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Why I Stopped Giving to the Greater Vancouver Food Bank

The problem is older than me, and this Band-Aid solution needs to be replaced by true food security.

Katie Hyslop 22 Dec 2022TheTyee.ca

Katie Hyslop is a reporter for The Tyee. Reach them by email.

Giving to the food bank was a Christmas tradition for me dating back to my childhood in St. John’s, Newfoundland.

When they could afford it, my parents took my older sister and me to the supermarket just before Christmas. We’d get two carts: one for our groceries, one for food bank donations. I remember toddling into the Salvation Army afterwards, our arms laden with donations.

Other years we donated cash (which food banks prefer).

There were also food bank drives at school, where tins of non-perishable food items that families could spare — all varieties of canned tomatoes, fun-shaped pasta in sauce, tins of peas and cranberry sauce — were stacked on card tables in the school foyer, waiting to be donated.

It was an important lesson in generosity, empathy and being part of a community.

Later my sister held a part-time job at another food bank, which she also used herself from time to time. It was from her that I learned food banks are accessed by a lot of people, including unemployed and underemployed people, people on fixed incomes and people with full-time jobs.

That isn’t unique to Newfoundland and Labrador, nor has it changed: in B.C. today nearly 20 per cent of people who use food banks have jobs, just slightly higher than the percentage of people on social assistance who use food banks. This raises some questions: first, why are Canada’s social assistance rates so low that people accessing assistance must rely on food banks? Second: why are wage rates so low and costs of living so high that working people need to rely on food banks?

There’s also a third relevant question: what happens when the food bank won’t help you?

A few years back the Greater Vancouver Food Bank brought in new rules that restrict access: new food bank users must book a registration appointment before they can receive food, to which they must bring government picture ID and a recent bill that shows proof of address.*

If they have other household members they’re hoping to feed, they must bring their B.C. care cards or other government identification to the registration appointment. Otherwise they’ll be going home with food for one.

A plan to go even further and require proof of income in the form of three pay stubs or pension or income assistance receipts was put on hold in 2020 because of the pandemic.

Jodie Ou, communications manager for the Greater Vancouver Food Bank, told me via email they direct people without proper documents to their 118 community agency partners. These include neighbourhood houses, Indigenous friendship centres, school and community meal programs, shelters and more.

“If anyone needs food, we will give them food, and/or provide them with resources to get food,” Ou wrote.

Some of those agencies operate their own food banks, providing groceries without the access restrictions of the Greater Vancouver Food Bank. However many serve hot meals they prepare themselves with donated food, which is both needed and not the same as receiving groceries a person could stretch over multiple meals.

These agencies are not evenly distributed throughout Vancouver, Burnaby, North Vancouver and New Westminster, the communities served by the Greater Vancouver Food Bank. There are just two west of Granville Street and the majority are found north of Broadway in Vancouver.

The Tyee has had a long history of articles critical of food banks.

Personally, I’ve written about the Greater Vancouver Food Bank distributing food past its best before date — which is not the same as expired food, but still sparked criticism for treating food bank users as second class.

I also wrote about a past change to food bank membership preventing people who used the food bank from voting at the charity’s annual general meeting.

Other criticisms of food banks overall include how the reliance on government photo identification can discriminate against trans and non-binary people. They are also not as helpful for those living in places without cooking facilities.

Even with its restrictions, the Greater Vancouver Food Bank estimates it serves 13,000 people monthly.

But food banks have been used to prop up successive government failures to end poverty and hunger for too long, with little consequence for anyone but those with bare cupboards.

Food banks started in the 1980s as a temporary, Band-Aid solution to food insecurity in Canada, one of the world’s richest countries.

I believe in wealth redistribution, and practice it by supporting charities and non-profits. But only because our governments don’t yet see fit to ensure we all have access to the social determinants of health.

Food, like housing, clothing, clean water and air, are not luxuries — they’re life essentials. Without them we would all die early, preventable deaths.

If the health and well-being of fellow human beings isn’t enough to convince you governments should be ending hunger, consider the money we will save on medical treatments for diseases and disorders linked to food insecurity, and on criminal justice spending when crimes of poverty drop because food can be legally obtained. Not to mention the broader economic benefits coming from people being able to focus on education or work because their bellies are full.

Yet in every one of the past 40-plus years, especially leading up to Christmas, food banks have asked their food industry partners and the public — not governments — to fill their coffers. For us all to scrimp and save for our neighbours who are forced to choose between buying food and paying bills.

For the most part, we deliver: the annual CBC Food Bank Day drive raised $2 million in B.C. for food banks earlier this month. An impressive feat of generosity considering the rate of inflation, the coming recession and stagnating wages.

The way things are going, some of those donors may have to use food banks themselves one day. In 2009 Food Banks Canada’s annual HungerCount survey showed nearly 90,000 people — one-third of whom were kids — accessing food banks in B.C.

The 2022 report found that number has nearly doubled to over 163,000 people, 31 per cent more than 2019. Children still make up a third of food bank users. The population of B.C. has only grown 17 per cent since 2009.

Overall, 10 per cent of the province experiences food insecurity.

Against this wave of need stand food banks: a too-small Band-Aid expected to hold together a widening wound of food insecurity.

I feel conflicted about my decision to stop donating to the Greater Vancouver Food Bank: letting people starve in order to put pressure on the government does not feel like the answer.

Yet I can’t in good conscience support this stopgap any longer, especially when access policies are as strict as the Greater Vancouver Food Bank’s.

So I direct my giving elsewhere, to lower-barrier organizations whose missions I support.

But no matter who I personally donate to, it's not going to solve our inequality issues like having a secure social safety net would solve them for good.

* Story updated on Feb. 2 at 8:57 a.m. to correct information about what food bank users must bring to registration appointments.  [Tyee]

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