Visits to food banks rise six per cent
Not everybody who is food insecure or in poverty will access a food bank, report says
It was a simple statistical error, but one that made it appear as if the number of visits to Newfoundland and Labrador food banks was 275 per cent higher than the data should have suggested.
The wrong number was in Food Bank Canada’s HungerCount 2018 report.
Originally, the report said there were 28,063 visits to Newfoundland and Labrador food banks in a month, a number they said was unacceptably high.
Richard Matern, director of research for Food Banks Canada, says that number should have been reported as 10,114.
“The numbers that were being sent on behalf of the (Community Food Sharing Association) were being included,” Matern said.
“They collected on behalf of the province and they would send it to us in one chunk.”
This makes collecting the numbers easier, as they don’t have to contact each individual food bank, Matern said.
“They themselves have a food bank, but they were also counting those numbers by mistake, and they were including them as one batch.”
Eg Walters, general manager of the Community Food Sharing Association, says nothing stood out to him when the numbers were collected.
“We don’t analyze the data, we just send it off to Food Banks Canada because it’s their project,” Walters said.
“Food Banks Canada changed their reporting system. They changed it to the number of visits, rather than the number of people.”
Food Banks Canada says the number of visits for the month of March better reflects the need for food in a specific region.
The type of data it collected was changed for the 2018 report — the one with the error.
The actual numbers are more in line with what they see in other Atlantic provinces, in terms of the proportion of people in poverty visiting food banks, Matern said.
“Not everybody who is food insecure (or) in poverty will access a food bank,” Matern says. “What we’ve found is it’s between 14 and 20 per cent in the Atlantic provinces.”
In Newfoundland and Labrador, Food Banks Canada estimates 16 per cent of those who live in poverty visit food banks. This means an estimated 84 per cent of people living in poverty do not use food banks.
“We still have to find out why and reduce barriers as much as we can and decrease the stigma, if that’s the issue,” Matern says.
The total number of people using food banks in 2019 — 10,704 — suggests there is 5.8 per cent increase, or 590 more people, when compared to the 2018 numbers calculated after the error was corrected.
“The assumption was that Newfoundland was somehow different because the unemployment rate was a fair bit higher,” Matern said.
“But it turns out that’s not the case.”
He says one of the reasons Food Banks Canada focuses on trends is that it’s easier to spot errors like this when they occur.
“The numbers are high in every province as far as visits. So when you looked at the number in Newfoundland compared to other provinces, it didn’t seem like an outlier — it’s a similar number to every other province. But when you look at the population of Newfoundland being lower, when you factor that in, then it became an outlier and that’s when I realized that there was probably an error.”
The error was noticed in the summer as the current report was being finalized.
The problem may not be as large as it was once thought, but Walters remains concerned with the rising numbers.
“If you got one person using the food bank, it’s too many,” he says.