The Current - Record numbers of Canadians turning to food banks

Episode Date: November 1, 2024

Food bank usage has surged in recent years, with a new report from Food Banks Canada indicating over two million visits in March 2024 alone. Experts suggest that income support and making healthy food more affordable through price controls could help Canadians. 

In 2017, it felt like drugs were everywhere in the news, so I started a podcast called On Drugs. We covered a lot of ground over two seasons, but there are still so many more stories to tell. I'm Jeff Turner, and I'm back with Season 3 of On Drugs. And this time, it's going to get personal. I don't know who Sober Jeff is. I don't even know if I like that guy.

On Drugs is available now wherever you get your podcasts. This is a CBC Podcast. Hello, I'm Matt Galloway and this is The Current Podcast. It's not easy. It's not easy to ask for something so basic as food. More Canadians than ever are having to turn to a food bank. I'm really grateful for it because our salary, it's not enough to buy our food right from the stores. I work in landscaping.

My wife is also struggling. She works in a kitchen. We hope that next year can be better. We are struggling to pay our rent, and we don't have enough funds to buy food for the family. That's why we are using a food bank. But we are doing our best to find a better job, to find more job, additional job.

I was on long-term disability. That's why I'm here, because I have three young kids. That's been really, really great, you know, like help out. These people in Richmond, BC are part of a record-breaking number of food bank users across our country. In its annual report, Food Banks Canada says the number of Canadians using food banks has doubled in the past five years. And this March alone, there were more than 2 million visits to food banks in the country. Kirsten Beardsley is the CEO of Food Banks Canada. I can't stress this enough. We need to see food bank use come down. One of the shocking findings in the report is that 30% of food banks in the last year

reported running out of food before the demand was met. The food bank system was not built for this level of demand. We were never meant to see this amount of need in the country, and our system won't be able to accommodate it. And it really is going to be government policy at all levels that helps reduce the needs. that helps reduce the needs. Food Banks Canada is calling on governments to introduce new measures like rent assistance and a monthly payment to low-income groups in order to help offset the skyrocketing cost of living.

Jesse Rosenberg is the Director of Policy for the Wellesley Institute, a non-profit that proposes policy solutions on health and health equity-related issues. Jesse, good morning. Good morning. When you hear people talk about going to food banks and that twice as many rely on them now,

what do you think of? So the first thing that I think of is how shocking it is and how difficult and how dark it is that we're not finding ways to solve this problem. And the second thing I think about is because of what we work on is around their health. So this is going to cause short-term health problems and also long-term problems with their health and health equity over their whole lifespan when they can't get healthy food, on top of the stress and the difficulty of having to go through that.

It does suggest that current policies are failing. They're not helping enough to allow people to cope with higher food prices. I think that it does. I think Food Banks Canada is absolutely right around their emphasis on income security and on housing affordability, which I'm sure you covered before on your show. We think those are huge parts of this problem, but we have another idea too. And I want to hear about that. It involves the National Nutritious Food Basket. Just remind us again what that food basket is. Sure. So the Nutritious Food Basket is a list of healthy foods.

It's maintained by Health Canada, and it's what Statistics Canada uses when they determine what the market basket measure of poverty is. So it's the federal government already realizes that that, you know, nutritious food basket, that list of healthy foods is something that everybody needs to be able to afford. So what are you suggesting? How differently to treat food prices in that food basket, for example? So what we're suggesting is we're trying to start a conversation around having grocers be required to make that list, so one of each kind of item on that list, available at a price that everybody in their region could afford. So when you go into your regular grocery store, there would be an egg, a brown flour, an apple, one type of each of those things that would be set at a really affordable price. So the grocers would still be able to set prices for almost everything in their store. We don't think we need to regulate the cost of imported cheese or the cost of chocolate or anything like that.

But we do think that as part of the cost of doing business and as part of their social responsibility, you know, we should be able to know that everybody can buy at least those healthy goods to, you know, help them with some of the problems that this report highlights. So putting a maximum price on certain foods, I mean, how would you decide what brand? So we think we can leave that up to them. We think that that, you know, would be absolutely fine. I mean, you could presumably deal with that down the road if there were, you know, real problems being created. But the idea would be that, you know, there's a bunch of apples when you walk into a grocery store, there's, you've got lots of choices. The idea would be that they would make one of those would have to be available at a price that we would know everybody could afford. It's interesting. Have you had any response from grocers about it? Sure, we have. So I think the first response,

and I think it's understandable with the way some public discourse has been going, is this isn't our fault. Don't blame us for this. We didn't do this. We don't control the whole system. But I think it's gone over reasonably well when I've said that we agree. And we do understand that this is a problem for everybody to solve together. We think it'd be great to see government take a leadership role on bringing grocers, producers, suppliers, distributors all together to try to solve this problem. Is this being tried in other places? I mean, it sounds complicated. It does sound like a solution in part, but surely there's problems with it too. Where else has it been tried?

