Seasonal philanthropy is as much a part of the winter landscape as bearded men in red and white suits. And one charity you’re sure to hear from at this time of year is the food bank. Holiday campaigns are a key part of any food bank’s donation strategy, and with good reason. Canadian food bank usage is up and the need for donations is urgent.

This had us wondering about other food bank facts. Using data from Food Banks Canada we decided to sort through food-bank-fact and -fiction.

Food banks are an inevitable part of modern life.

The first Canadian food bank was established in 1981 as a temporary relief measure for people facing economic hardship. Almost 30 years later, more and more people are turning to these “temporary” services. But Food Banks Canada believes that we can see the end of food banks if governments get tough on poverty by providing equitable access to social assistance and unemployment insurance programs, and by addressing other problems with the welfare system.

The need for food banks is decreasing.

According to HungerCount 2009, Food Banks Canada’s annual report on food bank use, March 2009 saw an 18 percent increase in use compared to March 2008, the largest year-over-year increase on record.

Most food bank users are homeless.

Actually, only five percent are. According to 2009 numbers, 87 percent of food bank users live in rental housing, with 60 percent paying market rent and 27 percent living in social housing. Six percent reported owning their own homes.

It’s mostly adults who use food banks.

But a large number of children need them, too. Food Banks Canada’s March 2009 count found that 293,677 Canadian children were eating food that came from a food bank. Families with children comprise 49 percent of all users, with 25 percent being single-parent families. Of users without children, 39 percent are single and 12 percent are couples.

Food banks are able to provide enough groceries to last a week.

Two-thirds of food banks provide five days’ worth of food or less per visit. Fifty-five percent provide help once a month or less.

The fight against poverty in Canada recently added a new weapon to its arsenal: the living wage bylaw. While only one Canadian city, New Westminster, B.C., currently implements the practice, the push is on to make it the norm.

Living wage bylaws require that workers employed directly or indirectly by a municipal government be paid a wage that enables them to comfortably meet their basic needs. The current movement has existed in the United States for about 15 years, resulting in over 140 living-wage ordinances, but it only gained a foothold in Canada on April 26, when New Westminster city councillors unanimously passed a motion mandating that anyone working on city property receive at least $18.17 per hour. This market-based rate is meant to reflect the actual income required for working families to pay for necessities, support the healthy development of their children, and participate in social and civic life.

Living wage proponents are confident that the victory in New Westminster will spur or embolden similar movements across the country. In Ottawa, street demonstrations and presentations to municipal councillors and staff led to the living wage being included within the city’s Poverty Reduction Strategy, which city council endorsed last February. This December council will make their final decision when they decide whether to commit financial resources to the plan. Initiatives are also underway in places such as Victoria and Surrey, British Columbia, and Kingston, Ontario.

Many anti-poverty activists believe that living wages are the key to addressing the plight of Canada’s “working poor.” While provincial minimum-wage rates vary, the lowest paid workers in Canada now earn an average of 20 percent less in real dollars than in the 1970s. Meanwhile, the cost of living has steadily climbed. As a consequence, even full-time employment is not enough to keep some Canadians out of poverty.

The New Westminster proposal was promoted by a diverse amalgamation of groups, including the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives, the Hospital Employees’ Union, and First Call: BC Child and Youth Advocacy Coalition. A similar coalition in Ottawa is looking to build upon this example. In September, ACORN Canada brought in speakers from New Westminster to help educate the people of Ottawa on how higher wages can benefit workers and the economy without burdening taxpayers.

Of course, the living wage does have its opponents. Free-market thinkers have criticized the policy as a bureaucratic intrusion that reduces profits and flexibility, and in 2009, they helped ward off what had been a promising campaign in Calgary.

However, with the evidence on their side, a growing number of Canadians are working hard to make living wages the law. Now that the breakthrough has been made in New Westminster, they might soon be able to concentrate on their real jobs.

Jacques Rogge's bank of Olympic televisions (artist's impression).

When Jacques Rogge, president of the International Olympic Committee, checks into his Vancouver hotel suite a few weeks from now, he will find (as he flops, exhausted, no doubt, from the strain of private jet travel) a “video wall,” paid for by the citizens of British Columbia. The bank of televisions are a requirement of IOC regulations, which state that the president must have enough screens to be able to watch every Olympic event underway at any given time—simultaneously.

The white-glove treatment being extended to Count Rogge of Belgium and the 111 other IOC members—the clutch of industrialists, backwater bureaucrats, tinpot generals, and dissipated royalty who preside over the Olympic “movement”—puts the economic reality of 2010 into sharp and sickening perspective.

Somehow in this country it became perversely more politically viable to spend $1.98 billion widening B.C.’s Sea to Sky Highway for a two-week international event than it is to implement a national housing strategy to aid Canada’s estimated 300,000 homeless (Canada is the only G8 country without such a plan). Today, more than 600,000 Canadian children live in poverty, a number that hasn’t budged since 1989’s doomed Campaign 2000 parliamentary pledge to eradicate child poverty by the turn of the millennium—yet $900 million will be spent on security costs, battle-hardening Vancouver against the Olympic crowds. The opening ceremonies of Vancouver 2010 are budgeted at $58 million, while the B.C. provincial government cut $20 million in arts funding just last summer.

It’s not possible to draw a direct line from the ledger that pays for renovating the Vancouver Convention Centre ($883 million) to the one that dictates that Canada pays among the lowest unemployment insurance rates in the industrialized world. But in a national sense, it is sad to contemplate the collective priorities expressed by these decisions: to choose the splashy over the prosaic; the grand, short-lived gesture over the incremental improvement; the rich and famous over the poor and marginalized. Or to furnish a Belgian count’s plush hotel room with more televisions than one man can watch, while thousands sleep in the street.

Google Earth detail showing part of the Athabasca tar sands mining operation. The tar sands is both the most carbon- and capital-intensive project on earth. Photo via Flickr user Skytruth.

Nothing brings out patriotic pride like the Olympics. But before we get busy reading about gold medals and new heights of athletic glory, let’s take a few moments to reflect on a few shameful Canadian records that you likely won’t be hearing about during any Olympic broadcasts:

1. The Alberta tar sands hold two shameful world records: Highest carbon footprint for a commercial oil project and largest capital project, says a September Greenpeace report. The organization commissioned award-winning journalist Andrew Nikiforuk to write the paper, in which he declares that the tar sands are likely to hold onto these records as production continues to expand over the next decade.

2. In 1989, the federal government promised to end Canadian child poverty by 2000. The kids that promise was made to are adults now, and one child in seven still lives in poverty. The Conference Board of Canada’s annual benchmark exercise scored us 13 out of 17 countries on child poverty; only Italy, Germany, Ireland, and the United States ranked below us.

3. Canada is the only G8 country without a national mental health strategy. Stephen Harper announced the creation of the Mental Health Commission of Canada in 2007, but so far the commission only posted a draft framework for what the strategy will look like on its website. With one in five Canadians dealing with a mental illness at least once in their lives, we hope the Commission stays on target to finish the plan by 2011.

4. We’re also the only G8 country without a national housing strategy. Though Bill C-304, an act to ensure secure, adequate, accessible, and affordable housing, passed its second reading last September, Libby Davies, the NDP member who proposed the bill, says that there is still much work to do to make it a reality. For example, educating our governing party on the importance of such a strategy: With one exception, Conservative MPs voted against the bill.