By Steve Macleod | Photo via Walmart Stores
The disgruntled, disassembled Occupy [insert city name here] folks might want to tear a page from the staying power handbook of Canada’s food banks.
Food banks first began sprouting up in the early ‘80s, mainly serving as a temporary measure during a tough economic stretch – there are roughly 900 of them in Canada today.
“The goal was to feed people,” says James McAra, chief executive of the Calgary Food Bank. “People cared and they looked around at the economic situation. People were seeing the loss of employment, the loss of opportunity and said we can get through this.”
It has been 30 years since the seeds of these charitable food organizations were planted and the temporary solution has become a permanent support system in many communities. Prior to the emergence of food banks, the role of feeding people who were hungry primarily fell at the doorstep of religious institutions.
The need for help, however, was growing in Calgary and in 1982 religious leaders in the city decided to team up. Rather than compete for donations and surplus foodstuffs, they banded together through the Calgary Inter-Faith Community Action Association to create a food bank. “It’s almost like a bad joke: a priest, a nun and a rabbi got together…” McAra says.
Elaine Power figures the bad joke has run its course. She authored an opinion piece that ran in the Globe and Mail back in July, suggesting it was time to shutter all the food banks in Canada. It was a pretty heavy debate to start on a Monday morning, but the comments section online filled up fast and opinion pieces responding to the article from various food banks across the country were published shortly after.
The Queen’s University professor wasn’t providing an amateur outside perspective. She’s studied poverty and hunger for 18 years. She’s also volunteered at food banks and even served time on the board of directors with the Partners in Mission Food Bank in Kingston, Ont.
Her argument for closing the food banks in Canada, which can be read here, is less to do with distaste for food banks, but rather the larger problem of poverty and hunger that she feels is not being addressed by society. So, rather than continuing to rely on a solution that was meant to be temporary to feed hungry citizens, Power suggests we close food banks, roll up our sleeves and deal with the root causes of poverty and hunger.
She’s not alone, either, in thinking we’re not paying as much attention to poverty as we should. Graham Riches, a professor at the University of British Columbia, had similar – albeit less extreme – thoughts years ago. Back in 2002, he wrote a commentary piece for the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives, titled BC Governments Must Not Leave Problem of Hunger to Food Banks. “Food banks clearly perform a much-needed and worthwhile charitable function. Yet we mustn’t be lulled into thinking they are solving the problem,” Riches wrote. “The goal of food banks is to meet emergency food needs as best they can, not to deal with the underlying causes of poverty and hunger.”
The Calgary Food Bank’s McAra agrees with the sentiment, but not with Power’s method. “If people don’t want them, we’ll be the first to close our doors. But if you haven’t addressed the underlying issues of poverty, another one will pop up somewhere else,” he says. “Don’t confuse the role of food distribution with that of public policy. Until civil society and government get the intestinal fortitude to make policies to address poverty, food banks will be around.”
Since the Calgary Food Bank registered as a not-for-profit organization in 1989, the requests for its services haven’t abated. In 2000, the organization doled out about $10 million worth of food. Just last year, in 2010, the Calgary Food Bank provided its highest total of support with $25.3 million of food.
Most of that food is spread around pretty evenly. McAra says about 85 per cent of people who arrive at the Calgary Food Bank only use the service two or three times. “There’s usually a short-term crisis where cash flow doesn’t equal expenses,” he says. “If you’re coming to see us more than two or three times, your root problems are not being addressed.”
While a food banks role is to simply provide a basic necessity of life, they have evolved over time and play a part in assisting clients find other organizations that can help them address underlying problems. “We’ll cover the food, now let’s get you some help,” McAra says. “Food can’t cure the underlying issues.”
The Calgary Food Bank partners with 235 agencies that provide community services to address some of those underlying issues, whether it’s health, employment, finance, education, or some other crisis that led to the need for the food bank’s help.
“We’ve found a lot of people don’t even know about what services the government offers or how to find them,” McAra says. “This answers a lot of questions for people who didn’t know where to turn.”
The issue of poverty is bigger than Calgary. Here’s a few statistics from HungerCount 2011, a report produced by Food Banks Canada:
- 93,000 people each month access a food bank for the first time
- 38% of those turning to food banks are children and youth
- 52% of households helped receive social assistance
- 18% have income from current or recent employment
- 13% receive disability-related income supports
The report also outlined a number of recommendations to reduce the need of charitable food assistance in Canada, including:
- Increasing federal and provincial support for the construction and rehabilitation of affordable housing, and the creation or expansion of housing subsidies
- Working with social assistance beneficiaries and other stakeholders to design an income support system of last resort that helps vulnerable citizens become self-sufficient
- Ensuring that Canada’s most vulnerable seniors are not left to live in poverty
- Improving Employment Insurance to better recognize and support Canadians in non-standard forms of employment, as well as older workers facing permanent layoff from long-tenure positions
- Prioritizing, at the federal government level, the need to drastically improve the labour market outcomes of disadvantaged workers
- Investing in a system of high-quality, affordable, accessible early learning and child care
Another underlying issue that McAra says needs to be discussed is the function of the health care system.
“Food falls under health, but our health care system is based on accidents, not prevention. It’s a mindset change,” McAra says. “It’s a difficult conversation to have about what went wrong in the community that people need the food bank.”
Category: Work
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