90 Replies to “Examining The Mechanisms Underpinning The Increased Demand For Food Banks In Affluent Societies: An Essay In 7 Words”

  2. or they could build “Gasoline Banks” . . sure they would be popular.
    Or just cut to the chase and set up “Money Banks” and hand out cash to the “needy”

  3. We need to increase funding to the Big Screen Plasma TV Banks as well. The line ups there are atrocious.
    Somebody think of the children!

  5. Recently, a food bank was established at the U of Manitoba to help out the students who were unable to afford to feed themselves. Organizers were shocked by the number of students that came to the food bank. They had no idea that malnutrition and poverty were so rampant on campus.
    And even now, some 30 years after I left university, the envy that filled me when I heard of this was quite palpable. Where were these food banks when I was in school? Why did no one care about the welfare of myself and other students back in the late ’70’s. I would have had an extra $50.00 a week for partying! That’s a lot of beer. And smokes! And, uh, recreational pharmaceuticals! {Well it was then!!}
    OF COURSE, the students are using the food bank regularly. It leaves more party money!
    Why wouldn’t it work the same way for the rest? Once you figure out how the system works, it’s just a matter of using it. You’ll only be embarrassed a little, the first time. After that, it’s easy and fun! As an added bonus, with the huge extra demand, the volunteers will feel so much more needed and loved. So everybody wins!

  6. The super duper food bank on Leathorne avenue in London Ontario may as well be a drive-through, like Timmy’s donuts.
    Enough parking space for a dozen vehicles to boot.
    My contention is if one can afford to keep a vehicle on the road (license, repairs, insurance ,fuel at a buck a litre) and then drive to a food bank for free food; that person can damned well afford to buy their own grub!

  7. I was thinking about that Sellick piece this morning before I saw this new thread. I agree with every single word and punctuation mark in her brilliant piece.
    However no perfectly rational argument, so well grounded in the basic principles of economics, will sway the perpetrators of food banks.
    The basic purpose of the food banks is for the socialist phalanx to fraudently manufacture evidence of market failure.

  9. Back when I was starving and unemployed in Edmonton, the nearest foodbank was only reachable by car. This proves that people who operate foodbanks may be well meaning, but are obviously retarded.
    A friend of mine fell on hard times last summer. She lives down in the southern US, so it wasn’t like I could pop by with a roast or something. So instead I went online (thereby not having to expend any unneccessary cost) and bought a $100 Winn-Dixie gift card, which would be delivered right to her door within a couple of days. With it she could buy milk for her kid, healthy vegetables, and maybe a sweet treat or two – it wasn’t the same goddam can of Campbell’s chicken noodle that every foodbank box seems to contain.
    RG

  10. “But what about the children?” [stock reply # 34]
    Yeah, I may sound like a heartless SOB but trust me when I say that even with a cart full of foodbank groceries, some kids will go hungry because there are slimeballs who will convert that into cash, boose or drugs.

  11. “Or just cut to the chase and set up “Money Banks” and hand out cash to the “needy”
    They already do. They’re your federal and provincial Agricultural Departments.
    If you subsidize it, they will farm.

  12. The unions set up food banks when Brian Mulroney became Prime Minister in order to try and embarrass him and his government. They have since become part of the poverty industry and provide employment t many (you guessed it) loonie lefties who think they are making a contribution because so many people in this country are starving due to neo-con policies. They make sure their stats prove them right.
    Fortunately, many people see through this charade and don’t contribute to food banks. These smart people believe in the old saying: give a man food and you feed him for a day; teach a man to fish and he will eat everyday.

  13. “If you build it, they will come.”
    Exactly so. I of course am one of those callous and poor bashing conservatives who refuses to accept that ‘the poor’ are always victims of circumstance.
    Vancouver now offers ‘safe injection sites’ and hands out ‘crack kits’ to addicts. The point is not to reduce addiction but to reduce the stigma and prevent the spread of ‘disease’. We’ve made the Downtown East Side an enclave of empty lives by saying that addiction is devoid of moral content and thus, should not be judged. Rather, it’s a lifestyle choice and therefore, as valid as any other path one might choose – and therefore, it deserves our support.
    As for ‘thousands of Canadians going hungry’, I just don’t buy it. I noted a sandwich board (no pun intended) listing the ‘food banks’ and free meal establishments in downtown Vancouver. The list, in rather smallish type, filled BOTH sides of the sandwich board. If anyone is going hungry, it’s because they are using the resources provided by others for non-food expenditures: drugs, booze or any of a number of other ‘essentials’ to their lifestyle.
    Now the demand is for ‘affordable housing’ for the poor. Build more housing without any responsibilities of investment or upkeep and I guarantee you’ll soon have many more people lining up to demand still more affordable housing.
    By the way, this non-compassionate conservative will be out in the cold this afternoon, shaking the bells on behalf of the Salvation Army – just as I was yesterday, too.

