Preparing for the morning shipment of food at the Ottawa Food Bank.

In its 2007 report, the Canadian Association of Food Banks estimates that more than 720,000 people across the country relied on food banks last March. The Ottawa Food Bank says that in the National Capital Region alone, the number of people who need food assistance each month totals around 40,000. 

The first food bank opened in Edmonton in 1981. Today, there are 673 known food banks that work with an additional 2,867 agencies in distributing food to the hungry. According to Health Canada, there were 2.7 million "food insecure" Canadians in 2004.  

Valerie Tarasuk is a professor at the University of Toronto who researches poverty and hunger in Canada. Figures about the number of hungry people in Canada are "gross underestimates," she says. "They’re tracking one portion of the total group of people in the community who’re struggling to get the food that they need."

According to the Canadian Association of Food Banks, welfare recipients, seniors, people with disabilities, single parents, children and the rural poor are among the different groups that receive food assistance in Canada.

Tarasuk says that food banks have become a fixture of Canadian society. "There's a generation of people that have grown up knowing nothing other than the fact that we have food banks."

Food banks part of the problem?

Some critics say it is striking that so many Canadians – nearly three quarters of a million – survive on food donations in a country where the national economy is the strongest it has been in years and real income is growing faster than the United States: between 2000 and 2006, the growth rates for the two countries were 15.5 per cent and 9.1 per cent respectively.

This raises the difficult but inevitable question of whether food banks contribute to the perpetual cycle of hunger by disguising the underlying and more serious problem of poverty.

"Food banks create the illusion that we’re doing something and that the problem is being solved," Tarasuk says.

But Peter Tilley, director of the Ottawa Food Bank, says it wouldn’t help the hungry if food banks closed their doors: "Our goal is to put ourselves out of business, but that’s not going to happen soon."

A day in the life of a food bank Peter Tilley of the Ottawa Food Bank describes how food gets from the hands of donors to the mouths of the hungry. Requires FlashPlayer

Tarasuk says that food banks also make it appear that the solution to the problem is charity and not government action to ensure "a more just, more equitable distribution of wealth in the population so that no one is without the resources they need to afford the food that they need."

For many volunteers and anti-poverty advocates, closing food banks would be morally objectionable.

It’s hard to abandon feeding the hungry in the hope that closing food banks, along with increased political action, would put more pressure on governments to seek a lasting solution to poverty. The need for food is in the present; it’s urgent. Government action takes time.

“I’m not convinced that a rally of the people who work at the food banks would be enough to change our politicians,” says Tarasuk.

Food banks across Canada receive practically no funding from the federal or provincial governments, says Tilley. Most of the funding comes from private sources.

Marjorie Bencz, director of the Edmonton Food Bank since 1989, says food banks have created awareness about hunger and poverty. "If we closed our doors on people, we would make no difference in terms of long-term solutions to the problems."

Political lethargy

Tarasuk argues that Canada is wealthy enough to effectively fight the hunger and poverty that exists here. 

Peter Tilley, director of the Ottawa food bank, says they serve 40,000 "food insecure" people each month.

"There is an extraordinary lethargy at the political level in terms of dealing with problems of poverty," she says. "There is a tremendous kind of malaise there."

The Conservative government’s child tax cut and the reductions in the GST amount to no more than "trivial little crumbs" going back to the taxpayers, which mainly benefit those who are spending a lot of money. Tarasuk also says inaction on the part of the present federal and provincial governments isn't the only thing that has forced the hungry to line up at food banks.

"The Liberals’ history on poverty is obscene. It’s actually far worse than the Conservatives’ history," she says. "They were partly responsible for the dismantling of the social safety net ... they created the problem we're facing today."

Bencz says that because the people who depend on food banks come from marginalized groups in society, they "have less of a voice and talk less about the issue."

She also says part of the problem is that sometimes people don’t believe hunger is a pressing issue. "People see the value of their houses go up and they're very happy with that. But they don’t see the problem we have with hunger."

But attitudes might be changing. Research shows that agencies both at the federal level (such as the Public Health Agency of Canada and Health Canada) and at the provincial level (such as chief medical officers) have been more vocal about the need to address poverty and hunger. Coupled with research and advocacy work done by groups such as the Canadian Association of Food Banks with their annual Hunger Count reports, Tarasuk says she believes poverty and hunger may soon enter the political debate.

"Things have gotten bad enough that the pendulum will start to swing," she says. "I couldn’t have said this five years ago."

Related Links Canadian Association of Food Banks 2004 Canadian Community Health Survey Ottawa Food Bank World Food Programme