HANSARD

NOVA SCOTIA HOUSE OF ASSEMBLY
COMMITTEE
ON
COMMUNITY SERVICES

Tuesday, February 7, 2012
Committee Room 1

Feed Nova Scotia
Printed and Published by Nova Scotia Hansard Reporting Services

COMMUNITY SERVICES COMMITTEE

Mr. Jim Morton (Chairman)
Mr. Gary Ramey (Vice-Chairman)
Mr. Sid Prest
Mr. Gary Burrill
Mr. Brian Skabar
Hon. Karen Casey
Ms. Kelly Regan
Mr. Keith Bain
Mr. Eddie Orrell

[Mr. Brian Skabar was replaced by Ms. Vicki Conrad.]

In Attendance:

Ms. Kim Langille
Legislative Committee Clerk
WITNESS
Feed Nova Scotia
Ms. Dianne Swinemar,
Executive Director

HALIFAX, TUESDAY, FEBRUARY 7, 2012

STANDING COMMITTEE ON COMMUNITY SERVICES

9:00 A.M.

CHAIRMAN
Mr. Jim Morton
MR. CHAIRMAN: Good afternoon everyone. I think we'll call the meeting to order. It's a few minutes after one o'clock, but we do have a quorum. I'd like to welcome all committee members here; I'd like to welcome visitors and staff in the room; and certainly I would like to welcome Ms. Dianne Swinemar, who is the executive director of Feed Nova Scotia.
To begin with, what we will do is go around the room to introduce the members of the committee, and then we will move to Ms. Swinemar who will be making a bit of a presentation.
[The committee members introduced themselves.]
MR. CHAIRMAN: Thank you everyone. One of the things we've begun to do as a fire safety precaution is to remind people in the room - particularly visitors - about what to do in the case of a fire, which I certainly hope will not happen today. But should there be a fire alarm, please leave the committee room and walk to the hall where the elevators are located. There are two exit signs, one to the left and one to the right of the elevators; both of these exits lead to stairs, which you should take, which will take you down and out of the building. When you're out of the building, proceed to the Parade Square and please remain at the Parade Square until further instructions are provided; don't come back into the building, in other words. Stay there so we know you're not somehow lost inside the building. Anyway, let's hope none of that's needed, but please remember it.
That will take us directly to Ms. Swinemar. I think you have a bit of a presentation that you want to make and that would typically be followed, if you leave us some time, with questions.

MS. DIANNE SWINEMAR: There will be lots of time. Well, thank you for the opportunity to speak to you this afternoon. I've spoken to very small groups and extremely large groups and for whatever reason, you make me nervous, so smile and make me feel comfortable. I used to work for the school board a number of years ago, before I got involved in this, and I did a presentation to the school board members about what it was like to be a parent going to parent-teacher night when your child is in Primary. You're in a little chair and everybody else is in a higher chair, the teacher is in a higher chair and you feel very intimidated. I'm feeling a little bit like that because I can't get my chair up any higher, so I need a booster seat. (Laughter)
Just a little bit of background. As I mentioned, I had no intentions of getting involved in food banking, it was not on the radar, but when I worked with the school board my job was to be involved in elementary and junior high schools and be connecting community to the curriculum. As part of that, I spent a lot of time volunteering when my girls started school. What I noticed was there were a lot of kids coming to school without adequate lunches. I was very, very judgmental about that, I have to tell you. I could not understand why parents would send their kids to school without enough to eat or the right kinds of food to eat.
It was over a period of time that the scales started to drop from my eyes and I realized that the reason that was happening was because the area I was living in had a high percentage of families living on social assistance, EI - at the time, unemployment insurance - and they were sending kids to school with what they could afford to eat. It really changed my whole attitude about it, and I became very committed and very passionate about trying to make a difference.
When I was asked to become part of a committee to look at need in the communities of Lower Sackville and Bedford, I put my hand up very, very quickly; I wanted to be part of that. Actually, Kelly's husband, Geoff, was part of that initial committee and we were both part of a founding committee that started Beacon House Interfaith Society. From there I was invited to become part of Metro Food Bank Society and thought I would continue in the life of a volunteer for a very long time.
The job as executive director of the Metro Food Bank Society was offered to me in 1991 and I have to tell you that it has been a wild journey. The organization itself, Metro Food Bank Society, was started in 1984 and in 1991, when I was hired, I had one mandate and that was to work to close that place down by the end of 1994. There had been changes in the economy, there had been a commitment from the provincial government at that time to work with us and we were working to put ourselves out of business in that time frame.
Now that was a mission and a mandate and there wasn't a work plan behind it. It was an interesting, challenging time, because if you remember what happened around the early 1990s, there were a number of changes that impacted on the economy, so we grew at a rapid rate. I've taken an organization that I was supposed to close down and I've grown it into what it is today, so none of this was supposed to happen.

Today we're Feed Nova Scotia; we reorganized ourselves in 2002, at the request of food banks across Nova Scotia. We had been working together with our partners across Nova Scotia. Our primary mandate was the Halifax Regional Municipality but because of our proximity, because of where we were located, we were getting all kinds of food donated to us - nationally-donated food, food from provincial partners and local partners - and it belonged to every food bank in the province. We couldn't get it to them and they couldn't get to us to pick it up. So we bought a five-ton truck and we put it on the road, and we made once-a-month deliveries to food banks around the province so they could get their food on time. They really liked the service and, as a result of that, they asked us to become a provincial association, so we did that in 2002 and then re-branded in 2005.

The thing about a PowerPoint is sticking to it, so I want to talk more about the organization as it is today. We have a vision: a province where no one goes hungry. We have a two-part mission statement: the immediate is to make sure we're feeding hungry people right now, today, as they need it; the ultimate part of our mission statement is that we will work to eliminate chronic hunger and poverty.

