Setting the stage: Canada’s budget moment

Released on November 4, 2025, Canada’s 2025 federal budget lands at a crossroads. Inflation remains incessant, reverberating through household budgets. Emergency food programs are over-stretched, rents keep climbing, and too many workers are juggling multiple jobs just to stay afloat.

Over 10 million people—or 1 in 4—across the country can’t afford enough food. While the federal government’s slogan—“Building Canada Strong”—projects confidence, for the millions who are struggling today, this strength feels elusive.

Since its release, the government has stood firmly behind this approach. The budget passed a key confidence vote on November 18 with no amendments or additions to income, housing, or Indigenous food sovereignty measures.

This first budget under Prime Minister Carney champions fiscal discipline and “spending less to invest more.” Yet by centering productivity and fiscal restraint over people’s basic needs, it risks reinforcing inequality—the very root of Canada’s food insecurity crisis.

As Parliament now moves towards implementing the budget, Canadians are left with a fiscal plan that still lacks a coordinated, rights-based plan to ensure everyone in Canada can eat with dignity.

A historical lens: From welfare state to fiscal discipline

To understand what this budget signals, it helps to recall how we got here.

In the post-World War II years, Canada built a robust welfare state rooted in collective security. But since the 1980s, successive governments have reframed social policy through a market lens—prioritizing efficiency, competitiveness, and so-called fiscal prudence.

Social programs have shifted in purpose, functioning more to support economic goals rather than people’s well-being. Budget 2025 continues this pattern. It celebrates a “leaner, more productive” public service, while redirecting resources toward capital investment, private-sector partnerships, and—guess what else?—defence.

That approach may please credit rating agencies, but it leaves low-income Canadians facing the same old trade-off: economic growth for some, austerity for others.

Food insecurity: The predictable outcome of policy choices

Food insecurity is not a symptom of rising costs or food shortages. It is the predictable outcome of growing inequality in wealth between the have and have nots. And it is the direct result of inadequate incomes for a growing number of Canadians.

At least one in four people live in a food-insecure household in Canada, with rates far higher among Indigenous, Black, and racialized families, people with disabilities, single mothers, single people living alone, and recent immigrants. These are not “vulnerable populations” by nature; they’re people failed by policy choices.

Yet public debate still gravitates toward food banks and community fridges rather than wages and benefits. Canada’s fixation on food-based solutions—what Mah and McIntyre (2025) call “the trap of food access”—has derailed genuine policy progress.

Budget 2025 does little to change that. Its flagship measure, the permanent National School Food Program, is an important step—but it feeds children in classrooms, not families at home. The evidence is clear: food-based programs—like school food—show little to no effect on household food insecurity. Without stronger income supports and a national food security target to motivate action, food insecurity will worsen for more families across the country.

Rights, responsibilities, and the missing framework

In 1976, Canada endorsed the right to food as part of ratifying the International Covenant on Economic, Social, and Cultural Rights. But endorsement is not implementation.

In 2012, UN Special Rapporteur Olivier De Schutter warned that Canada excels at civil and political rights yet falters in social and economic rights—including the right to food. Thirteen years later, that diagnosis still holds.

Despite a federal Food Policy for Canada and a Poverty Reduction Strategy, there is still no legislated food security target, no right-to-food framework, and no accountability mechanism. Budget 2025 could have tied income policy to human-rights obligations. Instead, it doubled down on piecemeal programs and fiscal restraint.

And equally glaringly, there is no investment in Indigenous food sovereignty—a crucial omission given the government’s stated commitment to reconciliation. Without dedicated funding for Indigenous-led food systems, ongoing colonial practices and inequities remain unaddressed.

Reading between the lines: What this budget signals

So, what does this budget really tell us about Canada’s priorities?

1. Productivity over equity.

Budget 2025 frames social policy as an input to economic competitiveness, not as a goal in itself. Growth comes first; equity is a hoped for by-product.

2. Trickle-down optimism.

Infrastructure and capital investments are expected to “lift all boats,” but without wage protections and income adequacy, many will suffer.

3. Incremental social policy.

Automatic benefits are promising but slow to roll out — reaching 5.5 million people only by 2028. For households skipping meals today, that’s an eternity.

4. Fiscal restraint as virtue.

The government’s $60 billion “Comprehensive Expenditure Review” reduces public-sector capacity precisely when communities need more, not fewer, supports.

Toward a different future: From food access to food rights

A rights-based approach demands more than charity. It demands justice. The progressive realization of the right to food would require Canada to:

• Legislate national food security targets, with measurable goals to halve food insecurity and eliminate severe food insecurity by 2030.
• Implement income-based solutions such as a permanent Groceries and Essentials Benefit, a fair Canada Disability Benefit, an enhanced Canada Working-Age Supplement, and comprehensive Employment Insurance reform.
• Invest in Indigenous food sovereignty, ensuring self-determination in food systems. To learn more about the policy recommendations identified by Right To Food’s Indigenous Network and Indigenous-led Community Food Centres, check out the Seeds of Sovereignty brief.
• Rebalance fiscal priorities, treating social investment as nation-building infrastructure, not as discretionary spending.

These are not radical demands; they are practical steps toward dignity. Efforts to end hunger must tackle poverty head-on, not frame hunger narrowly as a food access problem.

The verdict: A budget of missed opportunities

Budget 2025 gestures towards but stops short of fairness. It introduces patches—automatic benefits and school meals—while sidestepping the structural roots of food insecurity: low incomes, inadequate social supports, and housing unaffordability.

If budgets are moral documents, Budget 2025 reassures markets more than households. And if budgets tell us what governments value, this one prioritizes economic metrics more than people.

The budget’s successful confidence vote makes its direction clearer. But it does not close the door on change. The government still has opportunities ahead, including the upcoming Spring fiscal and economic update, to revisit its priorities and invest in stronger income supports, Indigenous food sovereignty, and a rights-based plan to end food insecurity.

The government can still choose differently. Building a strong nation begins with ensuring everyone can eat. That’s not just good policy—it’s the very foundation of real progress.

For more about Budget 2025’s food security-related measures, read this briefing note.