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Living Wage Report 2025
The 2025 Living Wage report is out today. The living wage for Metro Vancouver ($27.85 an hour) is now $10 higher than BC’s minimum wage. And Metro Vancouver is not even the most expensive place in BC—that distinction goes to Whistler ($29.60) and Squamish ($28).
This report—a collaboration between BC Policy Solutions and Living Wage BC —outlines concrete steps the government can take to close the gap between the minimum and the living wage. These measures balance efforts to lift wages with investments that reduce household costs: more affordable housing, universal $10-a-day child care, free transit for youth under 18 and publicly funded pharmacare and mental health services. These aren’t just social programs, they are economic infrastructure that enable workers and their families to thrive.
Let’s Keep Growing Together: 18 Years of Farm to School BC
November 25, 2025
For nearly two decades, Farm to School BC has helped children across British Columbia grow, cook, and eat healthy, local food while connecting classrooms to farms and students to the land that sustains us. What began as a small seed of an idea has blossomed into a province-wide movement, nurturing food literacy, supporting local farmers, and inspiring a generation to make healthier choices. Hundreds of K-12 schools in BC have leveraged F2SBC annual grants to create lasting change, turning modest investments into major gains for student well-being and community health.
We are calling on the Government of British Columbia to renew and restore funding for Farm to School BC so this vital work can continue for another 18 years and beyond.
Sign the open letter today to help keep food literacy and healthy eating growing in our schools.
We invite parents, educators, farmers, and community partners to stand with us in celebrating 18 years of success and to speak up for the next generation.
Petition for mandatory labelling of GMOs in Canada.
The Canadian Biotechnology Action Network (CBAN) and the group Kids Right to Know have launched a Parliamentary e-petition (e-6768) calling for mandatory labelling of all genetically engineered (genetically modified or GM) foods in Canada, including those produced with new gene editing techniques like CRISPR. Sign the petition today!
There are only five GM crops (corn, soy, canola, sugar beet, and alfalfa) grown in Canada and only three GM fruits and vegetables on the market, with a very marginal presence in Canadian grocery stores (GM sweet corn, papaya, and pineapple). However, the new genetic engineering techniques of gene editing could soon mean the sale of many new genetically modified organisms (GMOs).
We need mandatory labelling for transparency and choice in the food system. This is even more important now because recent deregulation of most foods from plants engineered by gene editing technology means that many new GMOs could soon enter the market without safety assessments or notification to the government.
The petition is open for signatures until November 3, 2025. Demand transparency and choice. Sign and share petition e-6768.
For more information and tools to help promote the petition, visit cban.ca/labelling.
Basic Income Now
Canada already provides income security for low-income seniors through Old Age Security (OAS) and the Guaranteed Income Supplement (GIS), and also supplements low-income families with children through the Canada Child Benefit (CCB).
We now need a livable Basic Income Guarantee (BIG) for low-income working-age Canadians to ensure everyone has an income sufficient to meet their basic needs, including food security and live with dignity, regardless of their work status.
Five years ago, the PEI legislature developed an all-party agreement to support and work with the federal government to develop and implement a basic income guarantee for PEI.
There is significant potential in the PEI’s proposed a 5-7-year demonstration project, which could advance and inform the development of a national Guaranteed Livable income benefit that is cost shared and administered in collaboration with provincial, territorial, and First Nation governments.
Contact the Vancouver Food Justice Coalition to join our Parliamentary petition calling on the government to advance the PEI basic income demonstration project
No More Scraps: Because Food is a Right Not a Privilege
Too many people in Canada are struggling to put food on the table and, with the current economic uncertainty around tariffs, the crisis is deepening. Wages are already too low, rents are unaffordable for many, and grocery prices are rising still further.
Right now, one in four Canadians is food insecure, with Indigenous and Black communities facing much higher levels.
For years, governments haven’t done enough to fix things. Instead of making sure everyone can afford food, people are expected to rely on food banks and charity—temporary measures that were never meant to be a long-term solution and won’t be enough to get us through a sustained economic crisis.
In a country as rich as Canada, no one should have to choose between paying rent or buying groceries. No one should have to skip meals or feed their kids cheap, unhealthy food because it’s all they can afford.
This isn’t just bad luck—it’s a failure of policy. We need a future where every person, no matter where they live or how much they make, can afford to eat.
Put Food Banks Out Of Business
The Put Food Banks Out Of Business campaign is a group of food bank and food policy leaders urging all candidates and political parties to include a guaranteed liveable basic income in their party platform in the upcoming federal election.
Governments have been failing Canadians and food banks have been doing our best to pick up the slack. But we shouldn’t be here. The food security of people in Canada should not rest on the shoulders of private charities and individual donors.
A guaranteed liveable basic income is the single most impactful policy for alleviating food insecurity. People are food insecure because they don’t have enough money. Hunger is a result of poverty.
BC can't afford to leave women workers behind
BC Centre For Family Equity
The COVID-19 pandemic hit lone mother-led families hard and we are seeing the impacts now. The child poverty rate in lone parent-led families in BC has worsened with a whopping 12.6% increase (First Call, 2024). We call for a suite of proactive policies and programs that remove barriers and build bridges to the labour market to ensure lone mothers' economic inclusion, end the cycle of family poverty and strengthen BC's economy now at a time of economic uncertainty.