Proceedings of the Standing Senate Committee on
Agriculture and Forestry
Issue 14 - Evidence - Meeting of February 6, 2007
OTTAWA, Tuesday, February 6, 2007
The Standing Senate Committee on Agriculture and Forestry met this day at 7:03 p.m. to examine and report on rural poverty in Canada
Senator Joyce Fairbairn (Chairman) in the chair.
[English]
The Chairman: Good evening, honourable senators and witnesses, and good evening to all of those who are watching our Standing Senate Committee on Agriculture and Forestry.
Last May, this committee was authorized to examine and report on rural poverty in Canada, the first time ever for a parliamentary committee in either House. Last year, we heard from a number of expert witnesses who gave us an overview of rural poverty in this country. On the basis of that testimony, we wrote an interim report, which we released in December and which, by all accounts, really struck a nerve. For too long, the plight of rural poor has been ignored by policy-makers and politicians. Well, not any longer.
We are now beginning the second phase of our study. Our goal is to meet with rural Canadians who are in difficulty, and the people who work with them in the smaller communities on the land. We want to hear first-hand about the challenges of being poor in rural Canada and what we can do to help.
To that end, the committee is holding some preliminary and preparatory meetings in Ottawa ahead of a planned travel to rural communities across the country. This evening's witnesses are from the Canadian Association of Food Banks, and we are glad to have you here tonight in this tough weather. You are doing us a great service by being here.
With us tonight are Charles Seiden, Executive Director of the Canadian Association of Food Banks; Wayne Hellquist — who used to be a great leader in our Canadian Paralympics movement — Chief Executive Officer of the Regina and District Food Bank in Saskatchewan; Dianne Swinemar, Executive Director of Feed Nova Scotia; and Michael Bay, a member of the board of directors.
Wayne Hellquist, Chief Executive Officer, Regina and District Food Bank: Thank you for the opportunity to be here. It is very gratifying to be included in these discussions because food banks right across the country deal with hungry people. Of course, hungry people are a direct result of poverty that exists across this country, but certainly in a significant manner in rural Canada.
We do not have a formal presentation for you this evening, but we want to give you an overview of what the Canadian Association of Food Banks does. We produce annually HungerCount, which is a snapshot of hunger in the country. We will talk about what that document says about hunger in Canada and in particular in rural Canada.
We can share with you some of the stories we hear on the ground with the food banks across the country. We love to have the opportunity to tell the story, because food banks are doing great work in addressing some of the problems. Unfortunately, I am not sure we are getting at the solutions to those problems, but we are part of the safety network that exists across this country to ensure that those who are poor do not go hungry, to the best of our capability.
I am pleased to hear that you are addressing the issue of poverty in rural Canada. It is a real issue; we see the results of it every day. I want to acknowledge the work that you have done and will continue to do to ensure that this issue receives the attention that it needs in this day and age in a country as rich and prosperous as ours.
I will turn it over to Ms. Swinemar, who is the CEO of Feed Nova Scotia, but also a member of the board of the Canadian Association of Food Banks. She has a vast amount of experience on the ground, but also at the national level in dealing with the issues.
Dianne Swinemar, Executive Director, Feed Nova Scotia: Thank you for the invitation. I think they invited me because I have been on the board the longest.
My job is to tell you about the Canadian Association of Food Banks, and I need to back up before I do that. In the early 1980s, in a response to what communities were seeing, front-line initiatives were started. Whether it was a grocery program, soup kitchen or a voucher program, communities were mobilizing around their neighbours to address what they were seeing — people showing up and needing help.
In most of the major cities in Canada, the churches and community groups came together and started what they called a distribution centre. That is what I inherited as an agency whose primary focus was to find resources to supply those front-line churches and local community groups to do their job of feeding hungry people.
In 1989, about nine of the leaders from the different hub food banks from across Canada came together. They realized that there were some universal things happening across the country and wanted to see what they could do as a united group to look at poverty and hunger in Canada.
They decided they would organize a national organization for three years. In three years, they would have addressed the problem and they would be able to dissolve the organization and go home. Here we are in 2007, still addressing the same issues, only they are larger.
Up until 2006, the Canadian Association of Food Banks was made up of a board of directors with people like Mr. Hellquist and me, people running organizations in our communities who were coming together to look at how we get the food we need to move into our local communities. With whom do we partner? How do we address the issues of hunger and poverty? What are the problems and how do we deal with them? Whose ear do we get to try to mobilize some action?
We found, much to our chagrin, that our actions were no different than those at the front lines, and we spent a lot of time trying to make sure we had the food we needed in order to feed the people in our local communities. The issues of advocating on behalf of the poor and trying to address the root causes of why they were coming to food banks always got pushed to the back of our task.
To do the food part of it, we started what we called a national food share system. We went to the food and transportation industry and said; ``We are in your industry by default. We need your help.'' Not only did they give us advice but they established an advisory group and made a commitment to give us the food we needed, providing we could commit to getting the food across Canada. We said we could do that, not knowing how. In a few years we had CN Rail, CP Rail and a number of transportation companies joining with the partners of Kraft, Kellogg's, Proctor & Gamble and about 80 national companies helping us to get the food we needed into those outlying areas.
We soon realized we could get food to Edmonton, but could we get it to Grande Prairie or beyond? We could get food to Halifax, but could we get it to Canso or Louisbourg? It was difficult. We know how difficult it is to address poverty in rural communities.
Once we got the food taken care of, we asked how we could address the bigger issue. How do we help people not to have to use a food bank? What things could we do? We realized that it is not our problem. This is not an action that we as an organization can take: this is a national concern, a national issue.
Also, we recognized that we were not the folks to do that. A year ago the board of directors stepped down, en mass, and we transformed ourselves. We elected a new board of directors, in May of 2006. We now have a corporate board. We have lawyers on our board of directors, and folks who will help us with our messaging and help us to look at the root causes of poverty, because we know that we have hungry children, hungry families, and we need to take care of them.
Mr. Hellquist: I will turn it over to Mr. Seiden, who can provide a bit of background about HungerCount and what it has to say about hunger in rural Canada.
