A year later, the Daily met with Delali, the general coordinator of Midnight Kitchen, to discuss the service, the progress they have made in the past year, and their plans for this year. 

The McGill Daily (MD): Could you briefly explain what your association does? What are your main activities and goals? 

Delali: Briefly, our goal is to provide alternative food options on campus. One of our biggest programs is our free lunch program that we do on Thursdays at 1:00 p.m. in the ballroom of [the University Centre]. Our goal is to serve approximately 150 meals this year at each service. But we do a lot of different things. 

MD: Could you explain what an “alternative food option” is?

Delali: Typical food options are grocery stores, restaurants, and stuff like that. And usually there’s a big price tag attached to those things, especially in recent years. Prices keep going up, but it’s not accessible to everyone. Food is a necessity. There was a point where people could access food by growing it themselves or trading for it, but as things have progressed, [this has] become less of an option, or it’s a lot harder for people in the city to grow all of their own food to provide for their family.  So Midnight Kitchen just adds another option that doesn’t require money. 

MD:  Do you feel like the food situation on campus has worsened in recent years, with the inflation of food prices and COVID-19?

Delali: For sure. I feel like even before COVID, prices for food on campus were  pretty steep for a student coming to campus every day. If you weren’t making all of your own meals and you had to buy lunch every day between classes, often people choose whatever is around, and what’s around is usually quite pricey. 

MD:  Have you seen an increase in student demand? 

Delali: Absolutely. A lot of mobilization came from frustration with the current food situation on campus. It’s great that people love our service and use it, but we’re not going to solve the issue as one service. But I feel like there have been new things popping up that are trying to offer alternatives, such as the grocery store in [the University Centre] with cheaper lunches.

MD: How has McGill responded to your actions? Has there been an increase in support? 

Delali: No, we’ve never had support from McGill, and there’s not been an increase. Since we’re a student service, and most of our interactions are with SSMU, we don’t really have a relationship with the administration.

MD: Would you like McGill to get involved and help? 

Delali: Of course, we would love that. 

MD: Can you discuss the fee increase that happened last year? How has that helped? What were the reactions? 

Delali: We’re really happy about the fee increase. Our biggest goal was just to expand our food budget so that we could not only cook with donated food that we get through Moisson Montreal – which is a food organization that distributes food that would have otherwise been thrown out. We do get a lot of free food through them, but it’s also nice to have the option of buying more fresh stuff to cook while keeping an inventory of options of things to cook for students. So in order to make sure that we can still provide all the same services and more, the increase has been really helpful. 

MD: Have you been receiving a lot of student support? 

Delali: Yes, but we always get lots of student support, which is always very heartwarming. There’s always a lot of students who are interested in volunteering with us and helping to cook. Honestly, I wish our kitchen was bigger so we could have more people in the kitchen helping us cook. 

MD: How do these volunteer training sessions work? 

Delali: Usually we will have people come to a training session, happening next week, and then also fill out a little form just so we know that they’re coming. Then, we have a big sheet with the shift times and stuff like that. Usually, shifts are two hours. And anybody is welcome to come – you don’t have to have experience cooking at all. Just an interest, curiosity, and [willingness] to help out in any way.

The Midnight Kitchen Collective will be hosting its volunteer orientation on Monday, September 18, from 5:00–6:00 p.m. at the University Centre (Room 304) and on Tuesday, September 19, from 5:00–6:00 p.m. at the University Centre (Room 302/304). To register for an orientation session, fill out the form on Midnight Kitchen’s website.

The free packaged meal service schedule can also be found on the Midnight Kitchen website. The next free meal service will be held on September 21 at 1:00 p.m. on the third floor of the University Centre. The food provided is plant-based and nut-free, and Midnight Kitchen asks that participants bring a reusable container and utensils.

The post An Interview with Midnight Kitchen appeared first on The McGill Daily.