Getting the food out is our core business, but there are a lot of other programs that we're involved in to try to make a more impactful change on the lives of the families that we're seeing show up at the front doors.

I talked to you about how we got started and how we evolved today. We went from the Metro Food Bank Society to the Metro Food Bank Society Halifax Regional Municipality to the Metro Food Bank Society Nova Scotia to Feed Nova Scotia, all over the course of a number of years. Today our organization consists of 36 full-time staff. We have a couple of part-time staff and we have over 700 volunteers who last year donated over 41,000 hours. We are serving just over 150 different organizations across this province. They're typical community-based organizations. A lot of them are faith-based, coming out of church missions, and some other community groups that are involved in it. They pretty much look the same from one part of the province to the other: people who are volunteering, trying to make an impactful difference on the lives of the people that they see.

Our relationship is a little interesting. They are members, they pay a very nominal annual membership fee, but they have their own structure for governance. We have our structure for governance, our board, and they each have their own boards. So from a policy perspective and an operational perspective, we have no jurisdiction over them but we try to influence how they're working. So we try to embrace things like safe food-handling practices and codes of conduct with clients and that sort of thing, but they each operate independently.

I have to tell you that going from a metro-based organization to a provincial organization was not easy. It meant that we had to re-examine everything we did and make sure that our policies, practices, everything we did was fair and equitable to every member of our organization. We had to re-examine everything we did.

If you remember, I told you we started out with one five-ton truck in 1997. That truck was old when we got it. The moment we became a provincial organization, our partners across the province, once a month wasn't adequate service for them. We needed to put that truck on the road much more often because we got more food. The donor community, the food community got immediately what we were trying to do, so the donations increased.

Financial donations didn't keep up capacity but in order to get the fresh food out, we had to start making twice-a-month, three-times-a-month, four-times-a-month deliveries across Nova Scotia in a truck that was, like I said, very old to start with, so we had some challenging times in those first days.

Today we have a very strong donor source. Every commercial grower in this province supports our organization so every time we make a trip, whether it's to Yarmouth, to the Valley, to Amherst, down to Cape Breton and back, part of the back-haul involves a pickup at either a commercial grower or a food depot, like Sobeys in Debert and that sort of thing; very, very strong support to the organization.

We have fairly strong financial support, mostly from HRM, but we're trying to grow that across the region so that as people become aware of what we're doing, that they will support our work in the community, always emphasizing that we are not wanting to take money from the local community food bank, but looking for support in addition to what they're doing with the local community food bank.

We get food from the damage retail sector. If you've ever been in a grocery store and wondered what happens to the damaged food, anything that comes out of a Sobeys store in the Maritime region or a Co-op store in the Maritimes, it lands in our warehouse and we have to sort through it. What we salvage we share with the food banks in New Brunswick, Prince Edward Island and, of course, our partners in Nova Scotia. At the Superstore, it's just a Nova Scotia collection so we get that as well.

There is a national food share program that's part of our national organization so if you happen to drive by and see a tractor trailer in front of our property, that is food that's being dropped off by CN Rail who bring it at no cost to us. About every three to four weeks we get a shipment from Kraft Canada, General Mills - companies like that who, a number of years ago, made a commitment that they would support all food banks in Canada if we could find a way to get it across the country. I saw an opportunity, grabbed it and we've picked up some really interesting transportation partners to make that happen.

We have, I think, been very successful in finding the food. We have a reliable process to go through and sort the food and make sure that we're culling out what isn't safe for human consumption and then sending that on.

We have another program that is only in Halifax Regional Municipality and that is that we pick up surplus prepared food from the hospitals and hotel industry, which we are then transporting immediately to a number of shelters and soup kitchens in this region. That program is one that we have to do a very quick turnaround on the product, so there is a vehicle in Dartmouth and a vehicle in Halifax that are handling that every day, so that's our food story.

As I mentioned, our food is based on a fair share system. I believe you all received a copy of our HungerCount report and then a provincial break-out piece, so we know exactly how many individuals are using each one of our member agencies. If an organization in Truro has 5 per cent of the hunger population, they get 5 per cent of our food supplies and so on, so we try to keep it as fair as possible. The reason we do that is because that's the only thing we know. We know the number of people that they're handling; what we don't know is what their local source of supply is so we can't guess what that is. We know that there are food banks that have very strong local community support and we know that there are others that rely 100 per cent on what we're sending them - Canso is a case in point. Canso and Area Food Bank relies entirely on our supply to them each week for their client population.

About just over 60 per cent of what we're sending out to our clients is fresh and frozen food, which we're really proud of. We made a conscious decision to move in that direction about 15 years ago, recognizing that we were feeding a lot of children. The children were in those families, were at the food banks for a number of years as they were growing up and we wanted to make sure that it was a healthier diet than what canned and packaged goods could provide.

Our one truck has expanded to a fleet of eight trucks and last year the mileage that they drove was the equivalent of eight times around the equator, so they're on the road a lot. I have to tell you a funny story. We check webcams all the time to see what the weather conditions are and last Thursday they were checking the webcams and saw our truck going up Kelly's Mountain. It was like a moment in time. It has never happened before so we have it proudly displayed at the office - great tools.

This is from the HungerCount research piece and it just shows between 1999 and 2011 food bank use in Nova Scotia. It has fluctuated, as you can tell from the bars. What is significant in more recent years is that between 2008 and 2010, there was a 33 per cent increase in food bank use in Nova Scotia. This past year in 2011, it was down by 0.6 per cent, so a very slight decline, but certainly a cause for hope.

