(Ottawa) “When I see moms all dressed up, but with tears in their eyes, it’s me I see. » MP Julie Vignola sometimes recognizes herself in the faces of the women who go to get food from the food bank. She also had to resolve to ask for help after finding herself unemployed when she was a young mother, but she bounced back to become a federal deputy for the constituency of Beauport–Limoilou around ten years later .
“It didn’t happen overnight,” she said in an interview. It’s a combination of situations that meant that at a given moment, the budget was tight: a move, two pregnancies, a contract that was reduced by 70%…”
It was 2010. Julie Vignola was in her mid-30s and the mother of four children. The family had left the North Shore to settle in Kamouraska to be closer to their loved ones.
Mme Vignola was then assistant principal of a secondary school and coordinator of the Agir differently intervention strategy deployed by the Quebec government to encourage academic success in disadvantaged areas.
Her partner worked at a lower salary than on the North Shore and their income became insufficient when she found herself unemployed just after maternity leave. Their budget was very tight, but their obligations remained the same.
“For me, it was a heavy thing to say: I have studies, I have a good training, I have a beautiful family, I am not destitute, but I need help. I can’t do it anymore,” confides the elected official with a bachelor’s degree in teaching who has worked in several schools as a secondary school teacher and as a principal.
It was hard. It wasn’t even a question of pride. It was a question of how can this happen when you have everything in front of you.
Julie Vignola, Member of Parliament for Beauport–Limoilou
Her work led her to meet the director of a food bank and it was this bond of trust that ultimately allowed her to ask for help.
“The breaking point where I said to myself: I have to go, was when I opened the cupboard and saw that I had two cans of bines, then a can of oatmeal,” he recalls. She. I had no eggs, no rice… I had reached the limit of what I could make in terms of imaginative and filling meals. That day, I went to Moisson Kamouraska. »
“If there hadn’t been a bond of trust, I don’t know what I would have done,” she admits with a hint of emotion in her voice.
Food banks, busier than ever
There are more Quebecers who need help to feed themselves than ever with the rising cost of living. The Quebec Food Banks network helped 872,000 people each month in 2023, or one in ten people. That’s up 30% from the previous year and 73% from 2019, the year before the COVID-19 pandemic. The increase is such that a majority of organizations that help them have run out of food.
The Trudeau government set aside $1 billion over five years in its latest budget to create a national school food program. The Bloc Québécois has been urging him for months to respect this electoral promise, but he is demanding that the money be transferred quickly to Quebec so that it can meet demand.
Although it is the subject of political debates, the subject of food aid remains taboo in the corridors of parliament. The Press tried to check if other MPs had ever used a food bank, but no other party except the Green Party responded to us. None of the Green MPs have experienced this type of situation.
Julie Vignola revealed it spontaneously in a press scrum last month after learning that GC Strategies, one of the companies linked to the scandal ArriveCAN, had pocketed 2.5 million from the government to recruit staff. The magnitude of the amount of this commission had deeply shocked her.
I am immensely grateful to be where I am now. And when I say that it is our responsibility to ensure that public funds are well spent, it is this experience that comes to mind because I know what living tight is like. […] there was no question of wasting.
Julie Vignola, Member of Parliament for Beauport–Limoilou
In her case, the tide ended up turning after a few months when she was able to find a new contract. She came away with great empathy.
“Everyone can experience a difficult situation even if we plan, even if we try to see what is coming. And everyone, ultimately, can succeed if they work to get by. This is what I take away from this experience,” she notes in hindsight. And above all, do not hesitate, despite discouragement, to “go and get resources even if you don’t want to”.