Daily Bread Food Bank, together with community partners LAMP Community Health Centre and Scarborough United Neighbourhoods, is hosting Toronto’s first mayoral debate of the 2026 municipal election on Monday, September 14, from 7:00–8:30 pm at Daily Bread Food Bank.
The debate, moderated by Daily Bread CEO Neil Hetherington, will focus on some of the most pressing issues facing Toronto, including poverty, affordability, housing, food insecurity and human rights.
To determine which candidates would be invited to participate, Daily Bread used polling conducted by Liaison Strategies, with a 5% polling threshold for inclusion in the debate. As of August 20, the following three candidates met that threshold and confirmed their participation:
More information about the debate participant selection process is available here.
As a non-partisan organization, we recognize the limitations of polling and want to provide opportunities for other registered candidates to share with Torontonians why they are running and their vision for the city. All registered candidates for whom an email address was publicly available through the City of Toronto were invited to submit a written statement of up to 250 words, along with their social media handles and/or campaign website.
Candidates were also invited to display campaign materials in a designated space at the debate, with equal space available to each participating candidate.
If you are a registered candidate who did not have an email address publicly available through the City of Toronto and therefore did not receive our invitation, please contact us at [email protected].
We will post candidate statements on this page in alphabetical order by last name.
The following statements do not reflect Daily Bread Food Bank’s position, nor does their publication represent an endorsement of any candidate. Statements have been provided by the candidates and are posted unedited.
Toronto’s food insecurity crisis is fundamentally an affordability crisis. Too many residents are struggling with the rising costs of housing, transportation, groceries, and everyday necessities, forcing difficult choices that no one should have to make.
As Mayor, I would focus on addressing the root causes of poverty by increasing housing affordability, supporting good jobs, improving access to transit, and ensuring city services work better for the people who depend on them. A stronger Toronto is one where people can afford to live, work, raise a family, and build a future.
I also believe Toronto should pursue innovative approaches to food security. Through what I call “Crunch and Munch Toronto,” I would explore opportunities to use waste heat from AI datacentres to support year-round greenhouses and controlled-environment agriculture, helping increase local food production, strengthen food security, and make healthy food more affordable for residents.
My goal is simple: a Toronto where prosperity is widely shared, affordability improves, and fewer people need emergency food support because they have access to opportunity, stability, and hope.
Food bank visits in this city are at record highs not because people have stopped working, but because incomes have not kept pace with rent, groceries, and transit. That is a policy failure, and City Hall has a role in fixing it, even on a file the province and federal government also touch.
If elected, I will: press the province to raise social assistance rates to reflect the real cost of living in Toronto; protect and grow funding for frontline agencies and food programs rather than treating them as the first cut in tight budgets; accelerate deeply affordable and supportive housing, so families aren’t choosing between rent and groceries; support living-wage and decent-work standards for city contracts; expand mental health and addiction treatment outreach and defend transit affordability programs like Fair Pass, which determine whether someone can get to work or a food bank at all.
Most importantly, I will treat food insecurity as an outcome to be measured and reduced, not a service to be quietly outsourced to your volunteers and donors. To accomplish this effectively, the City needs new revenue sources. A property tax base is insufficient to meet the service needs in Toronto. Go to electdarrellbrown.ca to see how this can be accomplished.
The core drivers of food insecurity in Toronto are structural, rooted in precarious employment, stagnant wages and inadequate social assistance. These financial strains are compounded by a lack of affordable housing, leaving too many Torontonians with almost nothing left for groceries after paying rent. Charity alone cannot solve a crisis of this magnitude. Eradicating food insecurity demands immediate, coordinated public policy interventions from all levels of government to secure affordable housing and establish liveable income supports.
The City has an opportunity to tackle food insecurity head on by working with community partners to scale up local food production and distribution networks. On the production side, Toronto should invest more in urban agriculture, including funding for expanded community gardens, new greenhouses and vertical farming initiatives. The City should also explore tax incentives for properties dedicated to food cultivation. On the distribution side, the City should support community-run markets and co-ops and explore opportunities for local food hubs. These are not pie-in-the-sky ideas but viable ways to feed the Torontonians. Enhancing local production and distribution would promote food sovereignty and decrease reliance on unstable, commercial supply chains, giving more control to local communities to directly combat food insecurity.
Fighting poverty starts with real solutions: affordable housing for newcomers, free training, and faster pathways into jobs that match their skills. Engineers, doctors, nurses and other professionals should have a fair path to work and contribute.
Food poverty in Toronto isn’t just about food. It’s about families having enough money to buy food after paying the rent, keeping the lights on, and getting to and from work.
If we want to truly tackle hunger, we need to provide help while addressing the real reasons kids go to bed hungry. I volunteered at the FYFB for over a year, making a hot lunch for about 100 people on Fridays. During that time, I saw the snaking lineup outside double and then triple within a matter of months.
As mayor, I’ll further support the food banks, community organizations and neighbourhood programs that are helping right now. I’ll also support the rollout of a universal school food program, so that every child has access to a healthy meal to kick off the school day.
But food banks alone can’t bear the brunt of Torontonians not making a living wage or having affordable housing. I’ll push for income supports that match the real cost of living, and build much more affordable housing. And for those counting on Ontario Works and the Ontario Disability Support Program funds, we’ll see that the payments match inflation. I want Toronto to be a city where everyone eats well, and not just for survival but for health and enjoyment.
Emergency food programs are extremely important. But the best food-security policy will be the one that makes emergency food assistance a thing of the past.
Toronto is a rich city that still has a line outside the food bank. That is not a vibe. That is a failure. People are working and still choosing between rent and groceries. I walk out the door and I can feel it. Everybody is a little braced.
I am not going to pretend a speech from City Hall feeds anybody. Food banks exist because housing is too expensive, paycheques are too thin, and the street does not feel safe enough to build a life on. If you are hungry, you are not thinking about a bike lane. You are thinking about the next meal and whether your kid can sleep.
I will treat violent crime like it is the first job of a city, because a city that cannot keep people safe cannot keep people housed. I will put fiscal discipline on every agency, board, and council. Expenses get scrutinized. Waste gets cut. That money belongs in houses and in the services people actually use, not in a machine that congratulates itself.
Axe the tax that is crushing the people who still live here. Build the houses. Not a ten-year slogan. Actual units.
