Cochrane town council has declared a food insecurity emergency, and food bank manager Ardis Proulx hopes municipalities from Hearst to Kirkland Lake follow suit.
She says the idea comes from Feed Ontario, which thinks it’s a good way to advocate for resources from government and to get people talking.
“By doing that, it doesn’t make this big grandioso gesture,” she says. “It just shows that the municipality is also with us in the whole promise to try to fight it and find different resources and curb the insecurity crisis that’s happening.”
Proulx says food insecurity numbers are increasing everywhere, and that gives Feed Ontario ammunition to ask governments for help.
“This is going to go up to Feed Ontario and they’re going to collect from all the different municipalities within Ontario and they’re going to be able to use that to advocate at a government level to say ‘Hey, we need some resources, we need some funding, there’s obviously issues here.’”
Proulx says the numbers can also come from soup kitchens and other organizations that deal with food insecurity.