Charles Seiden, Executive Director, Canadian Association of Food Banks: Thank you for inviting us to speak. It is an honour to be here. It is a good opportunity for us to get across to people the size and scope of the problem we are dealing with today. As Ms. Swinemar mentioned, food banks did not expect to be around for so long. We now have an organization that feeds 90 per cent of the people who use emergency food programs in Canada. We deliver food across Canada to each major city in every province. Ninety per cent of the people using food banks represent 750,000 Canadians a month. Forty per cent are children; that is 300,000 children. Those are powerful numbers. Every month the number of people lining up for food at food banks in Canada equals the size of the population of Ottawa. We are dealing with a mammoth growth of people who are hungry and need emergency food.
The corporations that have helped us have jumped in. Way back we started off delivering 2 million pounds, and last year we were up to 12 million pounds. That is only a fraction of the total food, because the local food banks raise over 150 million pounds. Added together, that represents probably $350 million of food delivered.
We still need to deliver more. We have circulated a copy of HungerCount 2006, our report on hunger.
The top manufacturers, as Ms. Swinemar said, have given us large donations of food. We have a special relationship with the food and consumer products manufacturers of Canada and with Canadian Grocer. They all promote the magazine. They promote us and particularly the people we serve. They are all interested in trying to get a fair share across Canada.
The size of the problem is overwhelming and you will see in the report that food banks struggle to meet the immediate needs.
What does it mean in terms of rural Canada? Despite the fact that many Canadian rural communities are located in prime agricultural areas, hunger is the reality for tens of thousands of the nation's rural residents. I do not have to tell this committee that; I have been reading your study and your reports, and you are beginning to identify the problems.
That said, relatively little research has been conducted on the specific nature of the problems of hunger and food security in rural Canada. That is why the work of this committee is very important.
The need for rural food bank users to turn to food banks is associated with the larger socio-economic vulnerability of many people in Canada and with a change in the social safety net, which has deteriorated significantly. I had the opportunity to visit America's Second Harvest, which is the U.S. counterpart of the Canadian Association of Food Banks, and I am on the board of the global food bank network that was formed by Canada, the U.S., Mexico and Argentina to help food countries that wanted food bank networks set up. Our first project was in Israel, and we have just finished establishing a network in Israel. We also have projects in other countries, like Ghana and several South American countries.
In the U.S. as in Canada, the use of food banks is related to many factors, including housing and the cost of transportation, especially for the rural community. You hit the nail on the head in your report. We did a report a couple of years ago on rural food bank use, and the distance people have to travel to get services, the greater reliance on transportation, and the lack of services in the community are all things you have articulated very well in your report.
Here are some specifics about food banks, especially in rural Canada. More than half of the food banks participating in HungerCount 2006, that is 325 food banks out of 638, are located in rural communities. In other words, over 50 per cent of the food banks we try to help are in rural communities.
In March 2006, a total of 65,000 individuals received groceries from food banks in rural areas. That number includes a minimum of 25,720 children. These are very scary statistics and it is paradoxical that 65,000 of the people who grow and produce the food, and 25,000 children, in a country as rich as ours are having to go to food banks and line up for food.
Since the year 2000, 60 new food banks have opened in rural communities. Single-parent families make up about 33 per cent of the households receiving support in rural communities. Single people, couples with no children and two- parent families make up 29 per cent, 12.2 per cent and 25.7 per cent respectively.
In March 2006, 36 per cent of the rural food banks had to take measures to deal with food shortages. Those measures included turning clients away, closing early, buying food and giving smaller amounts of food. As Ms. Swinemar said, we have plans to increase the amount of food, but that is not a long-term solution to a terrible problem that many Canadians are facing. Social assistance is a primary source of income for approximately 55 per cent of the households using rural food banks.
It is hard to put a face to the statistics I have read to you. The same statistics are reflected nationally in both rural and urban areas. It is important to note the ways in which hunger is experienced across the nation and differs by area of the country. I am hoping that tonight we will have an opportunity to put some faces on these numbers.
Mr. Hellquist: As mentioned, our HungerCount is a key piece of information. We collect data which we distribute across the country to help people understand not only the issue of hungry people in Canada but also a bit about the role of the Canadian Association of Food Banks and what we do to address the issue of hungry people.
Mr. Seiden talked as well about the dynamics of what is happening in rural Canada and the fact that many of the newer food banks are being established in small rural communities to address their immediate needs. The challenge, of course, is that many of those communities are ill-equipped to deal with the issue of hungry people in their own community. In many cases the most vulnerable in those communities are being driven to larger urban centres to seek a variety of supports and help. Consequently, we are seeing a decline in the size of rural communities. In many cases those individuals show up at Ms. Swinemar's door in Halifax or mine in Regina, because there are not the kinds of services they require in rural Canada. We end up importing those problems, or exporting them depending on your view, from rural Canada into the urban centres. The urban food banks get larger and deal with more clients all the time.
Building bigger food banks is not the solution. From time to time we talk about the fact that if we always do what we have always done, we will always get what we have always got. We see what we are getting: more people using food banks, larger food banks in urban centres and the establishment of food banks in rural communities. We do not believe that that is the fundamental solution to the problem.
Obviously, it is a very complex problem in Canada. We are a large country. Many issues affect what is happening in rural Canada. The HungerCount addresses policy priorities that are important from the food bank perspective in dealing with hunger in Canada. You will find those on page 30 of the HungerCount and beyond. I do not want to go into great detail; they are there are for your information. This is the collective perspective of the food banks across the country which deal with the issues daily.
You are well aware of the concepts of raising the minimum wage, ensuring there is a suitable earning potential for people, affordable housing, social assistance. These are not new ideas. As Mr. Seiden mentioned, in many ways our social safety net has a few holes in it. We certainly see the results of that every day at food banks across the country.
I come from Saskatchewan. You cannot ignore the agricultural economy in Saskatchewan and much of the rest of the country. I look at our neighbours to the south and recognize that in 2003 to 2006 they will experience their four best years of agricultural incomes in their history, while at the same time we are experiencing, as your report calls it, a free fall. Clearly there are some lessons we can take from our neighbours to the south regarding agricultural policy that allows rural communities to be successful at retaining some of their economic capacity within the rural areas.
There is the whole idea of processing product in our country and creating opportunities for growth in those rural economies. If we look at how we repopulate rural Canada, not through social policy but economic policy, we will see that over time we can impact the number of people in rural Canada who are hungry or poor.
As I look at my doorstep at the food bank in Regina, I see and more people migrating from rural areas. Our food bank now serves 100 rural communities in addition to the city of Regina. Again, we are seeing the problem come to life every day in our province. That is reflected right across the country.
