There is something about current food bank use that hints at the proverbial canary in a coal mine. In this case, the poor creature is feet-up at the bottom of the cage.
According to recent news stories, one in 10 Toronto residents uses a food bank – disturbing, to the extreme.
When we look at 10 per cent of Canada’s most populous city, we are not looking at a mere handful of the poorest of the poor. We are looking at families with at least one full-time wage earner, and seniors with what should be, and probably were at some point, decent pensions. We are looking at people who regard the food bank, not as a port in a storm, but a regular and necessary source of food.
People whose income would make them wealthy by world standards, need donated food to survive in Canada. Something is very badly out of whack.
Skyrocketing rents and inflation, combined with little or no increases to welfare, disability and pensions, would definitely be a factor, but there are others.
One is a change in what we consider necessities, a good example being computer and communications technology. A home without internet or a functioning computer means kids are deprived of an important education tool, and parents cannot access a lot of information such as government documents and job applications. Libraries partly fill the gap.
Cell phones and computers are expensive and not really a necessity – unless a social worker requires a client to be available for a phone call, or a prospective employer tells you to email your resume or arrange an interview via Zoom. Most government paperwork, including applying for Employment Insurance benefits, does not involve paper, but is done online.
Cell phone or groceries? Most people would choose the former. It has become a lifeline.
Transportation has also changed. Gone are the days when people in rural areas had access to low-cost, dependable public transit in the form of trains and buses.
Nowadays, people live in one community, work in another and see a doctor in a town an hour away. There is no public transit, apart from a taxi or two and the disability van.
Do you buy gas for your car to get to work, or buy food for the kids and lose your job? The answer is obvious – buy the gas and thank your lucky stars the community has a food bank. And ignore the critical looks you get pulling up to the food bank door in a decent vehicle.
With the exception of the Old Age Pension (1927), Canada’s vaunted social services safety net came into effect around the time of the Second World War. Employment Insurance started in 1940, and Family Allowance in 1945. At that time, memories of the Great Depression of the 1930s were still fresh in people’s minds.
The technology of the day included pay phones and trains. A lot of people did not have cars. Cell phones were the stuff of science fiction. Reality – that was Superman’s phone booth.
However, the war years had something in common with the situation we have today – general prosperity, coupled with a decline in the economic status of those on pensions and fixed incomes.
The result then was change – a general call for a national system of social security to protect everyone from extreme poverty. Canadians had learned how quickly and deeply poverty could impact both individuals and the entire country.
People lining up at food banks, and living in tents by the river, hearkens back to the Dirty Thirties – and also to the change that followed.
It appears the time has come for another round of change, for the same reason – to respond to new social and economic realities.
That will happen only if our federal, provincial and municipal governments – and the people who vote for them – have the courage to do what is needed.
Until then, we have food banks. We need to thank our lucky stars – and community food bank volunteers.
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Pauline Kerr is a Local Journalism Initiative Reporter currently working for Midwestern Newspapers. She can be reached at pkerr@midwesternnewspapers.com.
