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Why We Should End Food
Banks - March.24.2006 The fellow I’m sitting with at the neighbourhood food bank is one year from retirement and healthier than most of the other people. He can’t work now and was unable to get in the door on any job a year ago when he could. He’s typical of many who exist in a society that lacks a commitment to full employment and any belief in providing a proper social assistance rate. “I hope they have some fruit or vegetables this month,” he says. “It’s so nice when they have oranges.” Apparently they had oranges here once. Usually the food packages are about as fresh as that old pack of spaghetti at the back of your cupboard. “The food package should last a month”, says a worker at the bank. On inspecting one my guess puts it at lasting a mouse about a week, and as part of the reason people were fighting for more of a free pizza served at the counter earlier. The food package fails to size up for basics. Most people would expect a staple diet to include some bread and butter. Often people do get a loaf, this month there is no bread. Other basics like sugar and tea or coffee are rarely if ever supplied. Margarine is another rarity. Usually there is some milk or powdered milk. In total people get a few old cans of this and that, packages of some other stuff. They like to toss in some tiny packs of jam and crackers and a small bottle of drink. There are usually a few carrots and potatoes for people. Maybe a couple cups of yogurt, some tiny apples and cans of fruit. Lucky people might get a pack of some kind of meat or a jar of peanut butter. To cut it short, the grocery list is short by a hell of a lot. You couldn’t prepare more than a day’s worth of healthy meals for a child with it and a hungry man would eat it all in a couple days … probably to the detriment of his health. If the food looks like garbage that is because it is garbage; the food industry donates 80% of the food. Out of sheer generosity they have donated food they can’t sell. This is an act of random kindness when the industry could pay to truck all this food to landfill. Citizens also donate a percentage of the food, usually stuff they wouldn’t eat and don’t want themselves. The Ontario Government’s position on this is hypocritical at best. MPP Gerard Kennedy used to head the food bank. Even at that time he said he didn’t believe in food banks. Nowadays he likes to travel around to see that healthier food gets served in schools. Like the rest of the Liberals he is apparently out of touch with the segment of society that is fed a starvation diet of food industry throwaways. In today’s (March.24.2006) budget, the Liberals had plenty of cash for road building and a measly two percent increase for welfare and social assistance recipients that are 40 percent behind. The Liberals even kept the insulting clawback of the federal child tax credit in place. We might as well have voted for Ernie Eves. The Liberals like to promote a myth that one day social assistance rates will be enough to pay for food and shelter and at that time food banks will eliminated. If rates do go up that much, it doesn’t appear that it’ll be from a Liberal government. A key part of the myth is that food banks fill the gap for us now; that they provide enough healthy food for a disadvantaged family to get by. Food banks don’t. Shut them and ban them altogether, and let the Liberals give real increases for food and shelter. Politicians will only admit the truth on the day the half hungry become the starving and storm parliament or city hall. They can continue to hide as long as food banks are tossing scraps to the poor and keeping them back. They are safe as long as volunteers and donors keep the food bank myth alive under the illusion they are doing good. With social assistance providing 427 dollars for shelter and rents hovering around 800 a month we can be sure that people will continue living in shelters and using food banks. Governments will keep the moderated gray zone of misery alive indefinitely. It would be better to suffer all the pain and challenge them now. We live in a have and have not society. There are the very rich and well-to-do workers like police and firefighters that get high pay and retirement at 55 while the poor get a substandard minimum wage or inadequate benefits and a half measure of trash to eat. We are all taxpayers and it appears we pay taxes so the haves can have an ever bigger piece of the money pie. Perhaps some of them will be out this month to donate at the Daily Bread Food Bank’s April 2006 Gala Dinner. Under the 27’ ceilings and brilliant chandeliers of The Liberty Grand food bank supporters will enjoy dinner and cocktails. The evening is to be set in a time of abundance and optimism, and guests strolling drink in hand among the Renaissance style furnishings will certainly feel that way. Meanwhile in a dingy shelter room, a poor family will be eating the last of their ration. Nothing has changed, it’s only gotten worse. The rich didn’t have as much garbage to toss out this month. Perhaps there’ll be some leavings at the Liberty Grand, or at City Hall or Queen’s Park. ==================================== |
