Has incumbent Toronto mayor Olivia Chow never heard of food stamps?
· Toronto Sun
How’s that for food for thought.
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At Toronto’s first major mayoral debate of the 2026 election campaign, incumbent Olivia Chow shook her hands and shrugged in apparent confusion when asked if Canada should borrow from U.S. policy and “make the move to food stamps.”
“Food stamps?” Chow asked. “What’s that?”
The question came during a yes-or-no round of Monday night’s debate hosted by the Daily Bread Food Bank in Etobicoke. The other candidates on the stage, Brad Bradford and Chris Alexander, both held up signs saying “no.”
“Just put no,” Bradford told Chow as Toronto’s incumbent mayor wore a pained expression.
The Toronto Sun has asked Chow’s campaign if the mayor is unfamiliar with the term – the U.S. has officially called it the supplemental nutrition assistance program (SNAP) since 2008 – or perhaps misheard the debate moderator. Chow’s representatives have yet to respond.
Bradford’s team found it an odd response from someone who “has been an elected politician for more than 40 years at virtually every level of government.”
“While it’s something Brad Bradford has come to understand and oppose,” a representative for the campaign said in a statement Tuesday, “you’ll have to ask Mayor Chow why she couldn’t answer a number of the very straightforward yes-or-no questions the moderator put to her.”
How out of touch do you have to be to go to a debate organized by a food bank and not know what food stamps are? 🤔 https://t.co/DYJQxydGaP
— Ben Smith (@atBenSmith) September 15, 2026
Is incumbent mayor ‘out of touch?’
Chow’s non-answer drew some attention on social media. Political strategist Ben Smith asked on X : “How out of touch do you have to be to go to a debate organized by a food bank and not know what food stamps are?”
That drew a defence from the executive director of the Broadbent Institute, a think-tank aligned with the NDP. (Chow served as an NDP MP before her return to Toronto City Hall.)
“How out of touch do you have to be to think that a niche U.S. program is common knowledge in Canada?” Jen Hassum replied on X on Tuesday morning.
It’s hard to argue that food stamps, in place in the U.S. since 1939 and a byword for modern poverty, are “niche.” (In case it’s unclear: The program previously distributed coupons and now uses what are called “electronic benefit transfers” to allow Americans in need to obtain food without payment.)
The term “food stamp” has appeared in local coverage of the Sun at least 28 times since 1990 and about as often in the National Post during its history, not including stories from wire agencies such as Reuters or The Associated Press. Despite that, it appears that not once had the Sun or the Post previously seen the need to explain what “food stamps” are in an article.
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Phrase often appears in media coverage
The phrase also appears often in articles from news outlets that Chow is more likely to prefer. The CBC’s website lists dozens of articles including the term, while a recent search of the Toronto Star ’s website returned a whopping 592 results for the phrase, many of them wire stories from The Associated Press.
Chow also can’t really claim to be uninterested in U.S. politics and policies.
At Monday’s debate, she reaffirmed her commitment to city hall running grocery stores – a policy city council cribbed from another staunch leftist mayor, New York’s Zohran Mamdani.
She also led a quixotic charge to keep U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents from coming to Toronto during the World Cup, despite Washington’s insistence that such a thing was never in the plans.
That U.S. law enforcement agency was only formed a few decades ago following the 9/11 terror attacks. Interestingly, a search by Google’s Ngram Viewer tool suggests the phrase “food stamps,” even after the SNAP renaming, remains a much more common part of the collective vocabulary than the ICE agency.