As I may have mentioned, most of the food banks submit their raw data to us, so as a client is visiting a food bank, they're registered, their health card number and the health card number for their entire family is collected and recorded. That information is sent to us and we record it on a central database and then we record visits as they come in. I think there are only seven food banks that are not on the system as of to date. The goal is to be 100 per cent because that gives us good, reliable data collection. We know it's not just people who are guessing at how many people came - it's real, live information.

The regional look between 2008 and 2011 - you can see with some areas, there has been very little change. Cape Breton, for example, has been fairly consistent; a big increase in the Colchester region and the Valley. In both of those places, there were plant closures in the last couple of years. When anything happens like that, when there are a number of people laid off, we don't notice immediately, but we will notice it usually about a year out; we'll start to see a shift in the number of clients. Certainly the change in the forest industry has had an impact as well in both of those areas. It will be interesting to see what will happen in Port Hawkesbury and those regions over the next year or so as things change there.

Somebody asked about Cape Breton. That has been an area where there has been a fairly high unemployment rate and high need. We've noticed shifts in the client base there where when there was a huge move for families going out West to find jobs, we noticed a change. The numbers didn't change, but the service that was being provided changed and what was happening is that the family members who were left behind - in particular elderly family members - were showing up at a number of the soup kitchens, so there was a lessening of food bank use, but there was a real spike in the soup kitchens. It's just interesting how those movements will cause shifts in the service being provided at the local community level.

Behind all of this, these pictures are just a reflection of who is using food banks and one of the things that we try to get across is that it's anybody and it's everybody; it's someone's grandmother, it's the neighbour up the street that you may not know their circumstances - things look fine from an outward perspective, but we never know what's going on behind closed doors. It could be the person who served you coffee or sat beside you at church on Sunday. They are people who are real. It's moms, dads, and infants, and so we're trying to raise that consciousness. If I said to you, what is a typical food bank client? There is an image that will come to mind and oftentimes I test this in schools with the kids and say, who do you think are using the food banks? What's interesting is that people who find themselves in this situation that have to use a food bank, they wear that. They'll come in and say, I'm not your typical food bank client, and it's like, there's no such thing as a typical food bank client. It's just really people who don't have an adequate income to be able to provide for themselves, so they are the families that we're serving.

To the second part of our mission statement, we're trying to, again, raise consciousness so as part of our membership with Food Banks Canada, we have an event in the Spring called Hunger Awareness Week. Last year our logo was changewhatyouknow.ca. That's a picture of us out on the Bedford Highway. My mother told me never to play in traffic and I've never listened to her so I play in traffic all the time but that's us out on the street and just again letting people know that something is going on; the Web site is very clear so people could check on it and there were some stories on there about food bank use.

We do editorials. We responded on the elimination of the census long-form. We've talked about proposed education cuts. We do news releases. We did a presentation to the budget, Back to Balance. We're trying to find our way into various levels of government, of course, and other key players in the community to ask questions about what we're doing and to help us find ways to make a more impactful difference on the lives of our clients.

We did a neat election campaign project just before the last provincial election. What we were trying to do, it wasn't to talk Party politics but to encourage people to vote. We sent out door knockers and asked people to hang them on their doors, just letting them know that they were prepared to vote, because people who live in poverty oftentimes feel that their voices don't count. We wanted to say to them, your voice does count and you need to exercise your vote and to go do so, so just to try to mobilize them to take part in what they have a right to take part in.

A very practical program that we're running, we've been doing this - we're going into our seventh year - is the Learning Kitchen. This is modelled after a program out of the U.S. I went down and visited a few times and brought back all I could bring back to try to look at how we could do this in Nova Scotia. As I mentioned, we've been running it for six years out of the Nova Scotia Hospital's kitchen. They're not using it at the moment so we're free to camp there as long as the equipment lasts. If it breaks down, we'll have to look for a new facility. We take 12 students at a time. They go through a 16-week program that's a combination of pre-employment skills and very practical culinary skills. At the end of that time frame - after the class time - they go into a work setting for about three weeks. Our goal was to have them find a job and be employed at the end of that time frame.

When we started, we weren't sure how it was going to work and this past intake we had 37 referrals from income assistance workers and other community groups for people to go into the kitchen. What they've told us is the value to them is the pre-employment piece that we're focusing on rather than the culinary skills. We're focused on employment; they're focused on the pre-employment piece. It seems to be working; 78 per cent of our graduates are employed a year after they've gone through the program. So we track them, we ask them to stay in touch with us and when they do, we send them a grocery gift card as a thank you, so we are able to know where they are. I actually sent one out last night to one of the students who graduated from not the last program but the one previous to that, and he is actually at NSCC furthering his education in the culinary program there.

From that perspective, our goal may be culinary skills and certainly the hospitality industry here in Halifax is supporting that, but we've had them go into plumbing, welding, continuing culinary skills, and doing other things. But it's that first step into the world of learning that, for some of them, they've been out of for a long time, have had many challenges, and this is their way back in.
One story that I want to share with you is a woman by the name of Lynetta. She went out West in 2006, she and her family. They thought they could have a better life. She was employed in retail here in Nova Scotia and they thought the land was greener out West and it wasn't. She came back in 2007, got a job at Walmart; she came back on her own. She was the sole supporter of her family and has three children who are now 4, 10 and 12, I believe. She got a job at Walmart but her child care worker quit, so she lost her job because she couldn't find child care support. She was on social assistance for three years, came to our kitchen in 2011 to be part of the program, and graduated. She couldn't find a job and was quite discouraged.

