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With the recent rising cost of living and high cost of inflation “we’re in the worst scenario we’ve seen to date,” said Lisa Needham, nutritionist at WDGPH, who wrote the report. This is locally, provincially and nationally. In 2019, 12.3 per cent of people were living in food insecure households locally and in 2023 it was 23.4 per cent.

A family of four on Ontario Works (OW) would have negative $145 left after monthly expenses since 58 per cent of the family’s income goes to rent and 47 per cent goes to purchasing food as part of the nutritious food basket.

For single person households in the example scenarios “we see really scary findings. We see that they would require another $500 to $750 a month to afford those two basic expenses let alone anything else,” said Needham.

Money for monthly expenses is still short for those in the Ontario Disability Support Program. A single person would see 103 per cent of their income go to rent and 32 per cent to food. This leaves them short by $511 at the end of the month. A single, pregnant person is only marginally better off with 100 per cent of their income going to rent and 33 per cent for food. This leaves them short of $502.

He added that customers need to be aware that what they see as the lowest fare on a price comparison search may not wind up being the cheapest option once the fees are tallied.

"It's not transparent until you've gotten a certain depth into the booking: 'Oh, here's the seat selection fee. Oh, here's the baggage fee. Oh, here's the carry-on fee.' And watch out if you don't check-in online, there's a massive penalty if you don't," Vanderlubbe said.

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From telecoms to groceries to pharmacies to the resource sector, Canada is a playground for a handful of supremely powerful men from dynastic families, who have bought their way to dominance, consuming small businesses by the hundreds and periodically merging with one another.

Canada's Competition Bureau is underfunded and underpowered. In its entire history, the agency has never prevented a merger – not even once. This set the stage for Canada's dominant businesses to become many-tentacled conglomerates, like Canadian Tire, which owns Mark's Work Warehouse, Helly Hansen, SportChek, Nevada Bob's Golf, The Fitness Source, Party City, and, of course, a bank.

A surprising number of Canadian conglomerates end up turning into banks: Loblaw has a bank. So does Rogers. Why do these corrupt, price-gouging companies all go into "financial services?" As Hearn and Bednar explain, owning a bank is the key to financialization, with the company's finances disappearing into a black box that absorbs taxation attempts and liabilities like a black hole eating a solar system.

The Liberal prognosis is grim. For Trudeau to stand a chance, the government will need a major policy pivot. The Liberals could harness some of the populist economic momentum by cracking down on monopolistic practices or opening the telecom sector to foreign investment. Trudeau could make a generational commitment to restoring the dream of homeownership to the middle class. He could articulate his positive vision for Canada, as the nation he described in his father’s eulogy: a place “where simple tolerance, mere tolerance, is not enough.” A nation animated by “genuine and deep respect” for Canadians of all origins, values, and beliefs. A nation we may yet become.

Whether he will do any of these things is, of course, anyone’s guess. For all I know, Trudeau will be swallowed by the anti-incumbent wave after all—or take cover long before it arrives. But we are not the United States. We are not Britain, France, or anywhere else. Our future is unwritten, its outlines discernible in polls, perhaps, but also in the relationship between a father and son, their half-realized dreams, and long, lonely walks through the snow.

Her research reveals that the region’s early inhabitants moved hazelnuts long distances and managed the shrubby plants, creating and maintaining “large-scale ecosystems and sometimes entire watersheds through prescribed burning and forest clearing, transplanting [and] rock wall constructions” to foster perennial plant species.

“To have this hazelnut study come out and learn that it’s around 7,000 years that the First Nations brought hazelnuts and planted them here was insane,” he said, noting that it meant First Nations were growing food “before ancient Egyptians were planting their wheat fields.”

The research could have big implications for Indigenous land claims, Armstrong added, by challenging existing narratives that First Nations lived passively on the landscape rather than actively tending it.

Last year, the Canadian Medical Association Journal published an article on a case of scurvy diagnosed in an elderly woman in Toronto. It deserved attention because scurvy, a condition resulting from lack of vitamin C, is virtually never reported in advanced countries like Canada.

This year we have learned of 27 more cases, all diagnosed last year or this year, in the Lac La Ronge Indian Band in northern Saskatchewan.

Live without vitamin C for three or four months and you will begin to feel bad. You’ll be exhausted and irritable, and your arms and legs will hurt. Your gums will swell and start to bleed easily. Your teeth will loosen in their sockets, and you’ll have bad breath. Your skin will be rough and dry and will bruise easily. Wounds won’t heal quickly; in severe cases, old scars will open again. Left untreated, scurvy can result in internal bleeding, convulsions, organ failure and jaundice.

According to Food Banks Canada’s HungerCount 2024 report, food banks had two million visits last March — six per cent higher than in March 2023, and 90 per cent higher than in 2019.

A third of food bank users are children. Forty per cent of users are on social assistance or disability supports, and 18 per cent are currently employed — the highest percentage ever recorded.