Monday, November 5, 2012

Food Banks: The Art of Enabling

Few rational people would deny the contemporary need for food banks. Begun in Canada largely as a temporary anodyne to recession-induced job losses in the 1980's, they have grown in size and scope, becoming a seemingly permanent fixture on our socio-economic landscape.

The annual study by Food Banks Canada reports the following:

More than 882,000 Canadians used a food bank in March 2012, up 2.4 per cent from last year, says the annual study by Food Banks Canada.

The number of people using meal programs — where meals are prepared and served —also jumped 23 per cent from last year, the study found. It says food bank usage is up 31 per cent since the start of the 2008 recession.

Sadly, increasing numbers of clients are in fact employed but working at jobs that do not provide a living wage.

Having volunteered at a local food bank for over five years, I have found myself increasingly uncomfortable over the fact that I am part of the problem; by helping with their operations, I am in fact aiding and abetting the morally indefensible abandonment of the poor by both provincial and federal governments; by ensuring that the problem is bandaged over by distributing goods high in sodium, sugar and fats, and deficient in nutritional value save for seasonal fruits and vegetables provided by community gardens, in the larger scheme of things I am doing no one any real favours.

It is time to demand more from our governments, who seem almost exclusively focused on the commercial class, whilst ordinary citizens, despite being the putative recipients of economic policy, are relegated to literally accepting scraps from the table.

This dichotomy between Canadian citizens and our corporate overlords is amply drawn in a column this morning by the Star's Carol Goar. Its title, Corporations prosper while food banks overwhelmed, says it all.

We have become a cowed people, too afraid to insist that government take care of its people lest we chase away the chance of a corporation setting up shop here to exploit people at near-minimum wage. After all, as the narrative goes, there are plenty in the developing world happy to work for five dollars a day.

I don't pretend to have the answers, but living in fearful submission and depending on the private goodwill of people cannot be one of them.

6 comments:

  1. An excellent post, Lorne. What's truly disturbing is that more and more working Canadians are using the banks.

    This is the policy of those who originally lambasted welfare goldbrickers and who cut their welfare rates.

    Dante reserved as special place in hell for them.

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  2. I can't help but think, Owen, that our politicians are so far removed from the everyday reality of people that many of them still have the frame of mind you describe in your comment. Ironic that they should think that people need only work hard to succeed, given that a wealth of them either come from fairly privileged backgrounds or have forgotten their roots.

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  3. I hope you're fully recovered from the food poisoning, Lorne.

    From the article: "An increasing number of employed people can no longer feed their families. The reason, the report suggests, is that 18 per cent of employed Canadians — almost one in five — earn less than $17,000 a year." This is a shocking statistic.

    I agree with your point. It's like we've become inured to this increasing poverty. When I was growing up, those families considered poor had homes and food albeit not nearly decent enough to accommodate them comfortably. I was overseas the end of the 80s/early 90s and I was shocked to see so much homelessness when I came back. Food banks were supposed to be an emergency response but like people living on the street or out of their cars, these also became a permanent fixture with very few questioning it.

    Politically, not a single established party is willing to address poverty head on. In fact, they all promote policies and actions that are leading to this new normal. Depending on these ridiculously rich corporations to create decent jobs is far more pie in the sky thinking than promoting a just society through economic controls and progressive taxation.

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  4. You make some very good points here, Beijing. There seems to be, among the established parties, a tacit acceptance of the status quo; it is almost as if they are afraid to speak anything resembling the truth regarding the corporate greed that has contributed so much to the erosion of living standards in North America, lest they be attacked as 'socialists' or anti-capitalists, as if capitalism in it present plundering form were some kind of a solution to our woes.

    And as for progressive taxation, the notion seems to have been consigned to the status of 'quaint historical relic', doesn't it?

    Thanks for your good wishes about my health. I think I am back to about 75% capacity ;)



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  5. I can remember when the food banks were started in Alberta in 1981. The Conservative government promptly used their existence as an excuse not to increase welfare payments saying that they didn't have to because if people were short of food they could just go to the food bank.
    Anyway since the first food bank opened in Edmonton we have seen a phenomenal increase in the number of food banks.
    I certainly do not see this as a sign of increasing prosperity.

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    1. Your description of the Alberta situation, Unknown, mirrors the contemptible behavior governments across the country have taken engaged in using foodbanks as their cover.

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