As part of our program, we have made an arrangement that we hire from a previous class a student that we feel may need extra help and extra time with the chef on a six-month contract and so they are there helping in the kitchen to prepare meals, which is something I haven't mentioned, but they're preparing 3,000 meals per week as part of their training. She was hired into the kitchen on that six-month term and was very convinced that there was no job for her, that she could not find her way back into employment.

She finished the program with us, the six-month work term, and not a week later she found a job at Dalhousie daycare so her four-year old could be with her for that short term until she is five. She's the cook for the daycare, making $16 an hour and it had benefits. That was a real success story for her because now she's making it on her own, so it works and we're happy.

As part of the Learning Kitchen, we started out trying to take food that we were collecting and using it for the students to prepare meals, and we would send it out to one of the soup kitchens in the area. Today, as I mentioned, we're now supporting Feeding Others of Dartmouth and Shelter Nova Scotia, their facilities, and the Out of the Cold shelter. Like I said, we're preparing between 3,000 and 3,200 meals a week that support those programs seven days a week as part of this. So the food is prepared, picked up by one of our vehicles and dropped off to those sites. They're providing a real service as they're going through the program.

The Help Line - most people are not aware that we're doing this - was a program that was run by a separate society, and in 2002 they had lost some funding and were not sure about the future of their program; it was a Halifax-based program. Their board of directors asked if our board of directors would be interested in taking over the service and providing that support to the community. We agreed and we did a needs assessment.

We were wondering which direction do we go - do we take this program out of service or do we build it? We got a very strong message from the community that the program had to be grown. We've done that, we've taken it from the Halifax-based service to a province-wide service. We added TTY service to it this past year. Eighty per cent of the hours are volunteer hours that run the line, the rest are part-time staff people. We're taking about 1,650 calls a month.

We added, at the request of government, a parental piece to that. There was a concern expressed by Community Services that families who were living on fixed incomes had challenges finding support services if they were having problems with teenagers or whatever, so we added that parental support piece. So 23 per cent of our calls are on parental issues; 19 per cent are practical calls - they need transportation to a hospital, they need food, they need shelter or whatever; and 58 per cent are emotional calls - grief, sexual assault, abuse and whatever. If there's a call that will come in from whatever part of Nova Scotia where there's deemed to be harm to the individual or another member of the family, we dispatch immediately to 911 and it's taken care of. Sixty-eight per cent of our calls are now coming from within HRM and 32 per cent from outside of HRM, so we're trying to be supportive to all parts of the province.

I think that's about it. Thank you for - I'm not so nervous now. (Laughter) Thank you for the opportunity and if you have questions, I'll do my best.

MR. CHAIRMAN: Thank you very much. I began to keep a speakers list and Mr. Bain is the first person on it.

MR. KEITH BAIN: Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman. Thank you, Dianne, it's very interesting. My gosh, we could probably ask questions here for the afternoon because Feed Nova Scotia has grown to be more than just Feed Nova Scotia.

The Help Line was the last thing you mentioned, I'm going to ask a question. It's run by volunteers; do the volunteers have some sort of training they have to undergo before they participate?

MS. SWINEMAR: They go through 40 hours of training and then they're partnered on the line for two or three shifts before they're on their own. We use the same facilitators each time.

MR. BAIN: I'm just going to talk about food bank stuff for a few minutes. You say you have 150 members and we know that there are small food banks in some of the communities. How would they become a member of Feed Nova Scotia?

MS. SWINEMAR: Usually they'll get in touch with us and let us know that there is something going on in their community and they want support or we will read something in the newspaper about a program that we didn't realize was in existence and we'll contact them. They have to follow a code of ethics; they have to agree to that. They agree to a fair share, which is an agreement, it doesn't mean anything - I guess it could. For example, if the food bank in Lunenburg was to be accepting a donation of 30 pallets of food from High Liner, they would be obligated to offer that into a national food share program.

It doesn't happen very often in Nova Scotia, unfortunately. We're generally the recipients of that type of product, but in principle they agree to that. The newest policy that will come into play will be the food safety training that we're conducting around the province right now with our members.

MR. BAIN: Just a couple more, Mr. Chairman, if I could. You can cut me off when I take too much time. You mentioned earlier in your presentation that the member agencies pay a membership fee. Is that based on the size of the agency or is there a flat fee that they would pay to become a member?

MS. SWINEMAR: It is based on the number of people they serve, so again we use our HungerCount numbers for that as well. The entry point this year was raised so the minimum fee is $75 and the highest fee is $225 per year.

MR. BAIN: I'm just going to close off because I know other people have questions. When you mentioned there's no such thing as a typical food bank client, the community where I live - a small community - has a food bank and now it's serving eight families. I'm involved indirectly in every way that I can but I guess one of the good things is - if you can call it a good thing, people having to go to a food bank is not a good thing - I want to relate a story of a family who happened to call the people looking after the food bank. The husband had gotten laid off work and they requested assistance, so of course the food bank obliged and they were visiting the food bank for two months. After two months, the husband got work again and the following month, instead of going to the food bank, they said, we'd like to make a donation.

So for anybody who might get discouraged that might be working at food banks and everything else, they say, that's what we're here for. I don't think people realize the good things that come and how difficult it is for those people to go there in the first place. I'll just close with that, thanks.

MR. CHAIRMAN: Thank you. Ms. Regan.

MS. KELLY REGAN: Dianne, there's actually an article that just came out today on a Web site called OpenFile and it sort of deals with the issue of housing in Nova Scotia and points out - not just for people on income assistance, but also for the working poor. Adequate housing can be a challenge and people are often taking money from what they would normally spend on food or on medications and spending it to get proper housing. They note that the income assistance rental rate for a family of three or more gets $620 to help with rent, but if you have a two-bedroom apartment, that's $925 for the average two-bedroom rental apartment. Are you seeing a lot of people who are being impacted by inadequate housing and forced to come to you because the rates just don't reflect reality?

