https://www.thestar.com/opinion/contributors/2021/12/05/food-drives-are-not-the-answer-to-poverty-and-hunger.html

Food drives are not the answer to poverty and hunger

This is the time of year when the three of us turn off CBC Radio.

We can’t bear to listen to the Sounds of the Season’s cheerful promotion of food bank donations.

We are not Grinches or Scrooges. We most assuredly want everyone in Canada not to have to worry about putting food on the table.

But we object to our national broadcaster helping to perpetuate the myth that if we all just “pitch in” for food banks, then we can “end hunger.” This comforting fable is a convenient smokescreen for government inaction on poverty and the intersecting gender, racist and ableist inequities that disproportionately keep women, BIPOC, and people with disabilities in poverty and food insecurity. These are problems that food bank donations can never fix.

Being worried about being able to buy groceries, having to eat foods with too few vital nutrients, or not having enough to eat because of lack of money is a condition known as food insecurity. More than four million people in Canada, including more than a million children, are food insecure — and that was before the COVID pandemic.

Last month, Daily Bread Food Bank and North York Harvest’s “Who’s Hungry” Report revealed that Toronto food bank visits in 2020 smashed all previous records, with new clients outnumbering existing ones for the first time ever.

For every person who visits a food bank, we know there are another three or four people who never even get to the food bank. For many people, using a food bank is a symbol of hitting bottom, and some would just rather go hungry than swallow their dignity.

FoodShare Toronto, Daily Bread Food Bank, North York Harvest and others recognize that food insecurity is a crisis and food banks are an inadequate response. They are demanding effective government action to reduce poverty and build community resilience through decent jobs, affordable housing and a robust social safety net. Surely we should expect the same analysis and call to action from our public broadcaster.

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When food banks were established in Canada in the 1980s, they were an “emergency” response to an economic downturn. The founders assumed that once the economy recovered, food banks would close their doors. Instead, food banks have become firmly established as a sacred good. Food drives have become celebrations of giving; we would like them to become a time to reflect on what we could do differently to address the root causes of hunger.

Sounds of the Season, like other food drives, gives an appearance of generosity and abundance. But the food collected is nowhere near enough to meet the needs of the people who use food banks, let alone the people who are food insecure but not going to banks for help. Food banks allow some people to be less hungry. That’s all. They can’t even begin to address the deep chasm of poverty and its underlying gender, racist and ableist inequities.

This year, whether or not you donate to your local food bank, please take a minute to drop a note or email to your MPP and your MP and ask how they will commit to eliminating poverty and food insecurity in 2022.

And please let CBC know that you don’t want them using public resources to further enshrine charity as Canada’s default response to poverty and food insecurity. We need CBC to promote clear-eyed analyses of why poverty exists, who is most affected, and how to solve the problem with just solutions. Then we will turn CBC Radio back on in December.

Elaine Power is a professor in the School of Kinesiology and Health Studies, Queen’s University. Paul Taylor is Executive Director, FoodShare Toronto. Valerie Tarasuk is a professor in the department of Nutritional Sciences, University of Toronto.