Recently reported food insecurity on McGill’s campus reflects a city and nation-wide trend. Overall, the leading causes of food insecurity are poverty and an economic climate that has recently further exposed and entrenched people in poverty. Indeed, since 2019, food bank visits have skyrocketed, with the highest year-over-year increase in usage since the aftermath of the 2008 to 2009 recession. Stagnant provincial social assistance rates, end of pandemic-related benefits, and soaring inflation have all affected the ability of individuals in Canada to feed themselves and their families. Statistics Canada stated in January that Canada’s Consumer Price Index rose 6.3 per cent year-over-year in December 2022, fuelled by an 11 per cent jump in prices for food purchased from stores. Food inflation hovered around the 11 per cent mark during the last five months of 2022. To face this food crisis, various people and organisations are mobilising and trying to meet rising need. Among these, Resilience Montreal, created in 2019 by the Native Women’s Shelter of Montreal,  is a community-led project to support the homeless population in the Cabot Square area.

The number of individuals experiencing food insecurity in Montreal has continued to increase since the onset of the pandemic. According to Moisson Montreal’s Hunger Report, nearly 900,000 requests for food assistance were made to Moisson Montreal’s partner organizations in 2022 – an increase of 25.8 per cent  from the previous year. Rising inflation and the pandemic have given way to this rapid rise in food insecurity. For context, Moisson Montreal reported 600,000 requests to food pantries made in 2019, which was a continuation of a downward trend in previous years. 

Furthermore, food insecurity is a crucial issue in Montreal because it persists in circumstances of already existing crises regarding homelessness. In March 2020, the city of Montreal declared a state of emergency regarding the population of homeless people. Montreal has the highest number of homeless people in Quebec. The Canadian Observatory on Homelessness estimated in 2018 that 3149 people were experiencing homelessness at the time. While the effects of COVID-19 cannot be fully measured yet, many experts believe this number could be multiplied five or ten times this year. According to a 2020 report from the Milton-Parc Citizens Committee, out of these individuals, an Indigenous person is 27 times more likely to experience homelessness than a non-Indigenous person, and an Inuit person is 80 times more likely to experience homelessness. According to the Milton-Parc Citizens Committee, Indigenous people often find inadequate support systems in cities and discrimination in housing and job markets. 

Organizations like Resilience Montreal have noticed an uptick in their number of clientele seeking food support and services. They provide access to sleeping areas, showers, computers, clothing, first aid, a host of intervention services, and notably, three meals a day. Resilience offers a hot breakfast, a hot lunch, and a takeaway dinner for after the shelter closes every day at 3 PM. 

Margo Buchanan, Logistics, Community Program and Volunteer Coordinator, tells the Daily that Resilience’s food services have changed since the onset of the pandemic. When the organization started in 2019, they served three hot meals a day to roughly 60 to 80 people, Buchanan explains. Because of COVID-19, they had to begin providing their services outdoors in the park mid-2020. Individuals seeking meals went up to 100 per meal, as they were serving an open park and anyone could now get food. Consequently, they had to reduce their services to two hot meals a day and one takeaway meal. In September 2020 they moved back inside, but the demand kept climbing. “When we moved back inside, […] we started at 100 and then word got out that the food was good and we hired a lot of kitchen staff and then it went from 100 to 150, and then within three months, we were already up to 300,” says Buchanan. As of January 2021, Resilience serves around 300 people per meal. 

Buchanan stresses the importance of ensuring their food is not only nourishing for their clientele, but also delicious. Once a week, Resilience Montreal has “Traditional Food Tuesdays,” where they provide traditional meals for Indigenous people. On these Tuesdays, they will serve seafood, often raw, and other traditionally Inuit cuisine, as that is the largest group of Indigenous peoples served by Resilience. She further explains that if there are First Nations clientele in the area, they will also serve a traditional First Nations meal – such as caribou, tacos with local meats, or moose burgers – alongside the Inuit meal. “The overall goal of providing traditional food Tuesdays is to give people a sense of home and community and make them feel seen and understood and highlight how important their culture is to us as well,” adds Buchanan. Meals from recent weeks include cold caribou, arctic char and hot caribou ribs with rice, and caribou heart stew with bannock, frozen caribou and arctic char.

