By Courtney Strutt, Community Food Systems Coordinator, Food Action Network of Northwestern Ontario
It’s January 2027 and a major snowstorm rolls across Northwestern Ontario, requiring people to shelter in place and making it difficult for food and supplies to enter the city. How will Thunder Bay ensure people are fed, especially those most vulnerable to the emergency situation?
In November 2023, representatives from several food access organizations, in partnership with the City of Thunder Bay, ratified the first version of the Emergency Food Plan (EFP) for Thunder Bay as a way to collaboratively tackle the complex challenge of food access during emergencies. Not only was this the first version of an EFP for our city, but it is also the first municipal level emergency food plan in the country.
The purpose of the EFP is to coordinate key civil society actors to address food access challenges and associated impacts on health and wellbeing during emergency events at a local level. When activated, the EFP response seeks to operate from a single collaborative table, ensure barrier free and dignified access to food for anyone who needs it, and support the return of food access programs and services as quickly as possible.
An important part of maintaining and stewarding the EFP is conducting an annual tabletop exercise where primary partners enact a simulation. The EFP’s first two tabletop exercises focused on extreme weather events – extreme heat in November 2023, and extreme cold with a snow event in December 2024.
The impacts of climate change mean that extreme weather events are increasingly becoming more regular and a threat to community safety, including access to food. A part of ensuring that our community’s EFP is prepared to respond to the impacts of an extreme weather event locally is to assess the hazards and risks within our community in relation to people’s ability to access and/or safely prepare food.
During a response to an extreme weather event, the EFP can help get food to people who may have to shelter in place for their health and safety; safely prepare and distribute food during power outages; support municipal efforts with wider scale warming or cooling centres in relation to food and water; and act as a flexible body with wide-reaching, localized human and infrastructural resources to help provide food to larger parts of the population during challenging circumstances.
In the era of a changing climate, collaborative initiatives like the EFP ensure that our community has strategies in place to build resilience and preparedness for disruption. The primary partners of the EFP meet annually to practice, prepare, update and steward the EFP to ensure its relevance in keeping our community fed in emergencies, whether a major snowstorm in 2027 or any other disruptions headed our way.
For more information on the EFP, visit the Thunder Bay + Area Food Strategy’s website www.tbfoodstrategy.com/emergencyfood
