It’s Not Just About the Food

Recently, the National Post posed a question that’s becoming increasingly common: Are food banks in Canada being overwhelmed because more people are in need - or because people are taking advantage of them?

It’s a question that sounds reasonable on the surface. It’s uncomfortable, but it’s also incomplete. 

Because focusing on who is using food banks distracts from the more important issue…

Food banks were never meant to be a permanent pillar of our society. They were intended as short-term safety nets - not solutions. When they become long-term lifelines for millions of people, something deeper has gone wrong.

And it has. And not by accident. It is a choice.

Canada likes to see itself as compassionate. We point to community generosity and empathy as evidence of our values. But there is a darker reality beneath that narrative. 

As I wrote in my recent letter to Mr. Rana (my local MP), Canada is in the midst of a food and economic crisis that didn’t arrive overnight. Wages have stagnated while housing, groceries, and other costs have surged. Children are remaining living with their parents longer than ever before out of necessity. Seniors are choosing between medication and meals. Students can’t afford school and living well.

But let’s address this honestly - are immigrants to blame? Are they taking advantage of our kindness?

I know there are immigrants who are using our food banks. But I don’t believe it’s malicious as some may think, like they’re taking advantage - but because food banks are deliberately “all-access”. Many do not require proof of income, citizenship status, or crisis-level need. They operate on trust because hunger doesn’t wait for paperwork and we don’t want people to feel shame.

But what if newcomers don’t understand the initial use for food banks? Canada has never clearly defined what food banks are for, because officially, they are supposed to be temporary - even as we’ve relied on them for decades.

For newcomers arriving from a country where mutual aid is the primary safety net, or a place where aid is normalized, it is not unreasonable to assume: “This is part of how we get by here.” Especially if peers tell them ‘everyone uses it’. That’s not exploitation in the moral sense - but it is a mismatch between intent and use. And pretending otherwise helps no one.

What if people genuinely don’t understand food banks are for survival, not optimization?

If a service is widespread, has no eligibility criteria, is framed as ‘community support’, is recommended by institutions, and is normalized socially, then people will treat it as a cost-of-living strategy, not an emergency intervention.

That doesn’t mean the system is being “abused.” It means the system is poorly designed.

Food banks are doing the work the government refuses to formalize - so people use them however they need to.

But honestly, when we’re clearly already struggling as a country, why are we letting in more people who are also struggling? We’re inviting them here, presenting ourselves as saviours, a haven, a place of freedom, when in reality, we’re bringing them in to struggle with us.

This is the question almost no one wants to ask aloud, but it’s crucial.

Immigration targets are set federally, but housing supply, credential recognition, healthcare access, childcare, and job mobility are not scaled accordingly.

This makes upward mobility extremely difficult. For many, food insecurity becomes chronic - not because of dependency, but because the path to self-sufficiency is blocked. 

That’s not compassion. That’s managed insecurity and instability. When newcomers remain food-insecure years after arrival, that’s not an individual failure, it’s a settlement failure.

And here’s where this conversation usually collapses into extremes. One side says, “They’re abusing the system.” And the other says, “Any concern is racist/bigoted/etc.”

Both are wrong. And who benefits from this polarization and confusion?

The Canadian Government, that’s who.

As long as food banks remain charitable rather than systemic, governments avoid raising income supports to livable levels, confronting housing affordability, regulating grocery pricing power, recalibrating immigration targets to capacity, and funding long-term integration properly.

Food banks become political insulation - quietly preventing catastrophe while absorbing public frustration. 

The real issue is this: We have created systems where dependence is inevitable - and then we blame people for accessing those systems. That applies to food banks, low-wage work, housing subsidies, temporary immigration pathways, and charity based-survival.

But what we should be asking is, why is charity easier to access than stability in Canada?

Why aren’t food banks paired with exit plans? Why isn’t settlement funding tied to income progression? Why don’t we track long-term dependency as a system failure? And why are charities absorbing the cost of economic growth strategies?

If we care about reducing food bank use, then we must be willing to say this plainly - food banks cannot continue to serve as a substitute for government responsibility. 

Food banks cannot function as a part of immigration infrastructure, helping to support wage inequities, housing cost concerns, or long-term income support. When they are used as such, everyone loses. Volunteers burn out, donors grow resentful, public trust erodes, and vulnerable people face backlash. Which is where we are now.

We are importing vulnerability faster than we can resolve it. This is the piece that’s genuinely uncomfortable - unavoidable.

