Food banks are not normal

There has been a lot of talk about the profiteering and inflation at grocery stores in Canada recently. The increasing number of people who are unable to afford the basic necessities of life because of these increasing costs, coupled with stagnant or non-existent wages, are driving up demand at food banks and community pantries.

I had one person recently attempt to find a silver lining in this suffering, suggesting that people voluntarily filling local pantries with food for those that need it is a sign of the community doing something positive in the face of something very terrible. The existence of food banks and community pantries gives me no warm feelings, however. In my mind, their existence is a sign of a deep rot in a wealthy society that is unable to effectively provide for the basic material needs of its people.

Despite boasts of a "strong economy", lineups at food banks are getting longer and more frequent. An optimistic person might hope that this is only temporary. Well, when food banks first began to pop up in the early 1980s in response to a devastating recession, they were supposed to be temporary then. Today, their usage has never been higher.

Food banks don't have to exist. But while they remain, it allows governments, corporations, and the wealthy to download responsibility to ordinary people like you and I, while occasionally winning themselves some positive PR. As I often write, in such a populous, complex, and mutually-dependent society, personal responsibility will never solve systemic problems like food insecurity. Systemic problems can only be solved by universal, radical changes to the status quo. But to do so will require a lot of us to find the courage to accept that though the status quo might benefit us, that it doesn't benefit everyone.

These outcomes are in fact not a bug, but a feature of our profit-motivated society. There is a world where we solve food insecurity and poverty, and it's not at all a mystery. It's a world where we put people before profits. Yes, it is that simple. Getting there won't be simple, unfortunately.

In the mean time, I invite you to check out Canadaland's recent article and podcast titled "Every foodbank is a policy failure."