By Clare Demerse
Canada is a land of plenty and Ottawa is a city better known for its comfortable bureaucrats, lavish diplomatic parties and well-paid computer engineers than for its struggling poor.
Our farms produce more than we need and our grocery stores are always filled.
That may all be true, but it’s only part of the story.
The other part is that some parents in Ottawa go to bed hungry so their kids won’t have to; that welfare cheques in Ontario have been cut back, while rents are as high as ever; that thousands have been reduced to using food banks.
For most, this is the time of year to give thanks and as we reach for a second slice of pumpkin pie this holiday weekend consider these facts:
· Working people making use of food banks because minimum wage doesn’t leave enough for groceries after a tough month.
· Hundreds more are using soup kitchens in the Byward Market: a 14-per-cent increase over last year.
· Many food banks are in debt because donations are down.
· Ottawa’s high rents — a sign of the city’s economic strength — are also a burden for the city’s poor, leaving many without any money left over for essentials.
· Dedicated volunteers and city workers are teaching people how to cook nutritious meals, providing fresh fruit and vegetables at minimal cost, and picking up unused food from grocery stores, high-end hotel kitchens or fast food outlets.
· Food banks started as a temporary solution to hunger 20 years ago and have become a necessity for many.
The numbers are shocking. Hunger Count 2001, a survey for the Canadian Association of Food Banks done in March 2001, found that 41 per cent of food bank users are children. Twelve per cent of the people using food banks in March 2001 — the study’s time period — had jobs but couldn’t make ends meet, while another seven per cent couldn’t make disability pensions stretch.
Fully 40 per cent of Canadian food banks struggled to find enough groceries to meet the needs of hungry people.
A study by Statistics Canada looked beyond food banks to find the number of Canadians who experience “food insecurity,” – either going hungry, skimping on food or worrying about how to pay for the next meal.
In 1998-1999, more than 2.5 million Canadians — 10 per cent of the population — had trouble getting food on the table at least once. And without an adequate food supply, the study found the risks of bad health, anxiety, depression and obesity (junk food is cheaper than eating well) go up.
A 2000 report on hunger in Ottawa by the Food Security Group, a coalition of anti-poverty activists and the city’s health department, reports both growing numbers of poor families and increasing use of food banks in the city. The Ottawa Food Bank gave out more than twice as many cases of food in 1999 as it did in 1994. In 2000, about 32,000 people a month used the food bank’s services. The numbers are probably even higher now.
In documenting hunger in the midst of plenty, we talked to many food bank users who didn’t want their real names used.
But they’ve got nothing to be ashamed of. Trying to feed a family on a tiny government cheque or a minimum-wage job should be seen by society as more heroic than humiliating. Food for thought, this Thanksgiving weekend.