ranges in mind.
These sessions may also include seeking input from Innovation Assistance’s farmer partners, local food producers, etc.
This phase will be iterative, and will culminate in a community-approved charter
Phase Three (Declaring Commitment): January-April 2023
Community members will be invited to sign the not-yet-released charter
Community organisations, small businesses, etc. will be invited to sign the not-yet-released charter
A communications campaign will inform the community as a whole of the charter
This phase may also include seeking the City’s commitment to follow up on any action-items that the charter produces
Phase Four (Launching the Charter): May 2023
The Just Food Charter will be formally published, with information sessions, another dreaming toolkit, and resources for community members to use as they talk about the charter with their networks
Phase Five (Dreaming Again): June 2023-?
Building on the work done in preparing the first iteration of the charter, in this phase Innovation Assistance will work with the community to determine concrete action-items for businesses, organisations, and government to bring about the just food dream articulated in the charter
This phase may involve political advocacy, the establishment of new community projects, etc., as determined by the community over the course of both the previous phases and this new phase
Parallel Projects:
Parallel to this project, and as part of Innovation Assistance’s role as a ministry of Christian Direction, Innovation Assistance is partnering with various religious bodies in Montreal to develop a Just Food Theology that is rooted in the specificity of Montreal. In its later phases, the Just Food Theology project will produce a document similar to the Just Food Charter for religious organisations to sign onto as an indication of their community’s commitment to a future of food justice.
Other parallel projects are definitely possible! Innovation Assistance would be delighted to be involved in any capacity in projects that focus on dreaming and building a world in which food justice is the norm rather than the exception.