How the Grinch Stole the Food Bank Christmas

It’s hard when the Grinch personally arrives and attempts to steal your Christmas spirit, but that’s just what happened at the London Food Bank’s annual Christmas Party for staff and volunteers this week.Following dinner we learned from our newly compiled statistics that for the first time in our 25-year history the number of families coming to us monthly had finally surpassed the 3500 figure. It was a landmark we hoped never to see but now it has landed with a thud in our community just in time for the holiday season. Worse still, it doesn’t bode well for the coming year.I then Twittered the news and it was immediately picked up by citizens and media alike. It was like this new development was a sudden wake up call for our community. Rather than the flood tide cresting, it was if it was time to brace ourselves for higher levels to come.What are we coming to? We shouldn’t be foolhardy enough to think that this is a problem that has only recently emerged. For two decades now, while our economy was supposedly expanding year after year and wealth was being generated in phenomenal measure, the critical mass of those in poverty continued to remain at stubbornly high levels. We’ve been through three recessions as a food bank and following each the numbers of people in need failed to return to pre-recession levels. It’s as if our delight in all the cheap goods available, low-cost tourism and the baubles offered through the free market deluded us into thinking that all was well, when in reality the encompassing tentacles of poverty were strengthening their national grip without our notice.And as the poverty numbers continue to climb year after year, the issues that broaden our understanding of the marginalized are challenging us in numerous dimensions.  Mental health and addictions, homelessness, a housing crisis, food insecurity, hunger, high unemployment or marginal employment, aboriginal imbroglios, a growing pension crisis, child poverty – these have emerged from the mystical cloud of “poverty” to challenge us at almost every turn of public policy. We seem to have no comprehensive solutions, merely well-meaning and dedicated local efforts to deal with situations destined to swamp us all with their sheer size.We pursue solutions that can only assist some victims because we simply can’t come up with anything else greater. For that to happen would require all three levels of government acknowledging that the downward pull of poverty, in all its dimensions, is keeping our communities from flourishing and our country from restoring its image as a light of fairness, equality and opportunity in the world.It is no longer good enough to pretend that as a nation all of us are struggling through a temporary recession that is debilitating. Clearly that is not true; some are doing very well – perhaps too well. Furthermore, the very economic structure of our country is now highly suspect, for even during the good times the wealth never reached enough of the marginalized to lift them out of poverty, regardless of their rigorous efforts to achieve financial security. The system is flawed and an increasing number of Canadians have already come to that conclusion.What is missing is leadership, especially at the federal level where so many economic issues emanate. Yet as communities we pull up our bootstraps and dig in to help because that’s what good citizens do. The key to all good citizenship is found at the local level. Unfortunately our struggles are far greater than any local community can handle. As a result, an increasing number of Canadians are alone and adrift – our historic social compact is broken. Like any effective beast of prey, poverty lurks and suddenly strikes those isolated from the group. Our own citizens are increasingly vulnerable, and now is not the time to circle the wagons. This is the moment when we must take on the restructuring of the financial order, despite the formidable nature of its beneficiaries.Our problems are now far more imposing and threatening that any individual or community. They are now national in scope, emerging from decades of greed and distraction with little attention. We are now in the big leagues as a citizenry, and we either come together over this financial disparity or we find ourselves afloat in our own little vessels. Over 3500 families coming to the food bank each month is not so much a record as it is a travesty. Worse, it is beneath every single one of us who takes pride in their country but not in the potential of its citizens. It’s going to be a lonely life ahead of us unless we find one another in the growing darkness.