  14. Crickey. This brings back memories.
    Many years ago, at the suggestion of a friend, I volunteered down at the Daily Bread Food Bank in Toronto. I was young and dumb and all that and really believed that it might be a good cause.
    So I gave them a call to see if they would be interested in having me do some desktop publishing for them. They said they could use that, so I went down for the sign-up and orientation.
    Orientation started at “disturbing” and went down hill from there. They had the whole warehouse infrastructure thing happening, just as the NP article mentions. Even then I thought there was something wrong here — there just seemed to be far too much infrastructure for what they were doing.
    Their “order board” was the next thing that made me wonder. This was a whiteboard in the shipping area listing all of the local charities scheduled to receive food deliveries — hospices, shelters, and the like. At first I thought the board was alphabetical — all the AIDS hospices were listed first, ahead of places like children’s and womens’ shelters. I soon realised that the board was not alphabetised — it was politicised. In Toronto Hold ‘Em (Victimhood Poker), AIDS is clearly a face card.
    After the tour, the volunteers were herded into an office. We were lectured on the upcoming provincial election — we were told to vote NDP as only the NDP had a strategy to deal with poverty. Perhaps I was a little naive at the time, but I could not believe that this lame attempt at indoctrination was happening.
    The last straw came when they sat us down in front of phones. We were to do some telemarketing for a poverty group of some sort. I don’t recall which one — I don’t think it was for the foodbank itself, but it could have been. When I told them there was absolutely no way I would be doing cold-call telemarketing to beg for cash, I was told that they had no use for my time. The desktop publishing that I had originally signed up for? Didn’t need me — “we have someone who does that.”
    Just as a passing point of interest, the head honcho at the Daily Bread Food Bank at the time was Gerard Kennedy.

  15. I was watching TV last night, a Toronto station, and an ad came on for a food bank. It stated that last year the food bank helped over 900,000 people.
    There are only about 3.5 to 4 million people in the GTA, so this means 1 in four people in Toronto cannot afford food.
    Is this for real? If this was true I would expect to see a 1930’s era depression, hordes of people living on the streets, etc.
    Someone is not telling the truth.

  17. When I was at college in Northern Ontario, I knew guys who regularly used a food bank. So they’d keep more of their allowance from Mom and Dad for the bars. Glad to see Daily Bread providing such a vital service.

  18. I’ve volunteered for Winnipeg Harvest over the years…making deliveries and hucking boxes in the warehouse.
    They seem to accept that it just goes with the territory that some people who don’t need the help are helping themselves to the largess.
    I’ve seen scumbags driving luxury cars and expensive SUVs accepting food hamper deliveries or making individual grocery pickups at the outlet.
    By my estimation there is a good chance that about 50% of the food is wasted on abusers of the system.
    One question I ask is where is the effort to identify the abuse and the abusers?

  19. I volunteer at a casino for a charitable organization every few months. I also volunteer off and on at a Food Bank outlet run by our church. Imagine how it feels to hand out free food “for the children” to some of the same people who are blowing their entire welfare cheques at the casinos.
    Oh, and one lady I know personally always take a taxi to the food bank and hauls her three “starving” youngsters in to help with the free haul. For the food bank she wears sweat pants and a ratty looking coat.
    Her kids are also in on the free hot lunch program at school and dress like little hobos.
    However, for the casino trips this mother drives her newer model SUV and is dressed to the nines. She often comes with her live in boyfriend who I am sure welfare does not know about.
    Yup – the poverty industry needs people like her times thousands to keep THEIR jobs and load all of us down with GUILT.
    So sad.

  20. I heard from one food bank manager, on the radio, a couple of weeks ago that the food requried by food banks was changing – mores beans and rice, due to the changing ethnic immigrant clientel.
    My rhetorical Q is why are immigrants using food banks?
    I was only allowed into Canada if I could support myself.

