Toronto is electing a new government this year! We want to engage our municipal government candidates about food issues, and we want youth to be informed about the upcoming election. In order to make this happen, we have been having meet-up discussions to brainstorm and plan a project around the election. (Read our meeting summaries from our meetings on January 21 and February 25.)
Our project has three stages:
- Ask youth what food issues they would like to talk to their municipal government candidates about.
- Based on what we hear, ask for candidate positions on a few key food issues.
- Present the candidate responses back to youth to help them make informed election decisions.
So far, we have been focusing on the first stage and so we distributed a survey to the TYFPC community. We received 67 responses to the question: What food issues are important for you to hear the Mayoral and City Council candidates discuss before the election in October?
The issues that came out as most important (and the percentage of survey respondents that selected them) are:
- Food access (57%)
- Funding to community food organizations (37%)
- Urban agriculture (33%)
These are the issues that we will be focusing on, at least for now, as we move the project forward.
At this point, we are also planning for stage two and thinking about other organizations that we can collaborate with on this project. We are exploring options in the food movement, as well as other youth organizations.
If you would like to get involved in this project, we will be hosting our next discussion group on March 20th at 6pm (location TBA). You can keep updated by checking our blog and our Facebook page, or by emailing Kaylen, Advocacy Committee Co-Lead, at kfredrickson@tyfpc.ca.