As the holidays near and consumer spending skyrockets, the most important thing on the minds of some students is getting enough food.
“Students have always been poor,” said Ruth Perkins, an executive assistant at the Graduate Students Union, who helped run the U of T Student Food Bank for the last two years.
The Food Bank was opened by the Women’s Centre in the early 1990s because some of the women who used the centre were noticing the substantial food costs in the city. The Graduate Student Union took on its coordination in 1998, and recently, the Student Administrative Council has taken responsibility.
David Hulchanski, a professor at the Faculty of Social Work, agrees with Perkins that destitution among students has been increasing since the 1990s. “This destitution harms health, prohibits study and the ability to excel,” said Hulchanski.
Recent immigrants particularly are feeling financial pressure.
One food bank recipient, a graduate student in Public Health Sciences who came to Canada from Uganda, is a mother as well as a scholarship recipient.
Her rent takes up two-thirds of her living stipend. She sometimes visits community food banks, but the one on campus is the most convenient.
Another recipient, newly arrived from Columbia, was picking up groceries for his family. He is awaiting work visa status, so for now, the family’s only income is his wife’s teaching assistantship. He finds that having to live off-campus is another financial strain on the family’s limited means.
In April 1998, the Governing Council of the University of Toronto approved a new Policy on Student Financial Support, which states that “no student admitted to a program at the university should be unable to enter or complete the program due to lack of financial means.”
According to Perkins, this policy may mean additional financial support, but any extra money is often used to pay for increased tuition and rent costs. Food costs are a flexible budgetary item, with students often choosing to forego nutrition for lower costs or convenience.
The Food Bank provides approximately 35-65 students per week with a box of food (plus a bag if they have children).
At the end of the academic terms, when student funding tends to run low, there’s an increase in people using the food bank.
With donations from the Daily Bread Food Bank and others, the Food Bank currently provides about 2-3 days groceries ($40 value) for a family of two weekly.
Based upon statistics gathered in 2000-2001, there were about three non-students per week using the Food Bank services. A policy was implemented last spring to restrict its access to students only.
90 per cent of the people who use the Food Bank are student parents.
Two thirds of Food Bank recipients were undergraduates in the mid-1990s. Now that trend has switched, with two-thirds graduate students using the service.
Steadily rising tuition coupled with the Tory government’s abolishment of rent control are seen as major factors driving students into poverty and reliance on the food bank.
Almost 800,000 people rely on food banks each month in Canada, according to the Canadian Association of food banks. This is almost double the 1989 numbers.
The first food bank opened in Canada in 1981. There are now more than 600 food banks across Canada, and almost three per cent of Canadians use them—40 per cent of whom are under the age of 18.