We do not have any magic bullets or answers that will solve the problems. However, we recognize that food banks are not the solution to the problem. We are the community's way of responding to the need. We serve a very important role, but we are probably the one business or industry in the country that would really like to have fewer customers. In fact, we would like to be able to put ourselves out of business for lack of hungry people and for lack of poverty, whether urban or rural. Food banks could then turn their attention to something else.
That is not likely in the short term, but that is our vision. It needs to be the vision of all Canadians. We will wrestle this problem to the ground and not just build more and bigger food banks.
The Chairman: We like your vision. You have given us good information and we hope that in our own small way as we travel across the country we will be as thoughtful as we can, having listened to you and your struggles to make a difference.
Senator Oliver: Welcome and thank you for coming. I appreciate the presentation you gave us.
We are a parliamentary committee. We deal with issues involving government, largely federal government, because we are here in the Parliament of Canada. My questions will relate to what we do, which is to look at public policy from a federal point of view for all Canadians.
Some 800,000 people go to your food banks and you work on various ways of delivering. I just learned today that food banks even have global dimensions. Canada, Argentina, the United States and Mexico are all working together. As well, you are talking about giving advice in Israel. The problem is global.
It is also municipal, provincial and federal. Federal governments give aid and provincial governments give a lot of money for social services. Should this federal parliamentary committee be looking at ways that your food banks can coordinate the activities of provincial, municipal and federal governments in giving aid and assistance? Are several different agencies and government groups trying to do same thing for the same people? If so, could and should some of those efforts be coordinated to stop the need for food banks? How could you serve as a vehicle for delivering municipal, provincial and federal assistance to the people who need food from your food banks?
Mr. Hellquist: Let me jump in. We wrestle with that question on a daily basis because we deal with different jurisdictions. However, I am not sure that we are the best vehicle to facilitate that coordination. I would love to think we had the capacity to do it, but there is a need for clear coordination of social policy from the municipal level up to the federal level. There are conflicting programs and policies, and there is no seamless system of safety nets for poor or average Canadians. As a result, there are different challenges in various provinces and municipalities.
If we could at least engage in dialogue around how to create a mechanism where everybody is able to come to the table or contribute to the resolution, there is no question that would go a long way towards raising the level of understanding of the issues, which in turn could raise the level of coordination of the resources that will ultimately be needed to impact rural Canada significantly and to address the issue of hungry people.
Michael Bay, Member of the Board of Directors, Canadian Association of Food Banks: As much as I am proud to be associated with this organization as one of the newest board members, I do not think the Canadian Association of Food Banks is the precisely right group. My understanding, as the new guy on the block, is that rural poverty is fundamentally different from urban poverty. The people are different. Of course, we have the people with serious mental health problems and those sorts of issues, and my background is in dealing with that population. In urban areas we have people who perhaps for generations have been poor, who require assistance in rising out of poverty. In contrast, to a large extent in the rural areas of the country we have people who have been hard-working Canadians and who have contributed to the economy and the fabric of this country in many ways. They do not come from generations of poverty at all. They come from generations of feeding us, and now we are asked to feed them. There is something terribly wrong with that.
I think the Canadian Association of Food Banks is perhaps the wrong group because the focus here should not be simply providing assistance to these people and creating more dependency. The issue is facilitating economic renewal among a group of people who have always contributed so much to this country.
In Western Canada, people who have been contributing to the agriculture sector now find themselves on the receiving instead of the giving end. In central Canada, we read in the newspaper every day about 1,000 jobs lost in this major factory and 2,000 jobs in that major factory, forgetting the little feeder factories. It is not 1,000 jobs in Toronto that should be the big story; it should be the 50 jobs or 100 jobs from the little town, because that is all there is.
In Eastern Canada, there is the fishery; there is tourism in PEI. The question, as has already been mentioned here tonight, is how do we reinvigorate. To come back to that scary statistic that Mr. Hellquist talked about, why is it that our neighbours to the south are having their four best agricultural years ever? The answer has to do with the added value that they are becoming experts in.
Senator Oliver: The main reason is the subsidies in their Farm Bill of $90 billion over five years.
Mr. Bay: As I understand it, the majority of the income has to do with added value, perhaps with government assistance.
Senator Oliver: My main question really was not added value, but whether you think your food banks could do anything to coordinate the needs from a federal, municipal, provincial and rural area as a way of giving additional assistance to the people in need who are coming to your food banks. I am looking for a new public policy that might help.
Mr. Hellquist: We would certainly like to be engaged in the discussion about what that public policy might look like. I do not know if we would have the capacity to lead that discussion. We tend to be community-based organizations. Most of us do not receive any support from any level of government. For us, it is a capacity issue as much as anything.
We want to be involved in the dialogue. I think we have a role to play because we do get caught in the middle of those jurisdictional questions and concerns. We see the real life stories of people and the impacts those things have on them. I am not sure we are the right people to lead the discussion, but we want to be part of resolving the issue and being at the table and helping to coordinate and facilitate to the best of our capability.
Ms. Swinemar: I would tend to agree with Mr. Hellquist. My experience has been that to get a dialogue between two levels of government is very difficult. One is pointing the finger at the other as to where we should go for support or assistance for our food bank recipients.
It is encouraging that you voiced the question. If there is a desire to have that discussion, I would like to be at the table as an organization. However, I am not sure that we should be in the driver's seat.
Mr. Seiden: I too think the question you raise is a good one. You have to understand that when food banks first started, they thought they were temporary. What really started them growing was the federal government's changing how it funded services in provinces and in municipalities. When the Community Access Program, CAP, was turned into block funding, the restrictions about how the money was to be used were taken away. As a result, we saw a tremendous growth in our industry, unfortunately.
Currently there is an inconsistency in how that money is funnelled. I think the dialogue you are talking about is federal, provincial and municipal — absolutely.
Senator Meighen: We did not quite understand the phenomena that occurred that caused the increase in your customer load. You mentioned block payments.
Mr. Seiden: We talked about that in our paper. Money was transferred at a federal level and when the Canadian assistance plan was taken apart there were some restrictions on how the money could be spent. It had to be spent on social assistance or providing certain things and rules were built into it. When that was changed to block funding, we got grouped in with education, and the way the money was used was left up to the individual provinces; it was more open. Any discussion needs to involve that level of communication. The important people need to be at the table.