Buchanan explains that it is mostly the intervention workers at Resilience who coordinate and prepare the hot meal service. Because of the large clientele that they serve, Resilience mostly relies on big collectives – such as the Community Cooks Collective – to make individual elements of the meals for them to then be combined on site at Resilience. They also have networks of organizations and individuals throughout Montreal who donate baked goods for the takeaway lunches, Buchanan says, and the organization Bread and Beyond makes sandwiches for Resilience (which they need by the thousands every week). They also get a large amount of food every week from Moisson Montreal. “It’s a huge group effort [from] people across the city,” says Buchanan, “That’s the only reason we’re able to reach the numbers that we are.” 

Resilience does everything possible to ensure they provide the best quality food for every single person. Buchanan explains that Resilience “[tries] to do our best to remind them that they’re important despite their experience in the street every day.” Buchanan adds that for Traditional Food Tuesdays, because it’s often seafood they offer for Inuit clientele, they will often buy ingredients in store if they don’t have the donations. “We take so much pride in the work that we do, which is why we spend so much money despite having this huge network of people that make us food, because we really do try to give them the best quality food,” she says, “and honestly, [the food] is great.” 

Despite this large network of support, Resilience is always looking for more people to get involved. Buchanan stresses that donations from Bread and Beyond to Resilience often drop off over the summer in particular, as the organizations partners with elementary and high schools to make the sandwiches. She explains that a great way to help would be to volunteer for Bread and Beyond over the summer, or other organizations like the Community Cooks Collective, which also in turn help support the other shelters across the city. Beyond that, Buchanan says that they are always looking for volunteers at Resilience to help serve and make food, either on site or at home. 

If you are interested in getting involved, you can email resilience.volunteer@gmail.com.

The post Hot Meal Services in Montreal Meet Increasing Demand appeared first on The McGill Daily.

McGill Student Housing and Hospitality Services (SHHS) is considering a switch to an All-You-Care-To-Eat (AYCTE) meal plan model in dining halls for students living in residences, to be implemented tentatively at the start of the Fall 2023 semester. 

The current model – mandatory for students living in all undergraduate residences apart from Solin Hall – is a declining balance plan. The plan essentially functions as a debit card, with students having to budget their allowance throughout the year. For first year-students in residences, the current plan costs $6,200 in total, which includes the mandatory meal plan, a $975 administrative fee, and $500 OneCard dollars. The Daily spoke with three students regarding details of the AYCTE model, the student consultation process, and whether the plan has potential to mitigate concerns of first-year students regarding food access on campus.

Throughout the past semester, there has been an increase in concerns among students surrounding food prices and quality within residence cafeterias. “Lets Eat McGill,” a campaign with the goal of creating affordable, sustainable, and cooperative food options on campus, arose partly due to the concerns first-year students have about having enough to eat. 

At an assembly on food insecurity, hosted by Let’s Eat McGill on March 8, students expressed their frustrations in accessing food in residence cafeterias. Students mentioned struggling to budget in a way that allows for the plan to last the entire year. This is challenging given that the meal plan is only enough for two meals a day due to high cafeteria prices. Students also expressed their disappointment with the limited variety and low-quality options that often do not reflect the high price of items. One student said that food rationing and skipping meals has become the norm for many living in their residence. 

Kerry Yang, VP University Affairs at SSMU, has met with SHHS and relayed information from their February 24 meeting to the Daily. Yang believes this switch to an AYCTE meal plan model will be a step in the right direction within residences because it might help with the current plan being either too much or too little money for students. According to Yang’s meeting with SHHS, he told the Daily that SHHS began to review the current model in September and that SHHS is quite serious about the AYCTE switch. Once students are enrolled into the meal plan, they will be able to swipe their card whenever they want to access the cafeteria. Additionally, the model is only dine-in, with hopes to reduce the use of packaging and single-use containers. SHHS also hopes the dine-in model will encourage students to socialize. Those not enrolled in the meal plan, but who may still want to access the cafeterias, will be required to pay an entrance-fee. According to Yang, SHHS are still working out the details of the plan, and weighing different options for students. Further details about the plan will tentatively be posted in May and will be ready to be rolled out in the new academic year.