MS. SWINEMAR: That's the number one reason that people come. It's because the money that they get - if they're on income assistance - is used up in housing-related costs and the only disposable money they have is what's for groceries so we're the fall-back.

MS. REGAN: I can't remember who the presenter was - and maybe someone else on the committee was - but I think it was about families in crisis and they said the number one indicator of whether a family will get through a crisis is whether they have an adequate roof over their head. It just seems to me that there's an article in Malcolm Gladwell's book What the Dog Saw and it's called Million-Dollar Murray. It's about a fellow who has a problem with alcohol and how much money they spend on him over the years dealing with that, versus if they had just given him an adequate place to live and what they would have spent.

Any thoughts on that, in terms of housing and the way we deal with housing? What I'm hearing in my office is people are coming in, their phone is being cut off or they don't have enough money for food, because they're paying either a lot for where they live or where they live is not well insulated so they have to pay an awful lot of money out in heat. The result is that because we have inadequate social housing stock, there's money going to heating their apartment, for example, which really should be going into their children's stomachs.

MS. SWINEMAR: Housing is an area that we have typically stayed away from; we focused on the food side of it. But as I mentioned, we do know that's the number-one reason people call and say they need support, because they've otherwise used their money for housing needs.

I get extremely troubled when I hear us - okay, I'm from the food bank and I know we shouldn't exist but I don't think we're solving anything if we start fuel banks and all those other charitable organizations. It's just masking the greater problem, and the greater problem is that it's an inadequate allowance that people are getting for their housing needs, so the only way to overcome that is to increase the allowance. You're right, there's not a lot of housing in Nova Scotia that I'm aware of that's public, for people to have that they could afford.

MR. CHAIRMAN: Mr. Ramey.

MR. GARY RAMEY: Thank you and thank you for coming. I've been listening with interest to everything you said and I think obviously - and I'm sure it's shared by everybody else here - you clearly do wonderful work. It's wonderful that you've grown and provided better service. I'm one of the people who wish you didn't have to grow as fast as you have.

I guess my question is sort of along the lines of what my colleague, Ms. Regan, was getting at. I've been wondering if anything that has been done over the last little while is helping at all. The government has tried a number of things, like the Affordable Living Tax Credit and the Poverty Reduction Credit. I know they changed the guidelines for Direct Family Support for Children, allowing more families to qualify. They changed the cohabitation policy for families on assistance. I guess I was wondering, has any of that helped at all, in your opinion, or have these measures not been of much value?

MS. SWINEMAR: I think any change like that is a positive change. Any program that will allow more money to stay in the pockets of the families is a good and positive thing. I think that sometimes when we look at overhauling programs, sometimes it doesn't go far enough, so I'll talk about the ESIA program as best I can.

It feels like it's a very inflexible program that keeps people in the system, so if there was a way of just overhauling that whole program and allowing people to keep more income as they are earning it, to stay on benefits, so they could gradually get themselves into a situation where they could find a job, get the clothing and all the other elements they need to hold onto that job - the child care, the transportation and all those things - that over time it would cost the government less money to help that family move out of that system, rather than keep them in the system. Sometimes it just feels like it's inflexible and when families get into that situation, they can't get out.

MR. RAMEY: I believe the government has initiated some changes in that regard, to allow families on assistance to pick up some extra work, to keep - I mean at one time that was a no-no when it kicked you right back into the system again. I think that's being allowed.

I should maybe just mention - I'm not sure if you're aware of it - the government started something called Target 100, which is an arrangement with Co-op Atlantic. Co-op Atlantic was looking for good, qualified people. What was found out was that on the Department of Community Services rosters were a number of people who had university degrees and community college diplomas and very good high school educations who, for one reason or another, were just having tough times. So they were asked - I believe this is the way it was translated down - if they would be interested in having their resumés put forward. These would be for good-paying jobs with benefits. I'm not sure of the numbers, but I think so far 38 people have taken that challenge up and they've gone off the assistance rolls and now have regular jobs with benefits and are working and producing.

There is a real desire to not be pushing people around and making them do things that they don't want to do, but certainly to move along in that direction, which ultimately I think is the answer. It's just you always want it to go faster than it's going, but thank you for the answer to the question. I appreciate that.

MR. CHAIRMAN: Thank you, Mr. Ramey. I think that will take us to Mr. Orrell and then Ms. Conrad.

MR. EDDIE ORRELL: Thank you, Ms. Swinemar, for all you've done and what you do in the province. I'm interested in the surplus food program you have where you're picking up food from the hospitals. How does that work? Do they call you at the end of the day?

MS. SWINEMAR: No, we've been doing it since 1994 and so we have a regular route that we follow. The food is not on the vehicle more than two hours so we know there are a series of pickups and then a series of deliveries. The food has to be in certain types of containers, certain temperatures. There are a lot of food safety pieces that are part of that, but if it's on the truck more than two hours then we have to destroy it.

MR. ORRELL: So where does it go, shelters?

MS. SWINEMAR: Shelters, soup kitchens, drop-in centres. Some places we might pick up wrapped sandwiches, so they would go to a needle exchange program, for example. We try to match the food with the service that's being provided.

MR. ORRELL: Is that being looked at in other areas of the province as well?

MS. SWINEMAR: No. At the moment we don't have the capacity to do that because it's a program that you have to pay a lot of attention to and it took us a year to even map out and plan that program and make sure we had all the pieces in place. It would have to be a significant amount of food and a significant need in the community because one of the things is the food cannot go home. It has to be served right where we deliver it so they can't re-package it and take it home. There would have to be a need and a community that would support it to implement it.