Senator Oliver: The CAP program may be one way of finding that coordination.
Senator Merchant: I know the good work you do in Regina and I know you are aware of some of the causes of poverty. What are you doing at the food bank in Regina to try to lift people out of this dependency? Are you expanding into other programs as you try to address root causes?
Mr. Hellquist: Absolutely. We recognized sometime ago that we were not going out of business. In fact the need was increasing quite dramatically and both Saskatoon and Regina food banks were growing almost exponentially. We came to the realization that providing food to people was a service we would continue to provide because nobody should have to go hungry.
Our focus was on the food distribution and collection business. However, we realized that in order to help individuals and families we also needed to provide them with the skills and knowledge that they might need to move from that very dependent state to a much more independent state.
We have invested several million dollars over the last few years to build an education program and an education centre at our facility which is directly targeted at serving people who have been long-term users of food banks and their families. We are doing everything from fully accredited post-secondary programs — a short order cook program is taking place now — all the way through to things as basic as teaching preschoolers how to prepare food in the kitchen. We are doing a lot of employment readiness training and literacy training; much of our work is designed to move people into the workforce. We have worked very closely with both the corporate and the educational communities to ensure, first of all, that we are providing a high quality program, and second, that at the end of the road there is actually a job for these individuals.
The challenge, of course, is that we can deal with only a fairly small group at a time; we can help one family at a time, one individual at a time break the cycle. In many cases it is a generational cycle; this is not the first generation that has been hungry. It is not the first generation that has been poor. If we can break that cycle there is hope for that family and that individual in the future.
Our success rate has been extraordinarily good. We have had virtually a hundred per cent placement of our graduates and we have graduated 70 per cent of the students who have started the programs. On a very small basis we have tackled some of the problems rather than simply putting a band aid on the situation.
In many cases the root cause is generational; in other cases it is not having the skills or knowledge or experience to enter the workforce. Also, many of the people we see are dealing with multiple issues.
At the food bank in Regina we have created a multi-service centre and have collocated and housed a number of agencies to deliver a variety of services. We currently have services from our department of social services, plus a number of other types of training and development opportunities for the people who would come to the food bank. It is a small step but it is an important step for us.
The Chairman: We are working in that direction in Lethbridge as well, to bring various needs together.
Senator St. Germain: I would like to go back to the root causes that Senator Merchant asked about. You said it was generational. Have you discovered other root causes? Generational is a pretty broad overview of the situation. Can you be a bit more specific? I think, Ms. Swinemar, that you as well tried to determine root causes. Possibly you could elaborate further.
As was pointed out, the rural issue is one thing; it is driven by events. The urban scenario could be different. I grew up in the rural community; there was poverty, but no food banks. We all survived.
Ms. Swinemar: I grew up in rural Nova Scotia and we survived as a family because of neighbours and family who supported us. The bag of lobsters that appeared on our door was no mistake. There were no food banks, but there were certainly things happening behind the scenes to make sure families were being taken care of. You could run up credit at the local grocery store and pay when the money came in. Before I came into this position and this job found me, I didn't really want it. I was hired to close down the food bank that I inherited. A personal part of me is coming out when I say that when I write a bio and write about the things I have achieved in my career with the food bank, there is a real disconnect. There really shouldn't be pride to growing this organization, the organization that I run the way it is, but that is the reality.
Prior to this position, I was involved with continuing education. I was reflecting on that as Mr. Hellquist was answering his question about the centre that he's establishing. We are doing much the same thing, although not on the same scale; we have a culinary skills program and we are looking at what else we can put in place to be more supportive of the people we are seeing.
In rural Canada, and here I am speaking personally, when we went to school, we got on a school bus and were driven a couple of hours to school. If you are not motivated, and the school system is not really geared to everybody's way of learning, it is very easy to drop out of school. My job, prior to this, was trying to bring community and school together. I worked for a very visionary individual who believed that if we could run school programs including ESL, literacy, GED or general educational development, and computer programs for people who had not seen a computer, we would be able to stop vandalism, make sure kids were staying in school and have the support of parents who did not have a good experience in school. We knew there were many latch key kids and they were vulnerable. However, the education system has changed so the food banks are now trying to run the continuing education programs. That is another area of concern.
I am involved in the hunger count. Over the last couple of days I called to ask my partners across the province of Nova Scotia what is happening. They are telling me the same stories that we are hearing across the country about the lack of support systems for young people in rural Canada. In rural Nova Scotia, young girls are getting pregnant. They have no support systems so the girls are dropping out of school at an early age. Is that generational? Possibly. I am not sure how else to answer that. The entire community where I grew up in rural Nova Scotia helped raise me, and I am truly thankful for that. Now, when I go back to rural Nova Scotia, the rural community is not there because they are all so vulnerable.
Senator St. Germain: Is there a danger of creating a dependency through people taking advantage of a system? I used to be a policeman in Vancouver. I saw the Salvation Army and various religious organizations giving food to the people. Correct me if I am wrong but food banks have taken over some of the responsibilities of those organizations. Today's food banks are designed in such a way that dependency and abuse can occur. Is there any way of monitoring this? I do not imagine that dependency and abuse would be as prevalent in rural areas as they are in urban areas, but I would like your response on that aspect and on how an exit strategy will work for food banks.
Mr. Hellquist: Senator, you raise a good question. First, a degree of dependency is created when you provide a support system for people in need. They turn to organizations for that support, and continue to do so. That is why the support was created in the first place. The challenge is to move people along that continuum so that they do not become long-term or lifetime users of the system. That is one of the challenges faced by food banks all the time because we want to ensure that we remain an emergency food system. Food banks are not a replacement for social programs or social policies that ensure that people have adequate income to buy food.
Second, if you were to ask people whether they would rather go to a food bank or shop for groceries at Sobeys or Safeway because they had enough income to make that choice, I can assure you they would say that they do not want to be dependent on food banks. People are reluctant to be dependent on food banks. Certainly, there is a core group of people who are in need of long-term, systemic help. As well, there might be a group of people who will rely on some form of food assistance throughout their lives. The challenge is to move the rest of them off the system so that they do not become dependent on it. There is a risk any time a system is built. Food banks have taken over some of the territory that was held by church groups, religious groups or community-based organizations. However, those organizations are experiencing significant challenges. Church attendance is in decline and churches in rural areas, in particular, are struggling. They have neither the capacity nor the resources to provide the kinds of services that they once provided. I like to think of food banks as simply the way that today's society deals with the issue. Ms. Swinemar talked about how our communities have come together to provide those support systems. I suspect that food banks will have come and gone at some time in the future and there will be another community response to the issue of hungry people, and I would hope that there will be a lot fewer of them.