The Daily spoke to Liam O’Connell, the Food Representative on the Environmental Residence Council, about the prospective ACTYE plan. As the food representative, O’Connell attends University Residence Council (URC) meetings to advocate for improved sustainability practices, increased variety, and affordability in pricing within residence cafeterias. According to O’Connell, members of SHHS started developing this new model in response to students wanting a change from the declining balance plan currently in place. He expressed that SHHS is open to ideas and change; “I just feel like they don’t have these ideas,” he says, “so if people have any ideas, it would be very helpful for them to tell SHHS and talk about it.”

O’Connell says that although he has attended most meetings that took place, “a lot of it has been going on behind the scenes … without students.” Student consultation regarding the plan has been limited to the food representatives on residence council, per O’Connell.

Marcel Bendaly, VP External at RVC, told the Daily that “since we [RVC] are the main cafeteria on campus, I have heard a lot of stories of people foregoing their meals or skipping meals or budgeting to extreme lengths because of the food security issues.” When the Daily asked Bendaly if he believes the AYCTE meal plan will remedy the food issue for first-year students living in residences, Bendaly said in interviews with media outlets regarding food security, McGill’s response has been to refer to the AYCTE model. Bendaly said that the pricing and sustainability details of the plan are still unknown: “they have not defined exactly what it will be like. All they have given us are just the usual marketing slogans that students will have to select from natural or whatever locally sourced, that sort of thing,” said Bendaly.

Bendaly also commented on McGill’s lack of collaboration with student groups: “If McGill does really want to provide us with a good solution to the food insecurity issues, it would start first by working with the student groups, which are tackling the issue and establishing some sort of rapport where we are able to review the plans they have, give our opinion on them and be agents and actually changing that into something that would be good for students.” Such groups may include Midnight Kitchen, Let’s Eat McGill and Macdonald Student-Run Ecological Gardens.

The post Switch to All-You-Care-to-Eat Meal Plan Being Considered appeared first on The McGill Daily.

Macdonald campus, home to McGill’s Agricultural and Environmental Sciences, Food Science, and Nutritional Sciences programs, lacks adequate food access. Marché Richelieu in Sainte-Anne-De-Bellevue closed its doors in early January, leaving students and residents without access to a grocery store within walking distance. Café Twigs, one of the two eateries on campus, shut down on February 1 due to asbestos cleaning in the Raymond, Macdonald-Stewart and Barton buildings. Nearby Provigo in Baie D’Urfé, which previously provided a weekly shuttle for students, announced that they would close for 3 months at the end of March to convert into a Maxi.

Students living on-campus without a car must choose between ordering groceries online, taking transit to a grocery store further away, or using McGill’s grocery bus service. McGill currently runs two shuttles that leave from the Laird Hall residence at 6:45 p.m. to the Walmart in Vaudreuil and depart the store at 8:30 p.m. These departure times may interfere with students’ other commitments. In an interview with the Daily, Zell Song, Vice-President External of Macdonald Campus Students’ Society (MCSS), reported that they conducted a survey of grocery needs among the student population to see which times might work better. 

“We didn’t get a lot of responses, but from those that we have, [we found that] most people are concerned about food access,” she described. “We suggest[ed] Monday 6-8 p.m. and also Thursday 6-8 p.m. [to the housing office] so it’s spread out over the week, but that’s something the school needs to negotiate with the bus company to see if it’s possible.”

These problems are not new for the Macdonald campus. Maya Côté, who studies at Macdonald campus, informed the Daily that Marché Richelieu “didn’t have as many items as you could find in big Maxi or IGA stores, and [she] also felt like it was more expensive as well, so on a student budget, it’s really not convenient.” She noted that the Provigo is also in the higher price range and that the weekly shuttle could be stressful. “I kind of like to take my time, look at the items, compare the value, the nutritional value, stuff like that. I felt like you couldn’t really do that,” Côté pointed out.

