Faced with the deluge of need, community food programs across the country have begun closing their doors due to empty shelves—some temporarily, like the Salvation Army Food Bank in Brant County, Ontario, and others permanently, like Kingston’s Loving Spoonful.

Things are similarly dire at the Ottawa Food Bank: CEO Rachael Wilson says that the rising cost of food has left the charity strapped for supplies, forcing them to turn people away and even close their doors for a few days each month.

Here, Wilson describes the conditions inside her bank’s 51,000-square-foot warehouse and what needs to change to prevent millions of Canadians from going hungry.

How did you get into this line of work?

Growing up in downtown Ottawa, I saw the stark contrast between affluence and need. I started volunteering in my teens—first at the McNabb Community Centre, where I saw six-year-old kids coming in hungry, and then at the Ottawa Food Bank, where I sorted food. (The operation was about a fifth of the size it is now.)

I started my career fundraising for the Toronto theatre scene before transitioning to the Ottawa Food Bank as its director of communications and fundraising nine years ago.

I became CEO in February of 2021. Today, food insecurity is an even larger problem. We’ve all heard someone say, “I spent $100 and I got one bag of groceries.” The divide between haves and the have-nots is only getting bigger and bigger.

The holidays are traditionally high season for donations. How did this past one compare to others?

About 70 per cent of our annual monetary donations come in between November and January. Our 50-person staff was working seven days a week, up to 12 hours a day.

In terms of need, it used to be that some months were busier than others in terms of visitors, but now we’re seeing the same high watermark all year round. There’s no sign that the number of visits will go back down.

What’s driving the increased need?

Inflation and the cost of living. Forty per cent of people we serve rely on social assistance programs like Ontario Works or the Ontario Disability Support Program. Ontario Works rates haven’t kept up with rising rents or food costs. (For example, the average rent in Ottawa exceeds $2,000, while Ontario Works provides less than $800 monthly.)

Many of our visitors are also dealing with episodic illnesses or mental health issues and are forced to make difficult choices between buying medicine and food.

We’ve seen a lot of cases where parents are going without food so their kids can eat. Some have even locked food in their cars, only leaving out small portions so they can control how much food their kids have access to.

Your warehouse supplies a network of 98 emergency food programs across Ottawa. Are any of your partners also buckling under the pressure?

Since 2019, annual visits to our network of banks has gone from 280,000 to 550,000.

Just a year ago, our partners were able to give out food to people two or three times a month; now one monthly visit is all they can muster. They’re also giving out way less food per visit.

Visitors used to receive three to five days’ worth of food. Now, it might be two or three, depending on the organization.

How has this overwhelming need changed the kinds of food you can give out?

Usually, about half of the food we buy is fresh, like eggs, milk, produce and meat. Those are already expensive, but eggs have gone up in price 18 per cent in the last two years. Milk has gone up, too.

Lately, we’ve had to ask our partners to offer trade-offs to visitors. Like, “Because you can only get a little bit of beef, would you like fish instead?”

This coming year, we anticipate we’ll have to cut our food transfers to partner agencies by between 20 and 50 per cent.

More and more people with full-time jobs are accessing food banks, too. Have you witnessed this at your facility?

About 15 per cent of our users are fully employed now.

One woman told us she was working three jobs and still couldn’t make ends meet. Another who earns $50,000 a year had to rely on a food bank after her roommate left and she had to shoulder all of the lease and utilities.

That same woman was actually helping to run the food donation program at her work—without her colleagues knowing she was accessing one herself.

That’s shocking.

I’m ashamed to see what’s happening in our city and across the country.

I see so many people who are doing everything they can but who are continuing to struggle. And there seems to be a real lack of understanding that this isn’t about a failure to budget or people not knowing how to cook.

This is about people not having enough money.

Join me sending the Violet Flame,
the knowing of balance and LOVE creation . . .
opening our crowns, letting in the Mother’s Love
and the Light of the Father . . .

The Violet Flame is the essence of the unknowable
at that point of conjunction and Love creation
with the Mother, and a way for us to know
the Love of the Father, as well.

St. Germaine (1)

There also seems to be a misconception that the federal and provincial governments fund food banks, when they actually provide very little. Where does your money come from?

Food Banks Canada publishes a poverty report card annually, which grades provinces on their poverty reduction policies.

Quebec scored a C. Ontario, meanwhile, got a D-minus.

In Ontario, we receive no provincial or federal funding. To give you a sense of scale, the Ottawa Food Bank is a $30-million organization.