  21. Great post no guff — no kidding!
    You too Lickmuffin — quick and dirty real world education, what? Instant erasure of years of formal “education”, eh? Good on you.
    For my little contribution: It seems that most years my wife and I (she mostly) end up watching another tedious Dickens “Uncle Scrooge”. She always glances over at me meaningfully when Scrooge explains that he already “gives” in his very high taxes having heard the same double-jeoprady speech from me at purely random times in the year respecting no season!

  22. Well, all I can hope is that many of you choke on your food this Christmas season. Christ did not have a triage when feeding the crowd with loaves and fishes. THAT menu sounds a lot richer than the pitiful pasta-poor food that choked nasty Jonathan Kay at his supermarket.

  23. “One question I ask is where is the effort to identify the abuse and the abusers?”
    One is not allowed to question whether a ‘need’ exists or not. Do do so would be to stigmatize the poor, which is definitely not PC.
    I grew up in a poor family (six kids) and regretfully, my parents occasionally (but gratefully) had to accept a Christmas food hamper from our parish church. It was humiliating for my father, who did his very best in providing for us.
    But that very concept of humiliation helped to raise us out of poverty, too. My parents were determined not to have to accept the charity of others and raised all of us to be independent and successful. They used their experience to elevate our own, so that we would not require others to provide for us.
    Shame, humiliation and guilt, are considered ‘negative values’ but they do have a role in either reducing either anti-social behaviors or encouraging one to work hard, in order to elevate one’s station to a point where charity can be given rather than taken.
    When entering a food bank is considered as viable and normal as entering a grocery store, we have a problem.
    BTW, apparently donations to the Salvation Army are down about 30% in our area. I wonder if it’s because we are so used to ‘the government’ taking care of everyone, that we feel personal contributions are not warranted?

  24. First rule of becoming a self-reliant adult:
    If you don’t have it yet… try harder.Works VERY well.
    Concepts as social housing (my personal pet peeve)and food banks take away the incentive to buckle down and muster the extra effort required. When you’re REALLY sick and tired of the rut you find yourself in, you will find a way (your OWN).
    Can’t get a Cadillac with a Kia effort, or attitude.

  25. I havent given to the food bank for years since they were filming it once and I recognized my brothers ginormous oink of a sister in law and her two equally large sisters standing two back of the interviewee, I know they were all working and extra calories was the least of their requirements. you could have hidden a full size axe handle behind anyone of them.

  26. The ex used the food bank for awhile, “to feed the kids”.
    She soon gave up. Too much starch, pasta/macaroni, canned food, versus fresh fruits/veggies.

  27. All I can remember is the time in a supermarket and a over weight shopper in front of me with food stamps paying for at least $200.00 worth of high end products (choice steaks etc) and than she pulled out cash to pay for her high end liquor, lottery tickets and smokes. Yep — that’s what I remember. Of course I do believe there are people who genuinely benefit from food banks and government handouts, but it makes you think. Thanks for this alternative viewpoint — well taken.

  28. The only charity I donate to is the SPCA because unlike humans, dogs and cats have few choices and no job opportunities.
    If feel no sympathy for the less motivated and no guilt for feeling as I do.
    If you put up a free beer sign the line up will grow until there is no more beer. Yes, if you build it they will come. If you don’t, they will have to build it themselves and that is precisely what they should be doing.
    Life, when left on it’s own is conservative. It even Objectivist in nature. It is survival of the fittest. Those will motivation will prosper using logic, common sense and reason.
    It is no different with political venues. Conservatism continues to thrive because it is based on the values mentioned above. The Socialist system cannot (and has proved that) survive because it is based on ideals that are unsupportable (see free beer reference) unless Conservatives agree to fund it IE provide the beer.
    This is so simple even a moron should be able to figure it out. I must conclude that the present Leftists are sub-moron.

  29. Oh — what upset me was she had on a very expensive looking fur coat to boot! The cashier looked a bit perplexed.

  31. That can be accurately applied to any welfare-style service or product. If you give it away, MORE people will line up for it, rather than purposely NOT line up for it. It’s brilliantly plain to us; it confounds the hell out of those who think give-away programs should EVER be expected to shrink.