There are two eateries on campus, Café Twigs and the Ceilidh restaurant. Café Twigs is the second location of a locally-owned small business in Sainte-Anne and sources ingredients from the Macdonald Farm. While it has been closed due to asbestos cleaning in the Barton and Macdonald-Stewart Buildings, the buildings are currently set to open Tuesday, March 14. The Ceilidh restaurant is still operating and is fully run by the MCSS. According to a statement from McGill, the John Abbott College cafeteria next door is also accessible to McGill students and faculty. 

Sam Liptay, another student at Macdonald campus, told the Daily that Café Twigs and the Ceilidh are relatively affordable and healthy compared to the downtown cafeterias. “When I’m on campus here, I certainly don’t skip meals necessarily as much as I would downtown,” he said. Côté agreed, adding, “I really enjoy Twigs and the Ceilidh. But then again, they close at like, [3:00] p.m […] let’s say you have a class that finishes at 5:30. If you want to grab something to eat, everything’s closed.” 

Students on campus are working to fill the gap left by the administration, but face a lack of institutional support. Côté is the co-president of Happy Belly, a volunteer-run organization that provides free vegan meals on Thursday mornings and gives out leftover perishables on-campus. “We can’t address the whole food desert problem because I feel like we’re just kind of a bandaid on a womb,” she expressed. “We only cook one evening a week […] we can’t serve everybody on campus.” They cannot provide more meals because they rely on volunteers. 

Liptay is a member of the Macdonald Student-Run Ecological Gardens (MSEG), a fully student-run vegetable farm that sells to hundreds of members of the McGill, Montreal, and Sainte-Anne communities, and experiences similar challenges. “It’s really hard, this choice between  […] not pay[ing] anybody enough money at the farm and also feel[ing] like we’re selling our vegetables for too much money,” he described. MSEG has always provided a student discount and is offering five half-priced Community Supported Agriculture baskets this summer and fall in order to improve accessibility. 

Finding a balance between eating sustainably and affordably is a common struggle at Macdonald campus. Marché Sainte-Anne is a year-round farmers’ market that students and residents can access, but maintains a higher price point. The Mac Market also sells produce from the Macdonald Horticultural Center from July to November. 

Macdonald campus offers numerous classes on food topics. “A lot of people get more involved in food systems and realize how much work goes into making a good food system and paying more money for good food,” Liptay noted. “But there’s also this problem of food insecurity and people not being able to afford food and skipping meals.”

The academic focus on food security leads to many student-led initiatives, such as the Ceilidh, Happy Belly, MSEG, and Buy Your Own Bulk, which provides zero-waste dry food at an affordable price. However, much of this programming is unable to expand due to inadequate administrative support. Song explained that Ceilidh would likely be unable to increase its hours while covering costs and accommodating the student-workers’ schedules. Côté mentioned that she could not implement a composting project she was working on, expressing that “it’s always a lack of funding that kind of comes into play.” 

“We don’t get any money from the university apart from the land [… ] So it doesn’t really feel like I’m running a lovely educational experience for students, which is kind of what you’d hope at a university,” Liptay added. “It feels like I’m running a business that also has to deal with [bureaucratic processes] from the university.”

Working to solve food access can be daunting for students both downtown and at Macdonald campus. “Students are organizing against the food desert situation in general, but then it’s really hard because it also involves the cities and municipalities and bigger scale governance,” Côté said. “Student groups and student organization can go a really long way in creating change, but I also know with the high turnover that there is in any university, it’s hard to maintain organization,” Liptay described. 

Students in MSEG spend their first growing season as apprentices learning from the managers, then become managers their second growing season. This cyclical management system has allowed MSEG to continue running for more than 10 years. Liptay called for similar “institutional avenues of student participation in decision making and governance” at McGill. 

He added, “The most important part for me is for McGill to allow space for students to be more directly involved in their food system and have the opportunity and be encouraged to operate student-run cafes, food spaces, and food systems.”

