Our dear students,
The People’s Potato has put forward a referendum question in the CSU by-elections, asking for a fee levy increase of $0.16. This will raise the fee levy from $0.49 cents to $0.65 cents per credit, to be implemented with registration for the Winter 2025 term. You will find the question in your Concordia portal, and you will receive an email with the link to vote, during the polling period of November 19th (starting at 9:00) to November 21st (ending at 21:00).
The People’s Potato’s goal is to alleviate food insecurity for Concordia students, chiefly by providing a free daily meal service to over 400 Concordia students Monday-Thursday throughout the school year. We also provide free bi-weekly emergency food baskets, solidarity servings to different community groups and organizations both on and off campus, host a summer garden project, workshops, and more. The primary reason for our fee levy increase is because we want to provide our services 5 days per week (as we have in the past) while participating in the transformation of Concordia’s food system, but we have not increased our fee levy since 2009. With 67% of Concordia students facing food insecurity and food prices on the rise (grocery stores prices have seen a 20% price increase in two years!), there has never been a more pressing time to address this issue head on.
The demand for free food services like ours has only increased alongside the increase in the costs of food, and we want to keep expanding our services and ensure that there are accessible, healthy, free food options on campus. We are a relatively small team and we only have so much capacity to meet the ever-increasing demand for our services. It has been over a decade since our last fee levy increase (2009). This fee levy would help us hire more people to our team, which in turn could help us: increase the number of emergency food baskets we give out, increase the amount of meals we give out, diversify the food options we give out and be able to source food from more sustainable and local producers, do more servings outside the kitchen, and more.
Sources:
https://www150.statcan.gc.ca/n1/pub/36-28-0001/2023007/article/00005-eng.htm
https://www.concordia.ca/content/dam/concordia/services/sustainability/docs/Hub/Strategic/Student-Food-Insecurity-Report-2023.pdf
https://www.concordia.ca/content/dam/concordia/services/sustainability/docs/Hub/Strategic/Student-Food-Insecurity-Report-2023.pdf
https://www150.statcan.gc.ca/n1/pub/36-28-0001/2023007/article/00005-eng.htm
https://cdn.dal.ca/content/dam/dalhousie/pdf/sites/agri-food/End%20of%20year%20survey%20EN.pdf
https://theconcordian.com/2001/04/potato-gets-bigger-share/
https://foodbankscanada.ca/hungercount/
The People’s Potato has put forward a referendum question in the CSU by-elections, asking for a fee levy increase of $0.16. This will raise the fee levy from $0.49 cents to $0.65 cents per credit, to be implemented with registration for the Winter 2025 term. You will find the question in your Concordia portal, and you will receive an email with the link to vote, during the polling period of November 19th (starting at 9:00) to November 21st (ending at 21:00).
The People’s Potato’s goal is to alleviate food insecurity for Concordia students, chiefly by providing a free daily meal service to over 400 Concordia students Monday-Thursday throughout the school year. We also provide free bi-weekly emergency food baskets, solidarity servings to different community groups and organizations both on and off campus, host a summer garden project, workshops, and more. The primary reason for our fee levy increase is because we want to provide our services 5 days per week (as we have in the past) while participating in the transformation of Concordia’s food system, but we have not increased our fee levy since 2009. With 67% of Concordia students facing food insecurity and food prices on the rise (grocery stores prices have seen a 20% price increase in two years!), there has never been a more pressing time to address this issue head on.
The demand for free food services like ours has only increased alongside the increase in the costs of food, and we want to keep expanding our services and ensure that there are accessible, healthy, free food options on campus. We are a relatively small team and we only have so much capacity to meet the ever-increasing demand for our services. It has been over a decade since our last fee levy increase (2009). This fee levy would help us hire more people to our team, which in turn could help us: increase the number of emergency food baskets we give out, increase the amount of meals we give out, diversify the food options we give out and be able to source food from more sustainable and local producers, do more servings outside the kitchen, and more.
Sources:
https://www150.statcan.gc.ca/n1/pub/36-28-0001/2023007/article/00005-eng.htm
https://www.concordia.ca/content/dam/concordia/services/sustainability/docs/Hub/Strategic/Student-Food-Insecurity-Report-2023.pdf
https://www.concordia.ca/content/dam/concordia/services/sustainability/docs/Hub/Strategic/Student-Food-Insecurity-Report-2023.pdf
https://www150.statcan.gc.ca/n1/pub/36-28-0001/2023007/article/00005-eng.htm
https://cdn.dal.ca/content/dam/dalhousie/pdf/sites/agri-food/End%20of%20year%20survey%20EN.pdf
https://theconcordian.com/2001/04/potato-gets-bigger-share/
https://foodbankscanada.ca/hungercount/