MR. ORRELL: One other question I have is we talked a lot about where your donations come from. How much in actual personal donations come - not at Sobeys but someone who just drops into your food bank and makes a donation or a group that has a Christmas drive that brings in donations, approximately how much would that - is that going up or down, I guess is the biggest question?

MS. SWINEMAR: Are you talking food or money?

MR. ORRELL: Food or money.

MS. SWINEMAR: Most of the food comes from industry; Sobeys is our number-one donor. It's in the annual report, I believe, that was provided; there is a listing of the donors in there. But corporate is certainly the highest and then the food drives supplement that.

MR. CHAIRMAN: Ms. Conrad.

MS. VICKI CONRAD: Thank you, Ms. Swinemar, for your presentation. It's very informative, for sure. I'm really impressed that Feed Nova Scotia has a Learning Kitchen and the culinary training program. I'd just like your thoughts around where we used to be in terms of food poverty, maybe 50 or 60 years ago when processed foods weren't a staple diet for many of us and traditionally families who were living in food poverty had different types of skill sets around food preparation. In fact, they were not only preparing their own foods but preparing for the long term, and they would take something nutritious and of less quantity and make their food dollars stretch or make the produce that was available to them stretch further. It was a skill set, I believe, that was passed on and I think we've lost that within our most recent generations because of the packaged foods that are so readily available and are so costly.

I think families today who are living in food poverty and have children going to school, they really struggle with, I can't afford the $2.59 crackers-and-cheese snack packs, but they forget that perhaps if their dollars were stretched a little bit differently in their food choices that they're purchasing or what's being offered at the food bank, that they perhaps could send their children to school with something nutritious but less costly.

I think we know nutritious food, especially in terms of fresh fruits and vegetables, is expensive, but we forget how to prepare them. I'm really impressed and I'm wondering with the Learning Kitchen and the culinary training, is that part of the philosophy of the Learning Kitchen as well?

MS. SWINEMAR: No. What you touched on, there is a generation of individuals that fast food, processed food was the way to go and know very little about cooking some of the foods that we take for granted, or at least I do, growing up in the country. So in some areas we've had to put on - this is a little side story. I won't go grocery shopping with my husband because when he goes grocery shopping if there's a tasting station, he stops to taste. I thought about that one day and I thought, we could take this model and put it in the food bank, so we actually do cooking and taste testing at some of the food banks if we have a product that is not something that is typical and people would know.

Let me tell you, we get everything, including caviar, so we're introducing some interesting foods in the world of food bank. So if you put a slow cooker or a wok or whatever and you have something there cooking and people can smell it and they can see it and there's a recipe and there's a product, they are more likely to take it home and prepare it.

The Learning Kitchen was really meant to be an employment training program. We really wanted to move people from the world of being on social assistance into the world of work, and that is succeeding.

To go back to your theory, we do have families that decline some of the nicest, freshest foods that we have. So we've taken a new strategy and this past summer we introduced Kidz Magic Cupboard. We had a nutritionist work with us who loves kids, loves cooking and knows all about food. We designed a program for children between 8 and 12 years old. We ran it in food banks and we're teaching them how to cook and how to learn to like foods that they normally wouldn't have been introduced to. It was really successful, so we're hoping to keep that program going over the summer months and into all the different areas as well - a very easy program to operate, the kids loved it. We're hoping that there will be a yearning for that more nutritious food as they grow older.

MS. CONRAD: Looking at Feed Nova Scotia's program under the Help Line, I guess this also goes back to the Learning Kitchen and your response that it's more about introducing new skills with the hope that someone will find employment within that field and will move out of being a recipient of community services. It is about training and perhaps the mandate of Feed Nova Scotia is slightly changing from - yes, we still want to be feeding Nova Scotians but we're changing our mandate to include training, to be fielding those calls to the Help Line dealing with those parental issues and other issues that would arise in the life of someone who is facing a crisis. Is that correct, that you're slowly changing the mandate?

MS. SWINEMAR: We took on that mandate in 1998. It was a deliberate move to try to be focused not just on the food but on the other side of it and what can we do for the long term. So the Learning Kitchen will not move hundreds of people, it's a small program. It will move people but we want to be able to look at the components of that that aren't connected to culinary skills and say, the pre-employment piece, how can we take that more broadly out across Nova Scotia and have more people engaged in that program? That's what the income assistance workers are telling us, that's the most valuable piece of the program.

The Irving Shipbuilding contract that's coming up, there's going to be work at many levels. They're not all going to be high-level positions so if there is any way of us introducing pre-employment programs that are going to take some of our clients and help them into that job market, it would be a good thing.

MS. CONRAD: Again, going back to the Help Line and the mandate of Feed Nova Scotia. You had said earlier that there are 36 full-time employees as staff members and those staff members are trained then in dealing with those crisis calls that are coming in, or is that a separate staff person that's looking after those calls that perhaps are coming in your direction?

MS. SWINEMAR: The 36 staff includes the entire staff team. There are three people at the Learning Kitchen; about 15 of them are involved in the food side of the organization; the Help Line staff person, there's a director of the department and one person who is responsible for organizing the training - we don't do our own training, there's one individual who makes that all happen; and the rest are volunteer.

MS. CONRAD: Thank you.

MR. CHAIRMAN: Thank you, Ms. Conrad. That will take us back to Ms. Regan.

MS. REGAN: Dianne, am I correct in saying that Feed Nova Scotia gets no funding from the government for its food activities? Is that correct?