We receive $19 million a year in cash, almost all of which comes from private donations. (People write us checks for $25, $50, all the way up to $100,000.)

Just 1.4 per cent of our overall $30-million budget comes from municipal government.

Then, we receive another $11 million worth of donated food.

That comes from donations made to the bins we have in 20 grocery stores across the city, which we pick up every week, as well as food drives and item donations from grocery stores themselves—whether that’s extra or slightly damaged products, or ones that are just about to expire.

What needs to be done to stop food banks from closing?

In the short term, we need an influx of government funding directly to the food banking sector.

In the long term, we need to see more money in the pockets of Canadians through improvements to social assistance programs.

There is certainly a role for school food programs to play, but those only provide children with one meal a day.

Our preference is that Canadians are able to purchase the food they want so they can eat healthy, nutritious food at home.

There’s a sense of dignity and pride when parents are able to provide for their own family, or when a senior is able to to feed themselves.

Support can’t just come from your neighbors or individuals who live in your city, many of whom are already struggling.

It’s also got to come from the social safety net.

Charity exists when policy doesn’t, right?

It’s true. Five years ago, we operated on $15 million; now, we operate on $30 million and we still can’t keep up with need.

Food banks are doing more while governments do less, and that gap keeps growing.

We’re one of the organizations that is saying, “We’re drawing the line in the sand.” I think you’ll see a lot more food organizations doing that.

Food banks closing isn’t just a loss in terms of food security. You provide lots of services—some I’ll bet Canadians don’t know about.

People feel safe with our organizations because we provide them with food.

That service brings them to our door, but it’s natural for us to then refer them to other supports, like employment, language support and mental health services.

Food banks also run programs to reduce social isolation, particularly for seniors and people living alone.

During COVID, we worked with Ottawa Public Health to help underserved communities connect with vaccines

Do you hope to see a future where food banks aren’t needed?

Yes, absolutely. We know “more food” isn’t the solution—we’ve been doing “more food” for 40 years.

This is a non-partisan issue that needs policy change, at all levels of government, to end poverty.

Our goal is for food banks to be a thing of the past by 2050. So we’ve got 25 years.

This interview has been condensed for length and clarity.

****

Universal Mother Mary had this to share in a reading with me, April 25th, 2015:

Money that is given purely as a gift of the heart is a gift of gold.

It is a gift of joy.

It is a gift of creation.

It is a being saying:

“Here share my abundance!

“Share my wealth!

“Share my joy!

“Share my creation!”

If it is given in any other way, it has strings, and what has happened in the realm of human existence in small ways and in massive ways is that individuals, nations, organizations, structures, institutions give money thinking that it is a gift—we’re not talking about banks, etc. which are usury—but we are talking about the gift of money particularly and often the giver assumes ‘I am giving from my heart’ but truly it is an exercise in control.

The rich man walking down the street who has made his money, can we say in curious ways, some honest, some dishonest, walking down the street, meeting the beggar—and it was the same when I walked the Earth—and they give the beggar $20 to stop bothering them or because he feels that he better do it.

That is not a gift. That is trying to buy and very cheaply.

Now the person that walks down the street, and gives a dollar out of compassion and empathy, and the recognition that different circumstances you would be on the street—that is a gift.

The rich person who lifts the beggar off and says let me take you home, let me find you a home, let me get you into rehab, let me clothe you, let me feed you out of compassion—that is the gift.

So, there are many non-profits that are supported by wealthy institutions, companies, individuals who are simply giving for a tax break, for a sense of I can say, “I give” and that I am a generous soul and that it will assuage my guilt.

So, do not err, dear heart, in thinking that if the money is coming through a non-profit that it is pure or that it is coming from a profit that it is impure.

It is the intentionality behind it.

K: The non-profit can transmute that money that has come from the one that is doing it for other reasons?

UMM: If they are aware enough to do so—yes.

K: Is that a position that us as ‘re-patterners’ will be in?

UMM: Yes.

K: The transmutation of the money out to the world with no strings attached.

UMM: That is correct and the true teaching of how to create 
so that this need for multiple, multiple, multiple organizations to take care of the distressed, of the poor, of the down-trodden, of the dis-enfranchised disappears.

That is My Plan.

Footnotes

(1) “The Violet Flame: Operation Torch for Peace Within and Without,” https://voiceoffreedom.ca/the-violet-flame-operation-torch-for-war-within-and-without-2/