But Dan Meades, provincial co-ordinator of the Transition House Association of N.L. and an anti-poverty advocate, wishes the focus was a little bit broader than what's on the shelves at the food bank.

Yes, it is a good thing when we are able to help our fellow human beings, but it is not a good thing when we continue to put Band-Aids on what is a gaping wound of inequality.

Today's soup kitchens and food banks were created in the early 1980s to address food insecurity caused by the recession at the time. The original purpose of these services was as a temporary stopgap, but 30 years later, shouldn't we be questioning the length of the "emergency"?

How, you might ask, could we possibly close them when so many people in our communities rely on them?

Well, as Put Food in the Budget (PFIB) reminds us in their latest discussion paper, "We Need to Talk - Who banks on food banks?," one way would be for the Ontario government to set social assistance and minimum wage rates high enough so that people could afford their own food.

"If people at the church think they're going to end poverty by volunteering at the food bank, they're not," said Put Food In The Budget provincial organizer Mike Balkwill. "If they think they're alleviating poverty, they're maybe alleviating a very small part of it."

Undoubtedly, food banks allow some hungry Canadians to be somewhat less hungry. But research shows that the majority of hungry Canadians never go to a food bank - and even those that do so are still hungry. This doesn't mean we need to donate more food to food banks. It means that we need to tackle the underlying problem, poverty.

Elaine Power

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