A united call for action from Canada’s food bank networks to federal political leaders and voters was recently made, as election day approaches during a testing time.
“In the past year, nearly 30% of food banks ran out of food before the demand was met.” states the letter by Food Banks Canada, “Another 56% gave less food than usual to each visitor, to avoid running out”
The open letter calls for a concrete plan to halve food insecurity by 2030.
Here in Manitoba, that call for action echoes through local food shelters.
“I would say 1/3rd of them are already housed,” Mari Loucastro, food service manager at Siloam Mission, says, “but because of the prices going up, the challenge for them is to choose between rent and food”
Loucastro has been working with Siloam Mission for the past 14 years and says the demand for more plates on the counter spiked after the COVID-19 pandemic. She says the shelter used to serve about 1,200 plates a day before the pandemic, but has since seen an increase of about 25 per cent.
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“In this kitchen, here at Siloam, we serve three meals a day seven days a week including holidays,” Loucastro says. “On average, we’re serving about 1,500 plates everyday”
And that’s the core of the open letter, signed by 12 associations supporting over 5,500 food banks across the country.
“I look at Canada and it’s 2025, and we live in a country that’s wealthy and prosperous,” Paul Loewen, advocacy and accountability manager at Siloam Mission, says.
“It’s almost never a question of if we have enough food. It’s almost always that are we making sure that it’s being distributed well?”
Loewen says food insecurity is attached to issues such as poverty and impacts the overall productivity of the province.
“I mean, without a meal in the morning, how are people supposed to go to work, how are people supposed to go about their day?” Loewen says.
“And it really provides that foundation for making sure that they have the energy, the stamina and the will to go about their day.
“If we don’t meet those basic needs, we can’t even think about addressing things beyond that.”
Experts say the issue is prevalent in the province as well as the country, and it’s important to make sure that people don’t get used to it.
“Sometimes I think we can almost get desensitized to the prevalence of food insecurity,” Natalie Riediger, an associate professor in the Human Nutritional Sciences department of University of Manitoba, says.
“But what’s really driven it over the last number of years is inflation.”
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