  32. Em… if you read the rest of the story you will notice that Jesus did not say he would keep up the free meal …they went on to work and survive. And there were people of all ‘classes’ in the crowd…not just the ‘poor’. And He told us to love one another…suggesting Kay should choke doesn’t sound too loving.Please don’t preach.
    Looks like a ‘beer and popcorn’ moment here.Wonder if Scott is reading this.
    I have to agree. There are too many abuses of the ‘helpful’systems that are set in place. But I wouldn’t lump them all into the sme heap. For those of us who reakky want to help, there are many different ways.
    Merry Christmas to you all!

  34. no guff: By the way, this non-compassionate conservative will be out in the cold this afternoon, shaking the bells on behalf of the Salvation Army – just as I was yesterday, too.
    You realize that the SA also operates and uses food banks, don’t you?

  35. These stories remind me of a few years back when some Katrina victims were whining and complaining about the quality of relief effort… what? Oh wait, they are still here and still complaining.

  36. The now deprecated American system of foodstamps, which is integrated into every point of sale system in the grocery segment into the US was the basis for the Electronic Benefits, and Quest rules. Most supermarket item files contain a flag indicating whether an item is eligible for purchase with food stamps, or not. That flag is also present in just about every Canadian supermarket as well, but is unused.
    There were problems with paper food stamps, as there are with any palpable ‘currency’. Hence the push to EBT in 2000/2001. This is like online debit – payment processors are obligated to direct the traffic. WIC (women, infants and children) benefits are redeemed at the cash register in your local supermarket against goods purchased which are eligible, and no others.
    Oh, but we Canadians could never adopt such a system here! Oh no, we have to have a superior system – that one is to, well, American.
    This capability sits, available, but dormant, in nearly every major point of sale system operating in the food segment in Canada – including many retailer’s systems in the pharmacy segment, so any pharmacy also selling food can participate.
    The gas and convenience segment, not so much. There goes the beer and popcorn I guess.
    Food banks are by now sacred cows, and any one that dares to tinker with them is a mean conservative – probably a greedy selfish Christian anglo-saxon misogynist homophobic crusader racist male.
    But we’re talking efficiency here – which means more of the resource goes into the mouths of those that need it, instead of, ermmmm, the maws of the Poverty Industry. And after all, this follows the model of Nature, does it not, to be efficient? Isn’t Nature the paragon of efficiency?
    Therefore, we are advancing Green solutions, with a smaller carbon footprint.

  37. I know there are some pople with real need and down in their luck. At one time family and neighbors took care of these people since they had first hand knowledge of the circumstances and now due to our kindness we have created a multi-generational condition of entitlement and permanent pseudo-poverty for a lot of people.
    I see this a a cockroach sitution and as we all know if you clean up their source of food they will leave and relocate somewhere else.
    Sounds kind of cruel but when Abe Lincoln asked ex-slave Fredrick Douglass how they would provide for the freed slaves his answer was, “Let hunger be their master.” “If they are hungry they will find work and work hard.”

  38. Hey guys/gals.It’s just human nature that if you can get it for free,they will come.The work ethic of our forefathers has almost totally disappered,thanks to Turdeau and other commies.You MUST make the sheeple dependant on the state,if you are to control them.And the socialists/commies know this and use it very well,to the detriment of honest people.Food banks are just another tool in their arsenal against freedom loving people.

  39. Food Banks=Poverty Enablers
    Heres a Tip that befits the season: Find someone, anyone who needs help and help them any way you can.
    Lets cut the socialist victimhood poverty industry out of the equation

  40. Em: I hate to disabuse you but, Jesus fed the crowds because they had come to hear him talk. He also said that if a man did not work he did not eat. We do no one a favor by crippling them further by taking away their dignity with free handouts. Go read a good book it is called”The Glass Castle” by Jeanette Walls. That book just might open your eyes to the street people industry.

  41. Let’s face it–we are all enablers. We give mindlessly. You want money or food?? Fine, as long as it doesn’t interfere with my time. If more people would give of their time, we wouldn’t have a need for food banks.
    Its like putting bandaids on cancer-useless but we feel like we’ve contributed something but with no effort on our part.

