They piled bags of bread, a small mountain of Jolly Ranchers and a pair of rotten tomatoes in front of City Hall and asked "Would you want to feed your family this?"

Frustrated volunteers from the OPIRG food cupboard brought their message to a rally Saturday at noon since they are tired of trying to patch together decent meals for their clients from the bizarre quantities and types of food donated from corporations in exchange for tax credits. They say their request to civic officials for changes is just the start of their campaign.

Is income security the next BIG idea?

About 50 community leaders from across York Region gathered in Richmond Hill July 3 to promote the idea of ensuring Canadians have access to a basic income guarantee (BIG) so they have enough money for food and other fundamental needs.

Not only would income security spare people the indignity of going to food banks, but it would reroute taxpayer money now spent on health and social programs while giving low-income earners the opportunity to contribute to their local economies, Queen's University associate Prof. Elaine Power said.

Four million hungry Canadians. More than a million kids living in Canadian households where there is not enough food. Almost 20,000 Kingstonians living in poverty. More than 6,500 people using Kingston's Partners in Mission Food Bank.

These are overwhelming statistics. Where do we even begin to tackle hunger?

For more than 30 years, we have turned to food banks to solve hunger. The idea that food banks can make hunger disappear is appealing in its simplicity. Hungry people need food. If we give food to hungry people, then they won't be hungry anymore. Makes sense, doesn't it?

Unfortunately, the food bank solution to hunger isn't working...

When we look at the incredible need for emergency food centers that exist, one of the questions we have to ask ourselves is what can be done to reduce future reliance on food banks in Canada. In most areas, the problem with food insecurity does not have to do with regional scarcity of food; instead it has to do with distribution and availability of food. Income operates as a determinant for food access. In order to reduce food insecurity and reduce reliance on food banks, income-related policies need to be targeted. This includes policies that can increase minimum wage and social assistance rates to a level that makes it affordable to access food.

[S]ocieties can choose poverty. For poverty is a choice that we make as a society. It is constructed, not inevitable. It is constructed by the economic and social policies we choose, by which voices we choose to listen to, and by which rights we choose to support and which rights we choose to ignore. It is constructed by the choice we make about how well we fund the instruments we create to counter poverty, the safety net of public income supports.

I think this is an important idea, that poverty is something we have chosen to construct as a society, because if it is something we have built, we can also choose to tear it down. We can tear it down because we have decided to believe in human dignity for everyone, in healthy communities, in social justice, in moral fairness, and in shared economic prosperity.

Darren White serves as the mayor for Melancthon Township, but he knows what it feels like to rely on a food bank to feed his family.

After he was injured on the job more than a decade ago, White's self-owned business was hit with a very large blow.

"I've tasted that. I don't want to ever taste it again," White said of his trips to the food bank.

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