Previously published in the Winnipeg Free Press December 16, 2024
By Dr. Andrew Lodge
Althea waits in line at a local food bank in Winnipeg. Her youngest son, less than six months old, is bundled up asleep in a stroller and she holds her two-year-old in her arms. Nearby, her oldest son, now four, plays with a toy car.
Her story is a familiar one. She hails from a remote northern Manitoba community and is new to Winnipeg. Despite her intentions, she has been forced to use food banks since she arrived in town. Social assistance doesn’t sufficiently cover groceries, rent, and other costs like diapers and household necessities.
But Althea hasn’t given up. She is going to school part-time to upgrade. While she’s in class, her auntie living nearby watches the kids.
Althea is one of many Manitobans who increasingly rely on food banks to get by. A newly released Harvest Manitoba report reveals that food bank usage is up yet again in Manitoba. Visits are now in excess of 50,000 each month.
Manitoba is not alone. Across the country, food bank usage is on the rise. Food Banks Canada reports that over two million people a month now access these services countrywide. Almost one-quarter of Canadians live in food-insecure households.
Mark stands outside a smashed-out bus shelter in downtown Winnipeg, one of countless across the city. Underdressed for a Winnipeg winter — albeit a relatively kind one thus far by the city’s standards — in a black hoodie under a vest, sweatpants and unlaced running shoes, Mark paces back and forth while he talks.
His drug of choice is meth but he’ll do whatever he can get his hands on, not that there’s much choice in the matter. Winnipeg’s toxic drug supply is a veritable smorgasbord of toxins that rip through the body to numb the mind.
The Marks of the world coalesce to form an archetype of sorts in our city and in others across Canada. He is an increasingly visible presence, the manifest intersection of homelessness, hopelessness and substance use, causing much distress to the mainstream classes, whether they are sympathetic to his plight or fed up by the sight of him. And, while advocates decry the lack of services — a legitimate concern to be sure — Mark has been to publicly funded treatment on several occasions. He has been housed more than once, only to be evicted each time. For Mark, his trajectory is as complicated as his predicament is dire.
Mark and Althea are but two faces of poverty. But there are many others. The dimensions of the problem are sundry and so too are its faces. Some, like Mark’s, are visible to the rest of the public, raw and highly emotive. Others, like the working poor and the disabled are relatively hidden from view, by circumstance, choice, or both.
Statistics are unsurprising and the usual demographic categories remain in their well-entrenched locations. Indigenous people, as has been the case since federation, are wildly over-represented below the poverty line. So too are women, especially those who head up single parent households. Likewise, newcomers, the disabled, the elderly — in essence anyone found at the margins — are significantly more likely to live in areas with the greatest rates of low-income households. According to the most recent figures, Manitoba has the highest level of child poverty amongst all provinces in the country.
Against this backdrop, the rise of populism, seen here in Canada and south of the border, is fomented by an ideology rooted in individualism that paradoxically acts against the interests of the community as a whole and runs the very real risk of worsening the social landscape for those already in a precarious state.
Canada is a wealthy nation. Clearly, however, that wealth is not shared equally. We have witnessed increased costs while real wages stagnate. As a result, according to Statistics Canada, the top wealthiest 20 per cent of the population control almost 68 per cent of net worth, compared with 2.7 per cent held by the least wealthy 40 per cent, as reported last year in the Toronto Star. The same data set revealed that between 2006 and 2022 the wage gap between the highest and lowest income earners nearly doubled.
Meanwhile, impacts of colonization remain devastatingly front-and-centre, mirrored in plain sight by virtually every socioeconomic metric amongst Indigenous peoples. Reconciliation cannot be achieved without a levelling of this inequitable terrain.
Despite the myth of social mobility, one’s socio-economic position in our community remains substantially determined by birthright. If justice assumes reasonable access to such things as education, health, realization of a living wage and meaningful employment, there must be safeguards within the social system to ensure that adequate conditions exist to allow achievement of these rights.
Results highlighted in the Manitoba Harvest report should not be viewed as a canary in the coal mine. They are, instead, a reflection of an unjust distribution of resources in a society that has the means to do better.
Dr. Andrew Lodge is an assistant professor at the University of Manitoba, the medical director of Klinic Community Health and a research associate with the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives.
