Surge in demand puts strain on food banks
Hundreds of Montreal families may have little to eat this holiday season with the city’s food banks stretched to their limits.
Regroupement Partage, which serves 17 neighbourhoods on the island, has seen a dramatic increase in the number of people who need emergency food baskets. The waiting list to access one of its food banks has grown to 2,000 households.
“We’ve never seen anything like this,” said Karine Casault, a spokeswoman for the organization. “Working families with two parents on minimum wage and three children aren’t able to make ends meet. It’s scary.”
The food banks will distribute about $800,000 in food, toiletries and gifts this Christmas. About 11 per cent of the 19,600 people who receive Regroupement Partage’s holiday baskets have a job.
Chantal Jorg said the organization gave her a sense of dignity and belonging during one of the hardest times in her life. Jorg was teaching in Haiti 10 years ago when she and her family had to flee political violence.
When she came to Montreal, Jorg was unemployed and single with two children and a third on the way. She said the desperation of poverty could be profoundly isolating and stressful.
“There was a sense of solidarity, a sense of dignity to the way they helped me,” said Jorg, now a commissioner with the Commission scolaire de Montréal. “At Christmas, you still want to be able to give your children presents, to make a good meal, to make sure they don’t feel excluded from what every other child gets to live through.
“With Regroupement Partage, you pay 10 per cent of the cost of your groceries and gifts — it doesn’t feel like charity. There’s a dignity in that, and that money helps another family, so you feel like you’re connected to other people in your situation.”
Workers at Sun Youth are also feeling the strain of a tough economy. Volunteers rushed Tuesday to finish packing Christmas baskets. Though it has had steady support from donors, Sun Youth saw a 35 per cent increase in demand for its food bank since the 2008 financial crisis.
“This might be the new normal,” said Ann St-Arnault, Sun Youth’s associate director of communications. “When researchers look back, they might see 2008 as a turning point. Every year since then except one, we’ve seen demand increase. It isn’t going down. People’s wages are stagnant. You’re seeing more and more families who can’t get by.”
Moisson Montréal just wrapped up a massive fundraising campaign this week, culminating in the private donation of 3,024 turkeys. But its resources are also spread thin. The food bank, which serves about 140,000 people, has seen an 8.5 per cent spike in demand this year. An increase in Syrian refugees settling in the city may have contributed to the increase. Some 25 per cent of food bank users are refugees and Quebec will welcome more than 3,000 new Syrian refugee families next year.
Sun Youth’s St-Arnault said she’s seen a worrisome economic trend developing.
“You’re seeing people get work but not enough hours, so they take on two jobs and still that’s not enough,” she said. “You wouldn’t believe the amount of people who are just one paycheque away from disaster.”
In Montreal, the amount of people who have a job but live under the poverty line is growing. The city’s working poor population increased 30 per cent between 2001 and 2012, according to a recent study.
That study, co-authored by Centraide of Greater Montreal and the Institut national de la recherche scientifique, suggests about 126,000 working Montrealers live in poverty. Roughly one in four Montrealers from 18 to 64 are counted among the working poor, according to the study.
Economists point to a number of trends that disproportionately affect lower-income families. Canada’s slow economic growth and stagnant wages mean that many can’t keep up with cost-of-living increases.
What this means, in real terms, is thousands in Montreal go to bed hungry every night.
“It might not always be easy to give, but if you can, groups like Regroupement Partage make sure people don’t have to beg to have a decent meal,” Jorg said. “They really give you a chance to get back on your feet.”
After her hour of need in 2006, Jorg decided to give back. She volunteered for the community organizations that helped her and recently spoke to a mother whose situation was eerily similar to Jorg’s.
“It made me emotional to see her,” she said. “But I told her, ‘You’ll find your way out of this. I know you will’ — because I believe there’s a way out.”