So we haven't seen this exactly tried. So France has stepped in, you know, in a way that we're not used to into food. And I mean, as you know, food is already heavily regulated. We have, you know, food safety rules. We have lots of things around that. France, what they've done is they have started to look at pricing. And they've started negotiating with grocers to make sure that price increases reflect what they would call the grocers' actual inputs, what the costs are to the grocers. So that's related. It's a little bit different. It's not targeted specifically at health.

And it's not about setting a price that's affordable for some goods. It's about making sure that, you know, it's sort of reasonable. And I think the other international example we're seeing that we're excited to hear more about in the future is from South of the Border, where Vice President Harris is talking about capping the cost to households of things like prescription drugs and child care. So it's looking at, we have to figure out how to make sure everybody can get the things that they need in a way that's affordable for them. And so we think both of those are related to what we're talking about today. Jesse, price controls has a controversial history.

We've seen it tried in a number of places, notably in the 1970s under US President Richard Nixon, which ended up driving up prices of gasoline for example. I saw one figure up 47%. How would your plan be different from those experiences? So for one thing we think it's smaller. We're just looking at a specific list of healthy foods and we also think that the thing to do is for government to bring everybody together through the supply chain to figure out how they can make this work

for this, you know, small number of types of food. And as we discussed earlier, one specific thing, you know, from that list to make sure that something's affordable, not every apple, not every egg, not every brown flour, but everybody's got to be able to afford those things to be healthy. Yeah. Is this moving the government's responsibility or the government's solution out of the equation? Is that part of this? No, I don't think so, because I think we'd expect them to have to show some leadership here and probably to have to regulate. We'd love it if the industry wanted to come together and figure this out itself.

I think that this is part of their social responsibility. They make and move and produce and sell food, and they need to make sure that everybody can actually afford enough of it to be healthy and to survive. But we don't think that that's necessarily where that's going. So I think there still would be a role. And then the government still absolutely has a role on the other areas that Foodbanks Canada has identified around income security and housing. Yeah, I mean, I assume that the government is used to regulating government

income supplements and things like that, partly based on food? Yeah, they are. So that is in the market basket measure, which is not, you know, related, but I think it is hopefully considered in, you know, lots of those measures, you know, in Ontario, there is a special diet allowance for when you have special needs and things like that. So they are, they're certainly, you know, aware of it, but this is a different, this is a different approach. This would be them, you know, they're, they're very involved of it. But this is a different this is a different approach. This would be them. You know, they're they're very involved in the market. They set the rules for the market. But this would be them adding a new rule around making sure everybody can afford nutritious food. Jesse, what's at stake if the need for food banks continues to grow in our country?

Well, I think we're hearing from food banks that they have their own crisis. They don't just have the crisis they're raising here for their clients. They're starting to really struggle to keep up. But the long-term concern here has to be health. We're seeing the return around the world in wealthy countries of scurvy, of other diseases and conditions that are about nutrition. This exacerbates other health problems. This is a huge health and a huge health equity issue. And people who can't get healthy food are going to

get sick more. They're going to cost us more in our health care system down the line. And they're going to die younger. And that's not acceptable. That's not fair. And we need to move to address this crisis. Jesse, thank you for stirring the conversation for us. Thank you. Jesse Rosenberg is the Director of Policy for the Wellesley Institute, an independent think tank that researches and proposes policy solutions on health and health equity-related issues. In 2017, it felt like drugs were everywhere in the news so i started a podcast called on drugs we covered a lot of ground over two seasons but there are still so many more stories to tell i'm jeff turner and i'm back with season three of on drugs and this time it's going to get personal

i don't know who sober jeff is i don't even know if I like that guy. On Drugs is available now wherever you get your podcasts. Mike Von Masso is a food economist and professor at the University of Guelph. Good morning, Mike. Good morning, Susan. So you've been listening to Jesse's proposal to regulate affordable prices on certain foods. What do you think? Well, I think, let me start by saying I agree 100% that we are having an affordability crisis in this country,

and particularly for people at the low end of the income scale. I'm just not sure that regulating prices is practical, especially in the short run. Jesse talked about getting the whole supply chain involved, but this isn't just a Canadian supply chain. Broccoli, peas, although they're frozen on the list, are items that are on the list. Cucumbers are on the list. So there are things that aren't even coming from Canada that get more expensive in the winter anyway. And so who is supposed to bear the cost? When Russia invades Ukraine and wheat prices go up, are the grocers supposed to absorb that? supposed to absorb that? Do we go further back the supply chain and make everyone contribute? I think it's a good idea. I think if we do it for everybody, then we diminish the value of it.

