Assistance New Brunswick food banks see increase in number of working poor using service

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Benjamin Shingler
Telegraph-Journal

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FREDERICTON - As low-income New Brunswickers struggle to balance high costs with meager wages, more working people in the province are using food banks and community kitchens.

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Telegraph-Journal

Carol-Anne Noble sorts food at the Community Food Basket of Saint John. More working people in New Brunswick are using food banks to stretch their income.

Food bank operators in New Brunswick say demand from the working poor will likely increase as the holiday season approaches.

The latest figures released by Hunger Count, a national survey of programs taken each March, shows an increase in the percentage of employed people visiting food banks in the province to 11.2 per cent last March from 10.7 per cent in March 2007.

George Piers, the president of New Brunswick Association of Food Banks, said that figure has likely gone up in recent months.

"It looks like right across the province, more and more people are actually looking for help," said Piers, who also runs the Fredericton Community Kitchen.

There was some good news in the report, with New Brunswick showing a slight decrease overall in the number of people assisted at food banks, from 16,347 in March 2007 to 15,638 in March 2008.

In Piers' assessment, published in the Hunger Count report, the drop was partly due to the recent economic upswing in the province and a jobs boom in fields such as the construction industry.

But Piers said things have changed.

The average number of meals served at the Fredericton Community Kitchen has jumped from 125 in October to 175 so far in November, he said.

Piers said he spoke to a man a few months ago with a minimum wage job and three children, who told him he came in for breakfast every day so that he could afford to feed his kids.

Such stories are becoming increasingly common, he said.

Paul Henderson, a volunteer at the Community Food Basket of Saint John, said the south end food bank has seen a slight increase, and a wider variety, in the number of clients over the last few months.

"We are getting a lot of new people moving into this part of the city," he said. "We are getting a lot of new clients. Each day we're open we probably have two or three people coming from out west or Ontario or moving in from the north end of the city to the south end."

Henderson, whose food bank supplies 700 to 800 people a month, said his organization can always use more donations, particularly in the winter months.

Ray Gould, director of the Moncton-based Food Depot Alimentaire, a non-profit distribution centre that serves 23 food banks in southeastern New Brunswick, predicts demand could increase further as the holiday season approaches.

"The people either haven't got the dollars, or they spend too much at Christmas and they go to the food banks for help," he said.

The situation in New Brunswick is part of a national trend. The number of employed people across Canada visiting food banks has risen to 14.5 per cent of users from just under 12 per cent in 2002.

According to Piers' assessment in Hunger Count, New Brunswickers were left reeling from high gasoline prices and fuel expenses this year, meaning minimum wage earners had less disposable income for food.

Randy Hatfield, executive director of the Saint John-based Human Development Council, said food banks are essential for the province's poor, but do not address the underlying systemic problem.

"I think it's trying to plug a serious hole in the system," Hatfield said of food banks.

But the broader cause, he said, comes down to income inadequacy, meaning "meager social assistance rates and lowest minimum wage rate in the country."

New Brunswick's minimum wage is $7.75 per hour, which a Human Development Council report suggests is not nearly enough for a full-time worker to earn an income above the poverty line.

- with files from Canadian Press