The post Food Access on Macdonald Campus appeared first on The McGill Daily.

Their last meeting, which took  place on January 25, focused on the importance of institutional memory in considering campus food prices and accessibility prior to the pandemic, addressing the increase in cafeteria food prices, and the need to spread awareness of the ‘food crisis’ at McGill. 

Wednesday’s meeting discussed the various food related groups at McGill and the importance of joining forces to increase their impact. Organizations like SNAC, Midnight Kitchen (MK), McGill MealCare, and Le Petit Marché Étudiant, all work towards similar goals: providing affordable, sustainable produce to students, increasing food accessibility on campus, diverting food waste, and closing the gap between food producers and consumers. In 2013, the Concordia Food Coalition was formed, which unites disconnected groups advocating for food accessibility within Concordia University. The coalition oversees the Concordia Farmers Market, and incubates student-led initiatives including the Hive Cafe Co-op. They also oversee research on topics related to campus food sustainability and sovereignty as well as extensive needs assessments, surveys and interviews of Concordia food groups. The meeting members noted the importance of looking to Concordia for inspiration regarding their fight for food justice in Montreal. 

Members at the meeting specifically called attention to the need for more research and surveys to get a better sense of the student bodies’ perception on food accessibility. The most recent survey done regarding food and dining services was conducted in Winter 2018, of which the Daily was shared a copy of the results. The purpose of the survey was “to better understand the needs/expectations of the McGill community and identify opportunities for improvement in order to enhance services offered.” Notably, the results show that value for money followed by quality of food and beverages and general cleanliness ranked as the most important aspects of food services on campus, at a rate of 93 per cent, 90 per cent, and 90 per cent, respectively. Specialty beverages and fair trade products ranked as the least important aspects as 46 and 35 per cent of participants respectfully labelled them as ‘not very or not at all important.’ Furthermore, when asked about the performance of certain aspects of food services on campus, 76 per cent of respondents listed ‘value for money’ as ‘fair or poor’, while 6 per cent ranked ‘value for money’ as ‘excellent or very good’. Conversely, customer service and general cleanliness were ranked most frequently as the ‘excellent or very good’ aspects of campus food services at rates of 42 per cent and 40 per cent respectfully. Those present at the meeting called attention to the need for a more recent survey to be done, given the recent rapid inflation affecting food prices and the increased meal plan cost. Attention was also called to the  UBC 2022 Academic Experience Survey that indicated that approximately 40 per cent of undergraduate students and 50 per cent of graduate students feel food insecure. The group at the meeting called attention to the need for a similar study at McGill to assess the status of food security of its students. 

While representatives of Midnight Kitchen were present at the last meeting, none were present at this one. However, the importance of Midnight Kitchen was highlighted. Midnight Kitchen reopened in September after its closure due to COVID. In 2018 Midnight Kitchen had been forced to reduce its operations since March 2018 due to renovations occurring in the University Centre where their base was held at the time. During the pandemic, MK moved its services to focus as an emergency food bank. Prior to COVID, in 2019, Midnight Kitchen was able to serve about 300 meals weekly for pickup, and before 2019, they were serving up to 1,000 meals weekly. Now, that number has reduced to 50 meals per week due to budgetary issues, according to members at Wednesday’s meeting. Beyond its biweekly free vegan lunch offerings, MK provides free catering services for events that align with its political mandate, operates a garden seasonally, and hosts workshops and lectures relating to food preparation and security. Similarly, Concordia’s People’s Potato, a collectively-run soup kitchen offering vegan meals to students and community members, was noted. 

The last issue on the agenda for the meeting concerned the high cafeteria prices. Members at the meeting placed part of the blame for high prices on the privatization of dining services on campus. Most recently, in 2014, the private company Compass became a provider for food services at McGill. While Concordia’s food services are provided by Aramark, which served McGill until 2014, the university maintains multiple student-run food cooperatives including the Hive and Reggies. 

The next food security meeting will take place in person and online on Wednesday, February 8, the location will be determined. Follow @ssmu_ea on instagram for updates.

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