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.