MS. SWINEMAR: Yes. We get a grant for part of our Help Line and we get a grant for the majority of the Learning Kitchen, and the province and the city are supporting us with the portion of the cost of our building which is almost paid.

MS. REGAN: You have the building that's on the Bedford Highway and you also have a warehouse in Dartmouth, is that right?

MS. SWINEMAR: We are nomads. We are renting month by month in various locations in Burnside - nine at the moment. And we just got notice that it has been leased so we have to move again.

MS. REGAN: The scramble is on.

MS. SWINEMAR: We're scrambling. We need much larger facilities.

MS. REGAN: If there was one thing the government could do to eradicate hunger and poverty, what would you say - if we came to you and said we just struck oil off our shores, or natural gas, and we're going to have more money, what would the number-one thing be that you would say we should do?

MS. SWINEMAR: Don't give it to us.

MS. REGAN: No?

MS. SWINEMAR: No. My belief would be that it would be to look at community services, what are the programs? What is needed to make an impactful difference on the lives of the people we're serving? Put it there; don't give it to Feed Nova Scotia.

MS. REGAN: Okay.

MR. CHAIRMAN: Thank you. Mr. Prest and then Mr. Burrill.

MR. SIDNEY PREST: I noticed on your chart there you give figures of 20,000 and 25,000. Is that individuals or is that families?

MS. SWINEMAR: Individuals. There are about 11,000 families in Nova Scotia.

MR. PREST: What is the average age of the families or parents that ask for your help?

MS. SWINEMAR: The average would be, I'd say, middle-aged - 35 to 50, I guess that's still middle age - but we have everybody from infancy to very senior citizens. It goes full spectrum.

MR. PREST: What percentage would you say would be under 25?

MS. SWINEMAR: That I can't answer at the moment. Under 18, I know that it's about 31 per cent, which is lower than the national average, but beyond that I don't have those numbers. I can send them to you if you'd like.

MR. PREST: Yes. What advice or what would you tell a client that comes to you and said I need groceries, I need something to eat, because I have to use my money to pay for my satellite TV and my cellphone?

MS. SWINEMAR: Well, I don't know how I would answer that question. I do know that cellphones are the norm and they are typically cheaper than a landline because again, when people first started giving cellphones as the number, you kind of go, you know, a little judgmental. Then you stop and look at what the cost is for that and what the cost is to put in a phone and pay those expenses, and it's considerably less. There are some really inexpensive phone plans out there. I can't respond to the satellite TV, I don't have one so I have no idea what they would cost a month.

I guess I would say that I waste money, as an individual, I don't always make good choices. I try to be respectful that if that's the person's comfort, the satellite TV or whatever, then I guess so be it. I don't know what their family circumstances are and if there's children in the home, there's no way we're going to refuse them food. It can't be - we have to do it. I'm not sure if that's the right answer or the wrong answer but it's my answer.

MR. PREST: I'm just curious. That's good, thank you.

MR. CHAIRMAN: Mr. Burrill.

MR. GARY BURRILL: The area that I serve, Colchester-Musquodoboit Valley, kind of covers the two sides of the food bank world. We have on the Colchester side the Feed Nova Scotia food bank out of Truro, and then in eastern-rural HRM, the Musquodoboit Valley side, the independent Musquodoboit Valley Food Bank. I was wondering if you could say anything about - well, first, the rough percentage of the food bank world in the province that you would say is served by Feed Nova Scotia and then what you would see as some of the main differences in those projects that are associated with Feed Nova Scotia and those that aren't.

MS. SWINEMAR: There are probably eight known food banks to us that are not part of our network - actually there's more than that. There's two that are deliberately not members of our organization, there are eight food banks and about six other programs - that would be feeding programs - that are out across Nova Scotia that are in operation, that we are aware of, that are pending membership. We have not been able to take them on yet just because of our capacity, food or truck, to get it there.

I think the only difference is that they are not - the food banks that are not members are not going to benefit from the support that we get from Food Banks Canada, so there's a number of national food drives that go on with companies like Loblaw and General Mills and different groups like that, so they would not benefit from the food or the financial support there. They wouldn't benefit from the national FoodShare program, they wouldn't benefit from the reclamation program. They can be part of the food safety training but often don't become part of that.

To me there are advantages for us to be part of the national and I think there are real advantages to a local food bank, for a very small fee, to be part of Feed Nova Scotia because what we send out is significant and certainly much more than $75. We're taking $75 from an agency and we're sending back about $300,000 or $400,000 worth of food a year. It's a pretty good return for them, for sure.

MR. BURRILL: I was just trying to get a rough sense of the lay of the land. Would Feed Nova Scotia represent, say, 98 per cent of the food bank role in the province, or three-quarters?

MS. SWINEMAR: I'm guessing 95 per cent. What I don't know is what I don't know. Is there a community - there's a portion of Cape Breton, for example, where we have no coverage. I don't know all of the programs that may be in operation there, where we could provide support. Certainly if you look at the South Shore, we go as far as Shelburne.
We know that there are service providers in places like Lockeport and different communities, but we're not providing them support. It's just really being able to connect with people because sometimes it's a local pastor of a church who is managing it and then the pastor changes and so you're constantly trying to catch up, so there may be a lot of programs that we're not aware of. I would say that we've blanketed about - the known food banks - about 95 per cent.

MR. BURRILL: I have a different question. I really appreciate the clarity that you've spoken about the basic economics of this; that the bedrock of the client base is income assistance recipients and the bedrock of that need is the inadequacy of the rates related to how much of it is eaten up by housing. I think most people would recognize that - although I'm sure this was never your intention - you have kind of become the voice of the food bank world and when the HungerCount numbers are given out, well, what does Dianne Swinemar say? I think your opinion carries a great deal of weight, properly so, in the province. I'm just wondering, what would be your general sense, when we think about what would be required to make a significant solution? What would be the general shape of the income assistance change that would be required? Would the rates have to be quadrupled? Would they have to be 50 per cent greater than they are? Do you have any picture of this in your mind?

