Toward a New Era of Values-Based Purchasing: Welcome to Fasken Law & Buy Social Canada

We are building an ever-stronger team to bring values-based procurement  to Canadian health care. Today we are delighted to officially welcome Fasken Law and Buy Social Canada as project partners to one of our five Nourish collaborative projects.

The values-based procurement team's scan of best-in-class social procurement language is currently underway. Under the leadership of Buy Social Canada's David Le Page and Maija FIorante, the scan will cover provincial, domestic, and international examples of language that harnesses a public buyer's purchasing power to procure foods that support the health of patients, communities, and planet.

With the legal expertise of award-winning firm Fasken Law, led by Kathryn Beck, Vanessa Mui, and Daniel Fabiano, we will bring this research to life by developing and open-sourcing tested language for adoption by health care food purchasers.

We will develop, test, and open-source two sustainable procurement tools: one to support organizations with self-operated food services and one for organizations with outsourced food services. Creation and testing of two procurement tools aims to support the sector to break out of the current cost-driven process that defines healthcare food purchasing. Our goal is to advance more responsible procurement of healthy, sustainable and tasty meals for health care. Similar to our peers in the Nourish Sustainable Menus project, we are interested in the social, economic, and environmental dimensions of sustainability.

Over the next months, we will be recruiting health care sites to test the contract language developed by our team. Please send us a note through the Get in touch form if you are interested in being a beta-test site or would like to become otherwise involved.

With the growing circle of engagement around this project, so too is our confidence growing that we urgently need to bridge the gap between our desire and our capacity to bring our values more fully to life in our public institutions. 

We will develop, test, and open-source two sustainable procurement tools: one to support organizations with self-operated food services and one for organizations with outsourced food services... We urgently need to bridge the gap between our desire and our capacity to bring our values more fully to life in our public institutions. 

We couldn't be happier to be joined by Fasken and Buy Social as we continue on this journey. 

We're Hiring (again): Traditional & Country Food Programs Advocacy Coordinator

The Traditional & Country Foods collaborative project team is hiring a coordinator to support their project to meet the growing demand from institutions that want to learn how to deliver culturally-safe traditional and country food programs. The full job posting is here.

Current colonial regulations make it difficult for Indigenous People to access their traditional foods in many health care settings. Our team believes that “to deny one’s food is to deny them of their culture.” While some health care facilities have taken leadership in establishing Traditional Food Programs (TFP), these facilities have been overwhelmed with requests to share information about their TFPs.

To meet this growing interest across the country to develop capacity to deliver TFPs, this team will create an Advocacy Resource to empower health leaders within organizations to start or expand traditional food programs across the country. The advocacy resource will build on existing resources and aims to support senior leadership and food service teams in health organizations to meaningfully develop culturally-safe traditional and country food programs.

The resource will provide relevant background information and linkages to the Truth and Reconciliation Commission Calls to Action, and will provide managers and senior leaders with the appropriate tools to address the political and systemic barriers associated with thoughtfully developing TFPs. In addition, the resource will provide technical and “best practice” guidelines related to sourcing, processing, food production, service, storage, food safety, and traceability of country/wild (non-inspected) foods.

The team seeks a a consultant with knowledge of Indigenous traditional/country foods and healthcare system; experience working with Indigenous populations and an understanding of colonialism and its impacts on present day Indigenous health outcomes; excellent communication and bridge-building skills. 

The full job posting is here. Deadline to apply is April 4. 

If you are a potential contributor or user of this resource, you can get in touch with the team by emailing: nourishTFP[at]gmail.com. 

Wanted: Legal researcher to advance values-based procurement

One of Nourish's five national collaborative projects is hiring a contract legal researcher with an interest in public procurement and food systems sustainability. This is for an ambitious cohort-led project to build capacity for more values-based food procurement in public institutions. 

The core team for this project, made up of institutional food buyers and food service managers, is looking to hire a researcher who understands public procurement practices, process, and relevant policies to produce. The selected researcher will complete a comprehensive national and international scan on best in-class sustainable language in public procurement. Supported by the core team and advisors, the researcher will also work with a lawyer to help produce national RFP models for beta-testing this year. 

The detailed job description can be found here. Please share with motivated, mission-aligned candidates in your network.

Deadline to submit a proposed scope of work is March 22.