Carl DeLine

The volunteers who feed Calgary’s hungry are growing weary and they’re starting to get angry.

Twice last week, the Calgary Inter-Faith Food Bank was broke.

That means the bank, the “Band-Aid organization” which provides hampers to up to 6,000 people each month who have no other way of getting food, had to start saying no to some requests because supplies of necessary items had run out.

The bank was still turning away some requests this week because of shortages.

Manager Carl DeLine was forced to appeal for donations and begin organizing a new round of food drives in the city to meet the demand.

Donations of food and money, which supplement the bank’s collections of unsold food from city bakeries and grocery stores, have lagged this spring, says Louis Grenier, DeLine’s assistant.

Usually, contributions slow down after the Christmas-time rush but begin picking up again in March, Grenier says.

But this year, for the first time since the bank opened in 1982, donations haven’t bounced back and that has the people of the Inter-Faith worried.

Calling the situation “unsettling,” Grenier says the slowdown in the economy may be limiting donations.

With no early end in sight to the recession now hitting Calgary and with the likelihood the demand for food aid will rise, concerns are being expressed about the ability of the bank with other volunteer agencies to continue rescuing those who fall through the gaps in the so-called social safety net.

DeLine and Grenier are growing angry with that they see as the failure of Alberta Social Services, which oversees the province’s income security system, to get money for essentials like food and clothing into the hands of those who need it before they must turn to the food bank.

Aside from providing assistance to people in need, the Social Services Department also provides emergency aid to those who are unable to get help through agencies like Unemployment Insurance, for example.

But Grenier says the food bank has sent people who have been referred to it to Social Services for emergency help “and they have been treated very poorly.”

DeLine says he and Claudia Tennant, now chairman of the board of the bank, placed their concerns about people on social assistance seeking hampers before Bob Scott, community relations officer for the department’s Calgary region, last September.

As a result of that meeting, people eligible for government aid who came to the bank were asked to call Scott’s office instead.

But DeLine and Scott disagree on the number of calls that were made. Scott insists that he got fewer than two dozen in October and November. DeLine claims the regional office was swamped with complaints.

But behind the skirmish lies the issue of whether social assistance should be increased.

Scott says the department deems it inappropriate for a social worker to refer a person on welfare to the food bank, because the amounts established for food in the welfare cheque are supposed to be sufficient.

But food bank officials say a hefty percentage of their caseload is made up of social assistance recipients.

DeLine says those amounts, $108 per month for an adult, $77 per month for each child under 11 and $110 for each adolescent, need to be re-examined.

DeLine also has another concern. Last fall, the deputy minister of social services, Michael Ozerkevich, attended an Inter-Faith board meeting and offered software for the food bank’s data processing system and radios for its overworked delivery vans.

The assistance hasn’t materialized. But DeLine admits that, while the help is badly needed, the idea of accepting government assistance poses serious potential problems for the food bank.

DeLine doesn’t want to become dependent on government money and lose his freedom to challenge Social Services when necessary.

Feeding those in desperate need makes DeLine feel happy he is able to help, but ashamed they have wound up in such a crisis. But he insists he won’t give up and he won’t lose his temper, despite the mounting pressure.

“I’m going to be heard.”

Originally published April 26, 1986 by the Calgary Herald (Calgary, AB), credited to Jim Cunningham.