Food Banks Canada CEO Kirstin Beardsley spoke to the Star about why food alone won’t solve hunger. “We need longer-term policy solutions.”
Canada’s first modern food bank system in the 1980s only required a few simple ingredients: an oil downturn in Alberta, double-digit food price increases coast-to-coast, and a poor social safety net.
But food banks are struggling, too. Thanks to the COVID-19 pandemic, food banks have spent years struggling to raise enough money to feed a growing list of clients in need. And the pandemic’s early economic crash — along with the possibility of another downturn next year — means Canada’s food bank system has its work cut out for it.
And then the third thing is that most food banks purchase food to offer a variety of options to clients, as well as culturally appropriate food — and the cost of purchasing it has gone up for food banks as well. In large urban centres, for food banks that transport food, the cost of ensuring it gets where it needs to go is also up.Do you think Canada’s food banks are keeping up?
This is part of the DNA of food banking, and why Food Banks Canada exists. When we were established decades ago as the Canadian Association of Food Banks, it was to do two things. One was an equitable distribution of food — making sure food made it from what was at the time a lot of manufacturing in southwestern Ontario out to the rest of the country.
Right now, things are tough across the country. In urban centres, costs are higher, so rents are higher. We’re seeing probably some of the biggest spikes in urban centres. But I was at a conference a few weeks ago where someone from a smaller community said they had people living in tents in a very small town — less than 1,000 people — and they’ve never seen homelessness before. Now, food banks are having to source a whole different type of food for people who don’t have kitchens.
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