  42. I remember when Sue Cox of the Toronto food bank had boasted about how the demand for food rose over the years when she was in charge and “Thank God” that I was there for the growth.
    Right Sue , and giving away food had nothing to do with all those people speading the news to others so the Pyramid would grow not be demand but by human greed to get something for free.
    How odd that the NDP rants about child Poverty and how they go to bed and go to school hungry every day , yet the actual Facts from the Medical profession is that Canada has a obesity issue for kids.
    Sounds like a Al Gore scam where he warns us about flooding and droughts at the same time.
    Amazing , the Leftists tell us the Obesity in children is the first sign or Poverty and the record cold winters and seeing snow in October last year is a sign of global warming.
    Watch for the shift to warn us of a Ice Age
    once it gets hot out because heat is the first sign of a Ice Age.

  43. People can be given food vouchers or certificates for grocery stores in their areas and tobacco products etc. can be exempt. It is unfortunate that people who can afford to feed themselves use food banks; poor people do exist who need a hand-up and to think that they are somehow lazy and need to get a job isn’t only cruel, but couldn’t be further from the truth. Many single mothers with children live below the poverty line, whilst their ex-husbands live well above the poverty line – just a reality for women.
    There used to be a sense of shame associated with being poor – unfortunately, but now it seems some people have no shame at all.

  44. Touché Joanne…well said and true in the USA. Unfortunately, using the welfare handouts enables some to abuse the system.

  45. Ah yes, Jesus.
    He had a lot to say about people who squandered finances (the parable of the talents, to name just one story) and who took and took without so much as a word of gratitude.
    He also had a word or two for people who didn’t listen CLOSELY to what he taught…

  46. “There used to be a sense of shame associated with being poor – unfortunately, but now it seems some people have no shame at all.”
    There used to be a sense of shame associated with a lot of things, but the permissive society championed by the left has made just about anything a acceptable, worthy of subsidy by the taxpayer and worthy of protection (read suppression of dissenting opinions) by the various human rights kangaroo courts. Nowadays, the role of the state is to act as enabler for the worst in humans, so as to better control the masses.
    Meh…. I’m off to the Caribbean on a GHG-spewing jet this weekend (no, I didn’t buy any Gore-swindle offsets – unlike the AGW worshippers,I wasn’t born yesterday ), paid for by my hard work. Fortunately, I can subsidize my own lifestyle with what is left after the government takes a cut to subsidize the lifestyle of the lazy and retarded.
    I think our troops fighting the good fight in Afghanistan and their families deserve a lot more of our thoughts and time than the freeloaders at home.
    Feliz Navidad and Happy New Year

  47. This issue is actually the latest installment of an old dilemma. The solution arrived at by the 19th century liberals was:
    “We cannot tell need from greed except through this way: a bar set at a level at which only the truly desperate will apply.”
    Doing so may sound harsh, but it eliminates the need to scotch out cheaters, abusers and those who enjoy a free ride.
    Believe it or not, this system was rendered obsolete for a time by none other than the members of the Christian Left. They did so by belting out “shame! shame!” to any abuser of the system. The reason for the dropping of the poor rate and the poor house was the moral capital accumulated by the old-style Christian Left. They were the ones who had no compunctions when cracking down on welfare grafters.
    Nowadays, this moral capital has largely been consumed, or dissipated. I suppose the downside was too high…

  48. As Eliza, and others, point out poverty is now an industry in Canada. There are a whole lot of people, like Sue (above), who make their living “helping the poor.”
    If the poor were to become self-sufficient–horrors–there’d be a lot fewer jobs for the poverty pimps.
    BTW, living in poverty has a lot to do with families that break up and the resulting single-parent families, usually fatherless.
    When do you ever hear this? When do you ever hear those who say they “care” for the poor lamenting broken families?
    You won’t. Radical feminists think, as Gloria Steinem asserted, that “a woman without a man is like a fish without a bicylce”: Who needs a man in your life, even if you have kids?
    It may come as a huge surprise to a lot of post-moderns, that most kids do best with a mom and a dad, and most families don’t live in poverty if there is a mom/dad/kids family.
    This is the LAST message you’ll hear from poverty activists and/or the NDP.

  50. Just watching a news item from Toronto and a family who were looking for help from the food bank, etc. and having a new apartment given to them because of a fire in their former place. Camera panned to show a big 50 inch TV in the room. We seniors certainly don’t have that luxury and we BUY our own food on our small pensions. Guess it is better not to work because the food banks are going to be there to feed all eventually. The biggest mistake in our society -why is it? Because people would rather have their money for other things. We had none of this in the 40’s and 50’s – it is totally disgraceful. Do away with Food Banks – oh no, the NDP will cry.

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