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Prior to the COVID–19 outbreak, food insecurity was already a serious public health problem in Canada, impacting 12.7 percent of households. In recent years, activists, practitioners and researchers from a range of health–related disciplines, have debated the legitimacy of food banks and other charitable food programs, contending that policy and programs at the federal level must be prioritized to address the underlying root causes of poverty. This paper challenges the discourse that charitable food programs prevent or distract from Canada's social equity goals. Alternatively, this paper argues that programs and initiatives at the local level can emerge to bring short–term stability and self–sufficiency to local communities while also advocating for longer–term structural change. Drawing upon structuration theory and critical ecologies of anti–Black racism, we examine the work of BlackFoodToronto, a food sovereignty initiative, to illustrate the negotiation of power and agency, and how groups and networks react to and reshape confining and enabling structures through collaborative practice. In addressing Canada's food security crisis, this paper offers an alternative perspective of community–based, nonprofit and charitable programs, which in practice, can help inform future food security policy and related health equity and community development strategies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In January 2017, the 'abortion pill' was finally used legally in Canada. This paper provides a sociotechnical analysis of the controversy surrounding RU486 in Canada, focusing on its entry into public discourse, 1990-1995. The case study draws primarily on statements made about the pill, both in Canadian media and in various actors' print communications. Using approaches from science and technology studies, the analysis identifies the multiple human and nonhuman actors, their discursive mobilizations of RU486 and each other, and their contingent alliances, illustrating how RU486 mediates and shapes the communication that attempts to define it. Unpacking the network's complexity illuminates how these sense-making practices established the early setting of the technology's path, a first step in understanding why Canada has been a laggard in making the pill available. The discussion illustrates the tensions, instabilities, and reversals in the network that have hindered RU486's movement from development to diffusion. Finally, the paper suggests a framework for future sociological research on controversial reproductive technologies in their shift from discursive to material diffusion, one that recognises the integral role of women as users. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]