Food-insecure students trying to make the choice between paying their rent and buying their dinner can still turn to the Campus Food Bank for emergency support.
Located in MacEwan Student Centre since 2004, the food bank allows University of Calgary students and staff in need to pick up a food hamper once every 30 days or up to six times during the fall and winter semesters.
A recent study found 10 per cent of Canadian households cannot meet all of their basic needs due to financial stress. The Canada-wide study showed that for those without enough money to buy milk or butter, the experience of eating Kraft Dinner can be very different than for those who eat it as a comfort food.
The study, “Discomforting comfort foods: stirring the pot on Kraft Dinner and social inequality in Canada,” was published in the international journal Agricultural and Human Values and was co-authored by U of C faculty of medicine professor Dr. Lynn McIntyre and research associate Krista Rondeau. It described food insecurity as “the inability to obtain sufficient, nutritious, personally acceptable food… or the uncertainty that one will be able to do so.”
The study follows a report issued last year by the Calgary Poverty Coalition which suggested Calgarians are seeing a different kind of poverty these days. It referred to recent studies that showed the gap between rich and poor becoming wider and more visible in Calgary, attributed to increasing income for well-off Calgarians and higher debt, decreasing savings and stagnating incomes for others.
Despite the studies, Campus Food Bank use has decreased by about 50 per cent in the last two years, said Students’ Union volunteer services manager Sue Wilmot.
SU vice president external Alastair MacKinnon thinks the decrease may be due to students’ lack of awareness of the service. Wilmot argued more students can work part-time to make ends meet.
“There could be a correlation between food bank usage and availability of fairly well-paying, part-time jobs, like at Tim Hortons, where people make something like $15 an hour,” she said.
The Interfaith Food Bank has seen similar patterns over the same time period, Wilmot added.
Of those students who have used the food bank during the last year, 40 per cent said they were concerned with rent increases. Others are trying to cope with unseen expenses related to the rising cost of utilities, natural gas and fuel.
But students’ difficulties range from insufficient student loans or social assistance, family illness, sudden unemployment or even a sudden change in marital status.
MacKinnon believes something needs to be done for students faced with unexpected expenses.
“The expenses pile up,” he said. “Often students will choose less healthy food or they’ll just stop eating. You can’t not pay tuition and buy your books if you want to stay in school.”
MacKinnon wants to see more upfront, non-repayable financial assistance for students in the form of grants and bursaries instead of tax breaks. He believes expectations of parental contributions to a student’s university education should be eliminated, since some parents may not be able to contribute even if they are making a lot of money on paper.
Assistance should also be targeted to certain groups of students underrepresented at U of C, he said, such as rural students, students from the north and aboriginal students.
Students in financial need can take advantage of various services offered other than the food bank, such as the financial aid office, the Counselling Centre and the Students’ Union office.