Inflation and the housing crisis are driving more and more Quebec households into food insecurity. A situation that translates into considerable pressure on the health system and community organizations. And the lasting solution to this problem does not go through piecemeal treatment, but through prevention, according to several experts.
When finances are tight, it’s the grocery bill that suffers most often. “Rent is an incompressible expense, and people eat with what’s left,” says Louise Potvin, professor at the Université de Montréal and holder of the Canada Research Chair in Community Approaches and health inequalities.
Blanca, a single mother of two teenagers, is barely making it. The auxiliary nurse is gradually returning to work, after being diagnosed with breast cancer in 2020 which forced her to stop working. “I had a car and the house mortgage to pay, and I didn’t know I was going to get sick. Everything is more expensive: it happens that you no longer earn enough, ”she laments. It is finally by reducing her grocery bill that she manages to get back on her feet: she has been going to food aid organizations for two years.
The cost of suffering
“If you are not able to feed yourself with the agri-food products available on the market, it becomes a daily quest”, explains Professor Potvin. And this quest results in a lot of distress and anxiety, say community organizations.
At Bouffe laurentienne, for example, a social worker crisscrosses the region to meet only the needs of users of the organization’s food counters. “To have work, it has some”, underlines its general manager, Dominique Cadieux. For her part, Nathalie Loyer, director of the Soupière Joliette-Lanaudière, says she now has to lock the containers where she throws expired food to prevent people from looking for food there.
“If you haven’t eaten, it’s really easy to get disorganized. You enter a cycle of anxiety; your only concern is to feed yourself. A person who does not have mental health problems can easily develop them,” explains Sylvie Chamberland, co-director general of the Carrefour solidaire Montreal Community Food Center. A child who does not have enough to eat is also more at risk of developing hyperactivity or behavioral problems, notes Suzanne Lepage, nutritionist at the Montreal Diet Dispensary.
“My two oldest understand that it’s difficult financially, that you have to be careful. But the youngest does not understand. He wants to play, he wants to eat everything. When he sees stuff in stores, he wants to have it. At the park, he cries because he wants a ball too. It’s difficult, ”says Rebecca, a single mother of three children who has agreed to reveal this aspect of her life on condition of anonymity.
Food insecurity also undermines physical health. In precarious times, people tend to limit their consumption, especially of fruits and vegetables, observes Suzanne Lepage. A deficiency that encourages the development of problems of hypertension, diabetes, as well as certain cancers.
All this has a price: in Canada, the costs of health care provided to an adult suffering from mild, moderate or severe food insecurity are respectively 23%, 49% and 121% higher than those provided to the rest of population.
See beyond food aid
Food insecurity is often associated with the use of food banks. However, only one in five people in this situation calls on these organizations, says François Fournier, researcher at the Quebec Observatory of Inequalities.
There are a range of prevention strategies, he notes: setting up community gardens and kitchens, creating budget management workshops and forming buying groups, among others.
Food banks, on the other hand, respond to urgent needs. “We recognize that it is not by giving pounds [de nourriture] solve the problem of hunger. But if we’re able to make better use of food that would go to the landfill [autrement]it’s insane not to do it,” says Moisson Montreal’s general manager, Richard Nadeau.
The researcher Fournier believes that their role is essential, “but it remains a palliative”. “We must add an arm to the fight against food insecurity. And it must address its main cause, which is the lack of income and purchasing power,” he underlines.
There are therefore many possible solutions. Virginie Larivière, spokesperson for the Collective for a Quebec without poverty, for example, demands a minimum hourly wage of $18. “It doesn’t make sense that companies don’t pay their employees and that the state has to make up for the shortfall,” she says. Working should enable people to get out of poverty. »
Food insecurity is also deeply linked to housing, notes Professor Potvin, who believes that current rents are at the root of the problem. Part of the remedy could therefore lie in social housing.
Donald Boisvert also defends a multisectoral approach. He directs La Corbeille, an organization in Ahuntsic-Cartierville that works not only in food security, but also in socio-professional reintegration. Investing in prevention provides a real benefit to the community, he maintains: 85% of people who go through the La Corbeille program reintegrate the world of work, and they “are less subject to the judicial system, do not live at the expense of the State, pay taxes and are healthier.