Mr. Seiden: Both of your questions are related. Page 15 of the HungerCount report shows a disturbing chart on income sources. It shows that 53 per cent of the people are on social assistance and cannot survive because of the social system. This chart is important. Not only does it answer your two questions, to some extent, but also it answers the question of what policy needs to be in place to correct the problem at one point. Thirteen per cent of food bank users are employed but unable to make ends meet. They are not lazy, they are not dependent and they do not want to be at a food bank. They are earning less than minimum wage and cannot afford food. Many of the working poor are couples who together are earning no more than $16,000 to $18,000. The next figure shows those in receipt of a disability pension. These people would prefer not to use food banks but they have disabilities and are unable to work. In the next group, 6 per cent are seniors and on pensions, which is a new phenomenon, and 4.2 per cent are receiving Employment Insurance benefits.
The impact of a number of policies has meant that we are seeing people from a broader range in society, not just the generational core recipients. As Mr. Hellquist said, a number of people come to the food bank simply because the social safety net has been cut back in various areas, which is self-explanatory in this chart, and they are hurting, they cannot make ends meet.
Each year we measure this information. The number of working poor has increased dramatically, as has the number of people on disabilities. The number of seniors has increased. We are seeing those three categories shift over time.
Senator Trenholme Counsell: I am not a member of this committee so I feel most fortunate to be here tonight in place of Senator Callbeck. This is a special opportunity to be reunited with this issue and to become more sensitive to it in 2007. When I was first elected to New Brunswick's provincial government, I began a food bank in my town against a great deal of resistance because they thought it was a stigma. Now, 20 years later, the food bank is still in place. I knew it was necessary because I was a family doctor and I talked to people to learn about the costs of baby food and everything else for families. The need was very clear.
You said that the number of seniors is increasing. In the context of rural Canada, how do you address the issues for seniors? For example, do you make special provisions for seniors who cannot get to food banks? We know about wonderful programs, such as Meals on Wheels, that operate in rural areas to some extent. If an area is lucky enough to have volunteers, such a program can happen. Do you have a special way of dealing with seniors who cannot get out in rural areas?
Mr. Hellquist: It is a particular problem in rural Canada because of distances and the depopulation of rural Saskatchewan and rural Canada. Moving people back and forth into areas where they need to go for any kind of services, whether medical services or food banks, is a challenge. It is one reason we have seen an increase in the number of food banks in rural communities. We need to address that problem by taking the food source closer to that emerging group in need. That is one of the responses we have seen. Is it an adequate response? Probably not. It still leaves many people a distance away from gaining access to that assistance. Of course, moving food is a challenge. You have to deal with the safety issues in ensuring that you maintain a safe food supply. The cost of moving smaller quantities of food to a particular individual in an rural area is logistically challenging.
The simple answer to your question is that I am not sure we have done a good job of it and I am not sure there is an easy mechanism to solve the problem. The only mechanism we have seen is a significant increase in food banks being established in small rural communities across the country.
Senator Trenholme Counsell: To follow up on this if I may, is there a provision for someone else, be it a relative or friend or other caring person, to come on behalf of a senior or someone who is disabled to obtain food?
Ms. Swinemar: Certainly, such a provision exists. If a person is unable to access a food bank, then a family member or neighbour will come.
In rural Nova Scotia, given the current levels of unemployment, we are experiencing a huge shift with the employable moving out west to find jobs in the oil industry. In one community in particular where this was very noticeable in our look for trends, there was a significant decrease in the number of people using the food bank. We found out that that was because those who could work had gone to Alberta. When we asked why the numbers at the soup kitchen had increased, we found that it was because there was nobody to take care of the seniors. Even those who were using food banks were taking care of their elders. Now, that is not happening and the seniors are having to come out to a soup kitchen. The soup kitchen is rural Canada's new response to hunger and poverty, rather than the food bank.
Senator Trenholme Counsell: I want to go back to the issue of failing farms. I see failing farms in my part of New Brunswick. I also see some wonderful examples of young people going into agriculture and organic farming of special products. I can think of one young couple who decided they would raise lambs, and they are doing very well.
When people from failing farms come to you, do you ask them whether they have received special counselling so that they might find a new path for their land, although that new path might not be the big commercial operations that, perhaps, they were used to? Is such counselling happening? Farm people going to food banks is new and they need special counselling.
Mr. Hellquist: That is a good question. In my experience with farm families needing to access food banks, I have found that this is a tremendous blow to their self-esteem. Usually, they do not want to hang around and have a conversation and are in a hurry to hightail it out of the food bank. Having to go to a food bank is the last straw for farmers because they deem it an admission of failure when they cannot produce enough food and generate enough income to feed their families.
We have not engaged in many discussions with farm families. It is tough for them when they have to turn to a food bank. These people have prided themselves for years on being the producers of food not just for Canada but also for the world. They are still producing food for the world, but they cannot generate enough economic resources to produce it for their own tables. That is a challenge for them and a big self-esteem issue for many farmers.
The Chairman: You are right. That has happened as we have gone through the droughts, BSE issues and other problems way beyond anyone's effort to change. It is happening to more and more people, who would never have dreamed of having to stand in one of those line-ups; and it is very hard.
Senator Meighen: You have raised some great questions in response to those that we have been able to pose. I wish we had more time to ask many more questions that come to mind. For example, to what extent are you best to use your precious resources to investigate the root causes? Clearly, society has to address that if we are to put the food banks out of business, which you hope will occur. Yet your primary task, for better or worse, is to have food available for those who are in dire need. Some day we might address to what extent that is diluted by undertaking other tasks.
For now I want to concentrate on the matter raised by Senator Oliver. What can federal parliamentarians do to help you? We have mentioned the problems associated with block funding, so perhaps that could be addressed at the federal level. Is there any problem with receiving donations? Is there a problem with soliciting the donations? Are you receiving enough donations? How could the federal government help in that respect? Is there any other action that Parliament might take to make your job more effective?