Clearly, I'm in a position, while I felt the pinch of higher food prices and I've changed my behavior, I'm probably not the one who needs the support here. And this sort of price initiative would give everyone that benefit. How do we regulate it? How much do they have to have on hand? You know, one type of apple, when they run out, which we've seen in stores.

So I think it's not practical. I think also that it spreads the benefit beyond people perhaps who need it. And so while I think we need to do some things like income support, food security is an income issue in this country. There's lots of food available, that perhaps income support would be a better approach to this than trying to fix prices. Just on one more note on that, is there a role at all for any kind of price controls on certain grocery items as they continue to go up?

Well, I think if you look at what France did, France has not said, here's what prices are. They've asked grocers and other members of the supply chain to justify those price increases. And so what they're saying is, can we look at a basket of goods and say that those prices are reasonable as a subjective term, that those price increases are reflective of changes in the prices, changes in the costs

for those things. And I think, yeah, we could look at that. We've seen people point a lot of fingers at the grocers. We've seen people point a lot of fingers at the grocers, and while I think the grocers are not perfect corporate citizens, I think there's lots of evidence that they haven't contributed to these price increases. for some things, but the truth is we, prices are going up because costs are going up across the system. Climate change is another one. Extreme weather has been a significant contributor. And will be.

You know, just to put some detail to what you just mentioned, Loblaw's Galen Weston was put in the spotlight recently with accusations that they're contributing to food inflation. But he was testifying. We heard it that, you know, they only make a dollar in profit on a $25 grocery bill. Is there any role that big grocers have to make a dent in food affordability? Well, I think, you know, grocers do pay a role in in food affordability we see that there are even for the same products there are a variety of places we're also seeing

some of the big grocers uh introduce more uh discount uh lines as a uh as a uh as a way for prices to be cheaper for people who go to those stores. Now, we have access issues. We have some neighborhoods that have only got access to one type of grocery. So I think grocers are working hard, increasing the budget lines that they have, increasing the cheaper stores, which offer less variety as a way to reduce costs. So I think we all have a role to play. I think pointing the fingers exclusively at the grocers and saying, you guys have to offer things cheaper, maybe isn't the best way to do it and is going to be tough to do practically.

The CEO of Foodbanks Canada has another idea of how the federal government could help, a change in the GST rebate. Here's Kirsten Beardsley. We're suggesting that it be adapted to be a monthly payment and that it be increased so that folks who are living on low incomes can pay for their essentials. Do you think that could go some way towards helping people be able to buy groceries? Yeah. I mean, notwithstanding the issue of affordability for the government, I think that that is a much more practical way of addressing the affordability crisis we have. Well, we've seen in some centers rents come down. It's not

just food that is affecting them. And the proposal by Foodbanks Canada also targets it at those with the greatest need. People on fixed incomes who aren't getting adjustments for cost of living, people who are on minimum wage who we haven't seen adjustments to these inflationary pressures, that sort of approach would directly affect the people who need it the most and give them the ability to stretch their budget across the things that they're choosing, food, utilities, and those sorts of things. So I think it's a much more workable solution.

Are there other things that you think the government could do that would be effective to help make food prices affordable? Well, I think it's very difficult. If we look at what's causing these food price increases, even the Bank of Canada says it's not the grocers. You know, the war in Ukraine, government can't do a lot of that. Extreme weather. So I think looking at ways to build the resilience and diversify our supply, I think it's a great thing to increase local production. But if we have a crop failure due to a drought or other extreme weather, then we could see shortages. So diversifying and increasing the resilience of the supply chain so that we have multiple, multiple sources of foods when we have,

when we have extreme weather, I think is, is important. I think also food literacy is profoundly important. I'm going to sound like a grumpy old guy here, but you know, when I was in high school, we got basic food preparation skills. And so in the winter, when broccoli is more expensive, you know, maybe we could shift to root vegetables and we know Canadians are very much creatures of habit. Not everyone has the skills to provide themselves resilience when, when prices, uh, when prices disproportionately go up for, for some things as they do seasonally too.

So I think food literacy is a profoundly important thing in curriculums and also, as I said, the direct payments. Just in the minute we have left, those are long-term, big picture. You're an economist. We need to hear these things. But what about the short term? What do food banks do?

And what do Canadians who can't afford a food basket do? Well, I empathize. And I think as we saw last year, the ability of the government to augment a program that already exists, the GST tax credit. Now, clearly there are some people who are unhoused and who might not have access, but it provides a mechanism that we could institute right now to provide income relief to those that need it most. All right, Mike, thank you so much for your thoughts. Well, thank you for having me, Susan. Have a great day. You too. Mike von Masso is a food economist and professor at the University of Guelph. For more CBC podcasts, go to cbc.ca slash podcasts.