Rising Food Insecurity in Canada: The Shocking Reality of Grocery Store Theft and Starving Neighbors

2023-08-08 04:00:00

According to the Quebec Food Retailers Association, $4,000 to $5,000 worth of food is stolen every week from grocery stores.

If you think it’s only the unemployed or people working for minimum wage who are struggling, think once more.

Misery has become ordinary

More and more people who hold stable and relatively well-paid jobs can no longer make ends meet.

In Limoilou, the neighborhood where I live, requests for support have become common on the Facebook pages of mutual aid.

Every time I see a mother asking for fruit for her children, my heart breaks.

When I see fellow citizens explaining that their pay doesn’t go until the next one, that the rent falls on a Sunday and that their salary doesn’t come in until Thursday, that they’ve run out of groceries and that they would be interested in donations of “surplus” food, I die a little.

Canada is one of the richest countries in the world and my neighbors are starving.

Spare me the double-cent accounting lectures, the “they just have to plan better” and the stupid comments regarding the contents of the poor’s grocery baskets.

We laughed a lot at a Prime Minister who said that it was possible to feed a family of 4 with $75 a week, but at the time, it was still a sadly achievable humiliation.

Today, the small pound of runny butter is displayed without embarrassment beyond 7$. Margarine is no less arrogant and meat is no longer purchasable.

To the friend who wrote to me this week that “eating flank steak has become a luxury”, I replied: “eating has become a luxury”.

Politicians like to address the middle class when they talk regarding money.

Now, it’s sad, even the middle class can no longer afford it.

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#Food #theft #middle #class #longer #afford

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