Mr. Seiden: Those are good questions. One thing I have learned, being with the Canadian Association of Food Banks, is that we are almost like two organizations in one body, which seems a bit strange at times. We talk about whether we will go out of business yet there are many hungry people needing our service. Ironically, we have never asked for help. Food banks have wanted to be independent and we thought we would go out of business. Most of our dollars come from corporate Canada. We have not asked aggressively for donations to pay for staff, equipment and supports but, most importantly, we have not asked for any small tax incentives to donors, either transportation or food.
The U.S. has small tax breaks for food donors and food manufacturers. That leads to a tremendous increase in donations. Mexico too has established such a tax break and Israel, in its first months of developing a network, passed a Good Samaritan law that provided some small tax incentives for food manufacturers.
The U.S. just passed a law extending that tax incentive to rural farmers and small businesses. They estimate that will lead to an increase of 250 million pounds of food a year that farmers and small businesses will be able to donate to food banks — and they will be encouraged to do so.
Right now, donating is revenue neutral. The only thing a company or a donor saves is some of the cost to dump the product.
I heard a story about a farmer in Manitoba or one of the Western provinces who was having some difficulty. It was more costly for him to donate cows than to slaughter them, because there were no tax incentives. That is a shame. There are good examples from the south as well, which we can send you.
Senator Meighen: Can we get those examples, Madam Chairman?
Senator Oliver: I think Ms. Swinemar mentioned earlier that Kraft and Proctor & Gamble contribute substantially to you. Are you saying that when they contribute substantial amounts of food they get no tax compensation or receipt or relief for those efforts?
Ms. Swinemar: That is correct.
Mr. Seiden: If we write a tax receipt, they have to include the amount of the receipt in revenue. It is a revenue neutral situation, where they have to include the tax receipt as income and write off an expense for the product. If we do not give them a receipt, it is still revenue neutral. We give them a letter of acceptance. In this country, there is no tax incentive at all.
Mr. Bay: To give you an example, we have major food importers who find that it would cost them money to donate food to the food bank system, as I understand it. They bring the food into Canada, discover that there is no market or that the labels have been misplaced, et cetera. They paid certain taxes when it came into the country. If they can certify that the product has been destroyed, they get a rebate of those taxes. However, if they were to donate the product to us, they do not get one. Therefore, it would cost them too much money, so the product goes to the dump rather than to the food bank. To fix that would cost the Minister of National Revenue nothing because those taxes are rebated in any case since the food is being destroyed. That could be a budget item that would cost absolutely nothing.
Mr. Seiden: That has happened twice this year, where a manufacturer has paid the customs on a large amount of product and, in order to get that customs back, had to destroy the product.
Senator Hubley: We do not know as much about this topic as we think we do. In looking at rural poverty, we imagine a farm that had some problems and now the farm family has to go to a food bank. We have known for a long time that many of the farms were sustained by off-farm income; this seems to be another step along that not very comfortable path.
There is not a great deal of difference in poverty, whether it is rural or urban. How much information can food banks collect from your clients? Can you collect information their circumstances and why they are there?
Ms. Swinemar: Different food banks will ask questions differently of the people who come to them for help. As a rule, most of them will ask for identification through a health card. They will ask for the health card of all their family members to address whether a family is using more than one food bank, which is always a question from the public. They will ask the source of income. If the clients have an income, some food banks will even ask how much it is and what their expenses are per month. The questions generally do not go much deeper than that.
Again, as Mr. Hellquist pointed out, people do not want to hang out at the food bank. They want to be invisible — get in, get their groceries and get out as quickly as is humanly possible so that they do not have to see a neighbour or friend while they are there. However, at most of the food banks, there is some sort of data gathering. That is how we do our hunger count, for example; we have the data.
Mr. Hellquist: We have examples across the country of food banks staying open in the evenings so that people can come in darkness to access food. They do not want their neighbours to know that they are in dire straits. They do not want to acknowledge to the community that they are in need. Trying to collect data from them is somewhat problematic, particularly in rural Canada where many of the food banks are run solely by volunteers, the neighbours and friends of the food bank users. It can be an uncomfortable experience for someone who, for many years, has run their farm operation, has been a successful business person or business family. The farm has been in the family for generations, and now to have to admit that they have to rely on charity from the community to be able to feed their family is an incredibly humbling experience for those people. It is difficult for the volunteer at the food bank to engage in a discussion about anything more than the basic level.
There are food banks across the country that are trying to drill down deeper into the data. I know of food banks that are trying to do complete entrance interviews so that we can start to identify the myriad of issues those families are dealing with. They are not just hungry; they probably have health issues. In many cases there are addiction issues or other things, such as a single mom who dropped out of school. The more we can find out about those individuals, the more likely it is that we will be able to put together the services required to help them, but it is a challenge.
Ms. Swinemar: We run a 24-7 crisis line that we inherited as part of our organization. What Mr. Hellquist is saying is absolutely correct. We ask what is bringing them to the help line; it may be that they are asking for food but that is just one tiny piece of what their call is about. It is so much deeper than that. They talk anonymously so it is easier for them.
Senator Hubley: Can you then refer them to other agencies within the community that would be able to help them?
Mr. Hellquist: That would be the intent. If the food bank is not in a position to help them, we want to make sure that they get access to some assistance somewhere in the community. Again, the more we understand who uses the food banks, the more we are able to direct them to the right services.
Ms. Swinemar: That would not necessarily be true in rural Canada, because those same support systems would be missing from their community. They would have to go to the nearest town or city to get them. The volunteers running the food banks where they go in the first place may not be aware of the services that are available.
Senator Mahovlich: The Salvation Army has been in this business forever. Do they have a method to get the people off the system? For instance, do they have a training program in place to provide education for people to help them get off the food bank?
Mr. Seiden: We have met with the Salvation Army, and some of their food banks are members, especially in Western Canada. I learned from the national program director of the Salvation Army that they are running services for housing, clothing and other needs and, in fact, would prefer not to be in the food bank business. They are in it by necessity in some communities but that is not their primary service. All agencies, whether running a mental health centre or a food centre, struggle with how to wean someone off the service.
Senator Mahovlich: It is a constant struggle.
Mr. Seiden: Keeping in mind the figures that I read, I hate to leave the impression that all our people are dependent on us. Many of them are employed full time and still cannot make ends meet. Currently, 13 per cent of our adult clientele, with children, are employed full time earning minimum wage and are not able to make ends meet.
