Tight budgets mean hungry people are turned away, says the general director of Notre-Dame-de-Grâce community food centre The Depot.
A group of Montreal community organizations responding to the hunger crisis say the province needs to better fund their services.
They were responding to the Coalition Avenir Québec’s Nov. 21 budgetary update which Marie-Andrée Picard, coordinator of the Regroupement intersectoriel des organismes communautaires de Montréal, said contained “absolutely nothing for food security.”
“Stop ignoring us,” she told reporters, who gathered at the organization’s Little Italy headquarters.
Fifteen per cent of Montreal’s population is food insecure, Picard said, as are 11 per cent of people across Quebec.
“Is the government insensitive to the needs of this population?”
Community organizations work with very little government support but have become essential services in responding to food insecurity, Picard told reporters during a press conference held at a community centre in Little Italy.
The average organization in her network receives $145,000 per year from the province, she said. That doesn’t come close to the cost of their operations, which she said typically run in the millions. The rest has to be sourced from donations and other organizations.
Tight budgets mean hungry people are turned away, said Tasha Lackman, general director of The Depot, a Notre-Dame-de-Grâce community food centre.
Volunteers and staff at her centre want to help, “and then they have to say no,” she said.
“They have to tell people who are in crisis, who don’t know where their next meal will come from that they can’t help them. And can we refer them to our partners, to other organizations? Not really, because they’re in the same situation as us.”
This report will be updated.