David DeBenedetti has been making the 80-kilometre drive to the Regina Food Bank from Lebret since losing his full-time job in the tree service industry three years ago.
“I needed an order of food because I’m a little short at home, so I decided to come here,” said DeBenedetti, 52, who makes the trip to Regina every couple of weeks. He said he still works part-time and isn’t accessing social assistance, but the high cost of living and his low income have forced him to use the food bank.
DeBenedetti was at the Regina Food Bank on Tuesday shortly after the organization revealed HungerCount 2011, a report from Food Banks Canada that measures hunger and food bank use in Canada. Food bank use across Canada had increased sharply since 2008, but decreased by two per cent in March 2011 compared to March 2010. In Saskatchewan, the number of food bank users also decreased by 8.8 percent, or 2,003 fewer people using the service compared to 2010, according to the report. Wayne Hellquist, chief operating officer of the Regina Food Bank, said Tuesday at a press conference that despite this reduction, hunger and food insecurity remain the “most pervasive social issues facing Saskatchewan” with 20,655 people in the province using food banks.
Hellquist said the reduction in people using food banks in Saskatchewan can be attributed to the economic boom, whereas Regina’s numbers have further decreased due to an elegibility review of its users that saw some previous users disqualified from the service. Hellquist couldn’t say how many people were disqualified, but did say that the review was important to maintain the integrity of the service. One of the alarming facets of food bank usage in the province is the 43 per cent of people under the age of 18 that accessed the service in 2011, he said.
Bill Hall, executive director of Food Banks of Saskatchewan, added the organization has approached political parties in the province with three considerations that could help further reduce hunger and food insecurity in the province: A “food specific allowance” for people on social assistance, a better working relationship with government and organizations such as the food bank to better improve programs and the adoption and implementation of anti-poverty legislation.
The food bank’s report coincided with the release of another report on Tuesday from the University of Regina’s Social Policy Research Unit examining the poverty rate in Canada and Saskatchewan based on 2009 figures from Statistics Canada. The report, Poverty in Canada and Saskatchewan in 2011: No Closer to the Truth, states that the poverty rate in Saskatchewan was reduced to 11.7%, or 112,000 people in 2009 from 139,000 people in 2008. The 2009 poverty level is based on an annual family income of $27,500, said Garson Hunter, an associate professor of social work and the author of the study.
Given the economic prosperty the province is experiencing, Hunter said he would have liked to have seen lower poverty numbers. He added he didn’t contact or use data from the Food Banks Canada report, so he couldn’t say for certain whether there was a direct relationship between less poverty and food bank use.
But for DeBenedetti, both poverty and food bank usage are common factors. “I got my load for the week, and that’s all,” he said while leaving the food bank with four plastic bags filled with food.