Senator Mahovlich: I have a friend who is retired and now volunteers. Every morning he drives medical patients to another town for their treatments. Are we getting more and more volunteers now as food banks increase?
Ms. Swinemar: I will speak about my agency. I have a staff of 30 and a volunteer team of 600. We could not manage without volunteers.
Mr. Hellquist: We track volunteers in our facility by the hour and the average per month is between 4,000 and 5,000 volunteer hours. That far exceeds our staff hours on an ongoing basis. Food banks are very reliant on certain supports from the community. One is volunteer support and the other is the kind of support we get from individual donors who have a strong belief in the work that we do. As well, the corporate sector is very generous in their ongoing support, whether through the provision of food or through ongoing donations. We continue to enjoy tremendous community support from churches, schools and other community-based organizations. The movement is about as grassroots as you can get, and the grass is spreading to smaller communities all the time.
Senator Mahovlich: Do smaller communities have programs like Meals on Wheels? In Toronto, I volunteered for one week, when they wanted some publicity, and I delivered meals with Mr. Gordon Sinclair. It was great; the meals were excellent, and the recipients were so glad to see us.
Mr. Hellquist: Meals on Wheels is a wonderful concept and works very well in larger centres. It is challenging in smaller areas because there are issues around the safety of the food supply and who will cook it, et cetera. It is a tremendous service to those in need, but typically it is more likely to be seen in larger centres.
Ms. Swinemar: Bringing your question to the rural perspective, we are finding in rural Nova Scotia that the age of the volunteers running the agencies that we have been supporting is climbing. This year, a food bank had to shut down because the volunteers who had been running it for about 15 years were too old to continue running it, and there was no one in the community who could take over and run this organization. Now people are having to go to the next town for support. That, too, is typical of rural communities where the population is aging and their support systems are diminishing.
Senator Mahovlich: That is what I wanted to know — whether volunteers were still coming out to help. However, they are aging and the youth are not coming out to take their place.
Ms. Swinemar: That is right.
Mr. Seiden: The document I have is the only one of its kind in Canada that measures hunger and, therefore, is a barometer of food bank use. During my first year, for some reason we did not publish this document. I received calls from educators, churches and communities across Canada who wanted a copy.
Senator Mahovlich, if you look at the last page, you will see a summary chart. At the top, you will read that the total of volunteer hours in Canada is 245,000 and the total staff hours is 104,000. You can see for every province the number of volunteer hours and the number of staff hours and how many volunteer hours go into running food banks. There is a great deal of information on this chart relating your question.
Senator Mahovlich: Thank you.
Senator Merchant: Could you comment on the use of food stamps, which they have in the U.S.?
Ms. Swinemar: I have gone to a number of U.S. conferences with food banks and have asked about food stamps and whether it is a good program to provide support for families and whether it is making a difference. This is neither a scientific nor a well-researched answer, but the response I received from those running the food banks was that food stamps do not address the problem. Recipients of food stamps still have to use the food banks. Obviously, the program is not sufficient to take care of the needs of families.
Senator Merchant: You mentioned that if people had a voucher, they would make different choices.
Ms. Swinemar: Yes, they would.
Senator Merchant: Perhaps it would be helpful to have food stamps as well as the food banks. You are allowing people to come once a month and sometimes twice a month in Regina.
Mr. Hellquist: The concept behind food stamps merits some attention. Conceptually, it is not a bad program because it can enable people to add to their ongoing food supply. However, I do not think it is the single best answer to the problem. I think there is not one single solution to alleviate the problem of hungry people. At our food bank we will build a grocery store inside the food bank so that when people come to pick up their hampers, we can sell them nutritious, high-quality food at a reduced cost. We will provide them with the items that we are not able to provide them with on an ongoing basis, such as protein, fresh fruit, fresh vegetables, and so on. There are numerous things that we can do collectively to address the issues not only of hunger but also of nutrition. We are paying the price for poor nutrition in hungry people in our health care system.
If we step back and look more globally at what it is we are trying to accomplish, we will see that we are trying to raise healthy children and families. They need not only quantity of food but also quality of food. We need to ensure that that is in place.
Further to that, we are trying to stimulate economic growth and development in our country. There has to be a way to tie the food supply that we require at the table with the food production in Canada so that we are producing food in rural Canada that goes from the farm directly to the consumer without sending it offshore or to the U.S. to be processed. We need to generate economic activity that helps to protect and preserve our food production system right through to consumption in Canada — a made-in-rural-Canada solution to ensure that we have adequate food.
Perhaps with sufficient resources, the food banks could purchase product directly from the producers. There are many things we need to look at much more globally. Food stamps could well be part of the strategy. We have had that discussion in Saskatchewan. We wonder about the possibility of a different kind of food stamp program where you give people a food allowance but have some ability to control what they buy with that food stamp or credit card or swipe card. We need to be creative to ensure that we are providing not just good quantity food but also high quality, nutritious food, to ensure that kids, seniors and adults have what they need in order to be productive citizens.
Mr. Seiden: I heard an odd thing when I was in the U.S.; they said there were no poor or people who needed food banks in Canada, because we had a social safety net.
Food stamps are only part of a national policy in the U.S. The U.S. government purchases food and runs programs and spends billions of dollars. It would be equivalent to our social safety net, if it were functioning. They also purchase excess food, like our marketing boards. They purchase 500 million pounds of food a year for the food banks to give away to people. A whole range of activities are happening. I am not saying that everything is great in the U.S., but they have an entire package of policy to ensure that people have access to food.
Senator Merchant: We can think about other ways to be creative to bring food to people.
Mr. Bay: Another problem with vouchers or food stamps is the enormous cost of food in remote rural areas. Providing someone with a modest allowance that might help them in Regina or Toronto is not going to help them in a rural area. Let me give you an example. I spent a week in a little settlement in James Bay dealing with residential school issues and I walked into the northern store on a number of occasions. Many people in that community are on welfare. The bananas were $7.99 a pound. A food voucher or welfare cheque does not go far when buying bananas or meat. It was fine for buying potato chips as they were about the same price as in Toronto. This community is overburdened with diabetes. We have a special problem in many of the rural areas with such issues; you can use that voucher or your welfare cheque to buy food that will kill you, but you do not have enough money to buy nutritious food. You are faced with a double whammy, no matter how you cut it.
It is hard to move food to those areas. Some areas in Canada have summer access only, others air access or winter access only. While programs like food vouchers are important, they will not be the answer for our most vulnerable Canadians.
