Why do we have food banks? It’s a question a lot of people ask.

There was a day when we didn’t have food banks and it’s within my living memory.

What changed?

Some new research by a researcher at Sheffield University in the UK shows a clear connection between social assistance payments and food bank use.

That may seem to be a nobrainer for some, but this is the first time that a documented link has been established between cuts of social services and food bank use. Cut social services and food bank use goes up. Increase social services and payments and food bank use goes down.

There are many who would ask why we have social services in the first place. After all aren’t that what jobs are for? And if you can’t find a job, then there must be something wrong with you. Right?

Wrong. There is no connection between having a job and having something right or wrong with you.

What has changed in the last couple of decades is the nature of work and the nature of our economy.

The biggest factor is the Baby Boomers. In the interests of full disclosure, I am one.

What is happening in Ontario is that as Baby Boomers retire, the economy slows down. In an economic statement released by the Ontario government in the last few weeks, provincial growth is expected to slow dramatically as the Baby Boom generation ages out of the workforce. With growth slowing, the “good jobs” our politicians keep touting simply will not exist.

David Foote, a professor at the University of Toronto and noted writer on the impact of the Baby Boom generation says we had better get used to it. Business and labour markets, he says, have to adapt and change their thinking that growth, and especially rapid growth, is the solution to everything. We have built our society and understanding of community on certain principles. They include an continually expanding economy, jobs for everyone and a chicken in every pot.

That’s not realistic. As we are discovering now, economies contract. Jobs move elsewhere. We complete for jobs with countries with lower taxes, reduced health and safety regulation and a labour force willing to work for less, largely because any job is better than the unemployment they have now.

But those workers are exposed, as has been seen in places like Bangladesh to unsafe working conditions and even death. Just so we can have cheap clothes.

And what of food banks? One of the conclusions of the UK study was to warn the government that the cost of social services is an ongoing cost of government. Cuts to such services and payments will only harm people in the long run.

Government should also not expect the charitable sector to step up to fill the gap. Thinking that charities will somehow step in to increase supply and depend on the good will of citizens to fill needs when government makes cuts to social services is simply a non-starter. Charities and non-profits are not well equipped to fill the gaps caused by government cutbacks. 

The real result is people (especially children) will go hungry and poverty will increase.

The lessons for this country are significant. As we enter into a time of deep change, the old nostrums will no longer work. Cuts to social service programs will harm more than help.

If there is a positive message here it is that all of us are in this together and together is the only way to survive.