/ Food security

Policy Brief: Time to regulate food prices like a utility

• Jesse Rosenberg, Rishika Wadehra and Kwame McKenzie
An empty shopping cart in a grocery store aisle.

Access to affordable food is a health equity issue. In this policy brief, Jesse Rosenberg, Rishika Wadehra and Dr. Kwame McKenzie recommend the Government of Canada set a price for a basket of nutritious food at a level which every household can afford and require grocers to make that basket available, at that price or below, in every region of the country.

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Jesse Rosenberg

Jesse Rosenberg

Jesse Rosenberg is a legal and policy professional with political and policy experience in the fields of health, labour and justice. Director of Policy at the Wellesley Institute, Jesse previously held leadership roles with the government of Ontario and the Ontario College of Trades. He has extensive experience and expertise in stakeholder relations and legislative and regulatory development and analysis. He holds a Bachelor of Humanities from Carleton University and a Juris Doctor from Osgoode Hall.

Rishika Wadehra

Rishika Wadehra

Rishika Wadehra was a Policy Officer at Wellesley Institute from 2023 to 2025. He holds a Master of Public Policy from the Munk School of Global Affairs and Public Policy at the University of Toronto. Prior to joining Wellesley Institute, she completed a fellowship at the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives, and worked as a research assistant at the University of Toronto’s Centre for Global Social Policy, where she researched how different regions have responded to the growing demands for care work and its implications on gender inequality, racialization, the labour market and population health.

Kwame McKenzie

Kwame McKenzie

Dr. Kwame McKenzie is CEO of Wellesley Institute, which works in research and policy to improve health and health equity in the Greater Toronto Area. A practicing psychiatrist, he also holds positions as a full Professor at the University of Toronto and as the Director of Health Equity at the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health (CAMH). As an international expert on the social causes of illness and the development of equitable social policy and health systems, Dr. McKenzie has advised health, housing, education and social services ministers in Canada and the U.K. and has authored more than 260 peer reviewed papers and six books. He is a member of the National Advisory Council on Poverty, and recently co-chaired Canada’s Expert Task Force on Substance Use. He has also worked as a consultant to the World Health Organization. Dr. McKenzie has been a columnist for The Guardian and The Times and a presenter for BBC Radio, and he is regularly published in the Toronto Star.