Senator Trenholme Counsell: I was surprised but pleased to find something in particular in HungerCount 2006. I am a passionate advocate in the Senate, and wherever else I can be, on child care. I will read this passage from page 34 for the benefit of everybody:
Government must take immediate measures to provide a universally accessible, high quality, affordable and inclusive child care system in Canada. It must reverse its decision to end the national early learning and child care program.
Forty one per cent of Canadian food banks called upon our governments to do just that. That is one of the most powerful things I have seen on the subject. I thank you for this because I will certainly use it the next time I am on my feet in the Senate.
One of you may wish to expand on that position, because I believe it. It is powerful to see the fact that affordable child care is not available related so directly to hunger. Only 15.5 percent of zero to 12-year-olds have access to currently regulated child care, and I suspect that a disproportionate number of those are in Quebec. I had the privilege last week of visiting two child care centres in Quebec where parents pay $7 a day. There are waiting lists even in Quebec. That is a model for all of us to examine closely. I would like you to comment on this recommendation.
Mr. Seiden: We made a pretty strong statement here and I think it is a good statement. I like the way we have actually evaluated performance. We have done that over two years. I am not avoiding the question: it is one piece, and there are six major recommendations.
Senator Trenholme Counsell: I read the list. This is well down the list, but, nevertheless, 41 per cent of the food banks supported the recommendation by adding their names.
Mr. Seiden: We are strong advocates of that position. You must make inroads on housing and other issues. You must deal with the whole package. In this committee's preliminary report you talked about a national poverty- reduction strategy, and I think you identified Greg deGroot-Maggetti as a witness who said that you cannot look at any one policy recommendation and say that that is a solution. You need a national poverty reduction strategy that looks across all of these issues, because they are related to the food bank users. Earlier I pointed out the various proportions for groups making up the total of food bank users. For example, 53 per cent are on social assistance, and the largest part of that group is single mothers who cannot get off the system unless they have child care for their children. The policy recommendations are actually related to who uses the food bank and are designed to correct issues for those people.
Senator Trenholme Counsell: I would be interested in knowing what percentage of single mothers use food banks.
Thank you for this most interesting information. I know that it is a part of a package that includes housing, et cetera. It is a strong message. I assure you I will not take it out of context, but the message is more powerful coming from people like you than from perhaps a professor at the University of Toronto. You understand this just as well or probably better.
Mr. Seiden: To support what you are saying, 22 per cent of food bank users are two-parent families. Sole-parent families are 30 per cent. To find a system that gets them out of using food banks, you have to have a child care system in place, because a single mother coming to a food bank cannot leave a child alone in order to get training. Both of my colleagues have training programs. How can the mother get to the program? I know that some food banks have started developing day care centres within the food bank or supporting day care centres close by.
Mr. Hellquist: Let me pick up on that. We recognized early on that if we were to get into training opportunities for single moms, and also single dads, we needed access to affordable day care. We have a 60-person day care on-site, in our food bank, as part of our education centre. It is such a critical component to be able to take one more challenge away from those single parents, to remove one more barrier to access to services. Without removing that barrier, we probably could not attract those people to our programs.
From an anecdotal perspective, there is something absolutely powerful about a single mom or dad taking a training program and spending the coffee break with their kid or feeding lunch to their child. It is a whole different dynamic, folks, and a different way of looking at the issue. We are dealing with the family unit instead of with the individual elements of the family. Whatever we do in terms of developing a safety network, it has to be not only comprehensive but also in consideration of the family unit. If we can provide support to the entire family, then the chances of breaking any of those cycles of dependency is infinitely greater.
Senator Meighen: Do you have any control over, or have you succeeded in educating donors with respect to, the quality of the food?
Mr. Hellquist: Absolutely we have done that. We work very hard across the country to educate donors about the kinds of food we need the most. All of the food banks are consistent in having a list of the foods that are most critical to serve their needs. A couple of gaps exist in the lists I have seen. There is a tendency to have some low-nutritional items on the list because, very simply, they fill the belly. We need to look at encouraging Canadian content. Rather than ask for orange juice, we could ask for apple juice. We could make efforts in areas that will stimulate the purchase of Canadian products by donors to donate to food banks. That could be a simple and helpful thing to implement across the country.
Ms. Swinemar: About 60 per cent of what we ship out is fresh, perishable product donated by local distributors. Until yesterday, I said that we distribute our food according to Canada's Food Guide, but today I am not so sure, given the recent changes to the guide. We will have to check the inventory. It was a strategy of ours to target those foods.
Senator Meighen: Is there any reason, other than shortage of supply, that causes food banks to restrict the number of visits by its clients?
Mr. Seiden: The primary reason is shortage of supply. Some food banks offer a small percentage more food. However, that generally relates to location in Canada, the wealth of the relevant province, the location of the main distributors and how much food they can raise. In the future we hope to sit down and determine what the average person needs. While we are trying to get out of the business, for food banks to stay in business we need to know what the normal person needs and to know that we can work with our donors and manufacturers to produce that amount nationally as well as locally.
Ms. Swinemar: It states that once per month is the norm but that is not necessarily the action. A family cannot go to the food bank once a month and survive. The reality is that they are coming to a food bank two or three times each month, and we are dealing with that.
Senator Meighen: You advocated in HungerCount 2006 a working income tax credit. Some have said that in its 2007 budget, the federal government will propose a working income tax benefit. Have you had any discussions or been able to participate in any pre-budget consultations to urge this? Have you met with any success, in your view?
Mr. Seiden: When there is a pre-budget consultation, we submit a brief. I have with me our basic document, which is well researched and points out our policy statements.
Senator Meighen: With respect to the working income tax benefit, have you prepared for this budget?
Mr. Seiden: We have submitted our comments here to any pre-budget consultation.
The Chairman: This HungerCount 2006 is a useful document for the committee. I flipped to the page about my province of Alberta and read an interesting sentence, given all of the publicity it receives. I quote:
It is interesting to note that in spite of the economic boom and lower food bank use in Alberta, it is the province with the highest percentage of employed clients visiting a food bank.
That is almost unbelievable.
I thank the witnesses for their great contribution to this meeting. All of us have had something to do with food banks over the years. The testimony this evening will be most helpful to the committee as it travels across the country to continue its examination of rural poverty in Canada.
The committee continued in camera.