Canada has created a model where it is easier to survive through charity than to advance through work. That should terrify us. We are literally setting people up to stagnate.

The Canadian Government is not a bystander here - it is the Architect.

They are not watching this crisis, or many others unfold - it designed the conditions that made it inevitable. But as soon as we name them as a policy outcome, the government would have to confront them all honestly and treat them as a public responsibility. 

Housing. Healthcare. Affordability. Food insecurity. Small business collapse. Burnout everywhere you look.

But these are not separate problems happening at the same time. They are the predictable outcome of a government that has stopped governing in the interests of ordinary people, and has instead chosen growth, optics, and institutional comfort over lived reality.

Scarcity by Design

The Housing crisis is not the result of sudden demand or individual greed. It is the outcome of decades of insufficient housing supply, restrictive zoning, slow permitting, speculative investment, and population growth unmatched by infrastructure.

The government set immigration targets without ensuring housing capacity. They allowed homes to become investment vehicles rather than places to live. They failed to build non-market and affordable housing at scale.

The result is an economy where rents consume 40-70% of income, home ownership is out of reach for an entire generation, and housing insecurity drives every other form of instability. When shelter becomes scarce and expensive, nothing else works.

When Growth No Longer Means Prosperity

Canada’s economy is supposedly growing - but its people are not prospering. Everything costs more: food, utilities, transportation, childcare, insurance. Yet, wages lag far behind inflation. And at the same time: asset holders benefit from rising prices, corporations pass costs downward, banks record record profits, and wealth concentrates upward. 

This is not accidental. It is the result of policy choices that protect capital while leaving labour exposed. The rich get richer not because they work harder, but because the system is designed to reward ownership over participation. The poor get poorer not because they fail, but because there is no margin left.

Survival is for Corporations, Not Communities

It has never been easier to be a large corporation in Canada - and never harder to be a small business.

Corporations benefit from tax advantages, economies of scale, access to capital, regulatory flexibility, and government deference. Meanwhile, small businesses face rising rents, higher input costs, labour shortages, debt pressure, and thin margins. Many close. Others survive by underpaying staff who are already struggling.

Workers in small businesses are often told to “be grateful” - even as their pay no longer covers basic living costs. This is not entrepreneurship failure. It is policy bias.

Canada increasingly favours institutional stability over local resilience.

Burnout Is a Policy Outcome

Canada’s healthcare system is straining - not because healthcare workers lack dedication, but because they are being asked to function in environments that are unsustainable. 

We face a severe shortage of family physicians, long wait times for care, overcrowded emergency rooms, and increasing moral injury among staff. Healthcare workers are exhausted. Patients are frustrated. Trust is eroding.

This is not primarily about pay though, it’s about impossible workloads, administrative bloat, lack of support, and a system designed to get people through rather than care for them.

Burnout is not an individual weakness. It is the predictable result of chronic under-resourcing and poor system design.

The Quiet Crisis We Don’t Name

There are others: declining social mobility, mental health deterioration, childcare shortages, crumbling infrastructure, overburdened educators, and growing distrust in institutions. Each is treated as isolated. Each is addressed with pilot programs and press releases.

None are addressed at the root.

Why the Government isn’t Fixing This

Because fixing it would require choices governments have avoided for years - building housing at scale, prioritizing affordability over asset inflation, rebalancing labour and capital, investing in public systems rather than outsourcing failure, accepting slower growth in exchange for stability. Instead, governments manage perception - by praising resilience, celebrating community generosity, and pointing to economic indicators that no longer reflect lived experience. Charity, burnout, and debt have become substitutes for policy.

This is not about left or right. This crisis transcends party lines.

It is about a governing class that has grown comfortable with deferring responsibility, fragmenting problems, and letting individuals absorb systemic risk. Ordinarily, Canadians are told to work harder, budget better, be more resilient. While the structures that make life unlivable remain untouched. 

The Question We Should Be Asking

Not: Why are people struggling but, why has the Canadian government accepted a model where struggle is normal, stability is rare, and prosperity is concentrated?

Until that question is answered honestly - and acted on - food banks will remain full, hospitals will remain strained, businesses will continue to close, and more people will quietly fall out of the middle class.

Canada does not lack wealth. It lacks political will.

And until that changes, these crises are not temporary. They are the system working exactly as designed.

Ⓒ November 2025. Beki Lantos. All Rights Reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, or transmitted in any form by any means without prior written permission of the author.