Closing food banks dumb idea

Closing food banks dumb idea | Comment | London Free Press
Yes, as I said in my previous post, closing food banks is a bad idea with nothing in place to provide alternate support.

The food bank world was suddenly hit with a broadside this week with the Elaine Power's Toronto Globe and Mail article headlined "It's time to close Canada's food banks."

Nothing comes closer to irrelevance than her opening statement that food banks represent a serious obstacle in the fight against poverty in Canada. As the London Food Bank's co-director for the last 25 years, and a past chair of the Ontario Association of Food Banks, I have never encountered one food bank director who believed they were ending hunger or that they were the ultimate solution.

Power is associate professor in the School of Kinesiology and Health Studies at Queen's University and has served as a board member of a food bank.

It's true, as Power claims, that food banks were designed to be temporary solutions to a hunger problem that multiplied in the recession of the 1980s. Today they are still with us - a testament to the inability of communities and various levels of government to find effective solutions for poverty overall in Canada.

But to suggest that food banks be closed down won't result in any kind of solution but a sudden flooding of need to other social agencies that will be required to absorb the damage. ...

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