Why are People Going Hungry in Canada?

Yesterday Ruth, my wife, volunteered with one of the meal teams for Inn from the Cold at Bridge St. United Church, the congregation I served last before retirement. Our current congregation, Trenton United, also has a meal ministry, but Bridge St. is close at hand for her involvement.

Inn from the Cold is an everyday sit-down hot meal which feeds thousands during its six-week run. In addition Bridge St. has two other meal ministries which are year-long, for a total of more than 14,000 meals provided in 2019. All these meal ministries in various communities, many of them faith-based are important and in many municipalities there is support for what is happening. Bridge St. has a new state-of-the art kitchen which was funded, in large part, by the Parrott Foundation, a recognition that these meal ministries are important. Ruth encountered a number of guests from our time there, who greeted her warmly, and expressed gratitude for the excellent meal.

This is heartwarming, but as it happened I saw an article from AlJazeera Canada with the headline In wealthy Canada, millions go hungry: Report. The study published in the Canadian Medical Association Journal offers that more than 4 million Canadians in a population of 37 million experience food insecurity and hunger. 

..infectious diseases, unintentional injuries and suicide were twice as likely to kill those who faced severe problems finding enough food as those who do not, said the paper, published in the Canadian Medical Association Journal. "It's like we found third-world causes in a first-world country," lead author Fei Men, a postdoctoral fellow at the University of Toronto, told the Thomson Reuters Foundation.

"Food insecure people in Canada are facing problems like infections and drug poisoning that we would expect people from developing countries to be facing," he said. "The results are pretty striking to us as well. In the developed world such as Canada, food insecurity can still cause deaths," Men added.

Canada regularly makes the top five nations in studies on quality of life around the world. Yet more than 10 percent of our population is affected by food insecurity. The photo with the article shows someone sleeping on the street, but the majority of those who are hungry have some form of accommodation, and most are working or going to school each day. There must be hundreds of thousands of children who are attempting to learn without adequate nutrition. What will there futures be? 

While we can thank God for every program and ministry which helps to address this inequality in Canada, and for all those who give so generously of their time,  the report points out once again that there is an underlying systemic problem which goes beyond providing meals. We can pray that all Canadians are fed each day and that they will be able to live with dignity and the basics of equality.