Centre’s budget up about 40 per cent over past two years but demand has tripled over the same period.
The Depot Community Food Centre, formerly the NDG Food Depot, is cutting the amount of hours it spends every week giving out free meals. The service is being cut to three days a week from four because although demand is higher than ever, the community centre has not received additional funding. In other words, it must give out many more meals per day than before with less money.
The depot will no longer serve meals on Fridays. The new schedule for the meals is Tuesday 2:30 p.m. to 6:45 p.m., then 10:30 a.m. to 2:15 p.m. on Wednesday and Thursday. A two-dollar contribution is suggested.
In a news release, the Depot Community Food Centre stated: “As many of you already know, demand for services such as our Resto and our Marché has nearly tripled over the past two years. Funding from governments and other sources has not followed the demand. The result: we do not have the resources to continue to provide dignified services at the current level. Our team and volunteers are at capacity and our budget will not allow us to make as many meals or hire more staff.
“We are seeing exhaustion, discontent and over-hours from both staff and volunteers. This threatens the objectives and the program’s sustainability and does not uphold the depot’s values of care, dignity and equity. Additionally, we are seeing consequences related to our inability to keep up like the incapacity of staff to fulfill other aspects of their jobs. We do not have the resources to keep doing what we are doing.”
The centre’s executive director, Tasha Lackman, said in the past a really busy day for the Resto Depot was 200 people. Now a regular day is 300 people. This change has happened over the past two or three years.
Before COVID, the restaurant was open two days a week, but it increased to four days a week after COVID.
It gets about $450,000 worth in donated food from the Moisson Montréal food bank every year and spends an additional $950,000 each year buying food.
Its budget has gone up by about 40 per cent over the past two years but demand has tripled over the same period. Government funding over the past two years has not gone up for the centre.
Less than 18 per cent of its funding comes from the three levels of government, with only 3.5 per cent coming from the provincial government.
The centre serves N.D.G.-C.D.N., Côte-St-Luc, Hampstead and parts of Westmount.
“Food insecurity in Canada is at an all-time high,” Lackman said. “One-quarter of Canadians are now living with some form of food insecurity, up from one out of five. And we’re seeing the same thing in N.D.G. More than 25 per cent of NDGers live below the poverty line … food insecurity is an income issue. With the cost of housing increasing and the cost of your groceries is increasing, more and more people just can’t make ends meet and have to use organizations like ours.”