The news story starts like this: “The Greater Vancouver Food Bank’s second annual food drive, which included Burnaby, on Saturday did not reach last year’s total and was less than half the organization’s goal.”
It ends with a list of where weekly food banks are run in this city.
There are several figures in the middle of the story, and they all add up to the same sad truth: More people are going hungry, and fewer people seem to be helping in the effort to ensure that they have enough to eat.
Do we think it’s because we are an uncaring society too wrapped up in our iPhones to consider the poorer members of our communities? Well, the thought did cross our mind. But we also know that the majority of people want to help others and certainly don’t want to see children go hungry. So why did a pretty smart fundraising idea fail to meet the food bank’s goals this year or even last year’s contributions?
The food bank distributed empty bags right to people’s doors in this fundraiser. All householders had to do was fill the bags, and the food bank people would even come by and pick them up later.
Can’t get much easier than that. And yet less food and fewer donations were taken in.
Perhaps it’s because we have become enured to the thought of hungry people in our communities. Perhaps it’s because we believe those people could “pull themselves up by their bootstraps.” For whatever reasons, it merely underlines the fact that we need to come up with a better plan than relying on intermittent waves of compassion or charity drives to deal with the problem of hunger in our city and our country.
The price of food continues to rise as wages do not rise. Working families with children are having to rely on food banks just to be able to eat and keep a roof over the family’s heads.
The problem is worse in Northern B.C., and Indigenous people are certainly hardest hit, but there is no region without hunger.
Food banks were set up to be a temporary measure, not a permanent support. It’s time to look at creating a better system, whether it’s a universal food tax or a base guaranteed income to ensure that no one has to go hungry in Canada.