MS. SWINEMAR: I think there are many things that would have to be happening at the same time in order to effect change. I think the challenge is to look at it and take it on.

MR. BURRILL: Fair enough. Thank you.

MR. CHAIRMAN: I'd just like to ask a question myself, if I could. I think everybody has had a chance, I have a couple more speakers on the list. It's interesting to me that there has been an increase over several years now in the Annapolis Valley. I represent Kings North so I'm in the Kentville area. There has been an increase in the food bank usage over that several year period. I don't know how fully you're able to mine the data you have available to you, but do you have a sense of why that increase has occurred? Does it have to do with increased hunger? Does it have something to do with improved distribution methods? Do you have a sense of what the numbers might actually mean?

MS. SWINEMAR: First of all, there are more food banks in our network between the Hants County border to Yarmouth than in other parts of the province, for sure. Every town along the shoreline and through the Valley has a food bank, but there have been a number of things. It includes Yarmouth. There were changes in Yarmouth that we all know have impacted employment there and so people would be turning to food banks. Forestry in the Weymouth area has had an impact; the ACA plant closing. There has been downsizing in other plants so all of those things play a factor. That's anecdotal to us because we hear from our members what the clients' stories are, what they're telling them, so that's the only way we can substantiate that.

MR. CHAIRMAN: One of the things that prompted my question was that I know the food bank, the Fundy Interchurch Food Bank, which was located in New Minas, a couple of years ago relocated to Kentville because it had to. At least I've been led to believe that usage, when that relocation occurred, spiked quite a bit, which suggested to me that the demand may have been there in a way that wasn't easy to meet in its other location. Is that something you've noticed?

MS. SWINEMAR: It was more accessible, for sure, that particular food bank. It was easier for people to get there and they had a lot of coverage, so people hear about it. It's really interesting, you don't know there's need in a community until somebody starts the dialogue and then all of a sudden people will identify themselves as needing help, but in that particular region it was accessibility. The need was always there, they just couldn't access the services.

MR. CHAIRMAN: Do you have a sense of what people do if they haven't had that dialogue?

MS. SWINEMAR: That's a scary question. When people can't find support, you'll hear it manifest itself in all kinds of things, like child abuse, parents that aren't eating, they're not healthy because they're not eating to feed their children. We hear all kinds of stories, especially through the Help Line, so it does manifest itself in other ways, not very pretty ways.

MR. CHAIRMAN: If I may just ask one other question, if the committee will indulge me here. I know one of the ways food is distributed to families in Nova Scotia is through breakfast and lunch programs in schools. Does Feed Nova Scotia have any involvement in that program or in the policy development for that program?

MS. SWINEMAR: We have been involved quite extensively with the school breakfast programs. We had about 30-some that we were trying to support. When the types of foods that were allowed in schools changed, it became very difficult for us to support them because we couldn't guarantee that there were no peanuts in certain food and we couldn't come up with the types of foods they were asking for, so we provide very little support to in-school programs.

We are providing support to family resource centres, the FLEC programs, and that sort of thing, but not right in the schools. As much as the call has come to us, we can't do it. There has been a request, we just can't support it.

MR. CHAIRMAN: Thank you. I think I have at this point Mr. Bain and Mr. Ramey on my speakers list, and then Ms. Regan. Mr. Bain.

MR. BAIN: Thanks, Mr. Chairman. You mentioned that parts of Cape Breton aren't within your catchment area - would you be at liberty to say where they are? Is it northern Victoria County, Inverness - is that the area?

MS. SWINEMAR: Geography was never my strong point but it's like Cheticamp and up that tip of the island. We're covering the rest of the island and that's where the concentration seems to be.

We do know from conversations with people in Neil's Harbour and Cheticamp and those places, that there are things going on. Church communities are involved and they would like to have our support. Seriously, the one thing that's holding us back - it's not the food as much as it is the ability to put another vehicle on the road because that's what it would involve, to rearrange our routing and have another vehicle do that. We have a very aging fleet.

MR. BAIN: It would be quite a job to get to Neil's Harbour and Cheticamp . . .

MS. SWINEMAR: Yes, it would be difficult.

MR. BAIN: You mentioned that when the trucks go around making deliveries or drop-offs, they don't come back empty.

MS. SWINEMAR: That's right.

MR. BAIN: So are you saying that when it comes to Cape Breton, as an example, that they in all likelihood will be stopping at, can I say, Eyking Farms or Bras d'Or Producers Co-op or something in there?

MS. SWINEMAR: On the back-haul, Eyking Farms is one of the stops for sure. They come back with product there.

MR. BAIN: My final question is, we often hear through news reports about the difficulties particular food banks face at certain times of the year and everything else. Is that attributable to an increase in demand or is it a lessening of donations that are coming in, or a combination of both?

MS. SWINEMAR: It's a combination of those two things, and their own internal policies and procedures in the way that they're distributing food.

As I said, all the food banks are involved in our data collection except seven, so we know again exactly how many people are coming to the food bank, how much food we send them, because it's based on that number and what should be the norm; like if they're running out, what's happening? So if they're feeding more people more often, then we can accommodate that.

If we don't have the raw data, it makes it much more difficult for us to respond to that media report that there is more need in the community. When we've been able to dialogue with them and examine that, it may be that they have very loose record-keeping, they may be feeding the same family five times but no one will say no. There has to be some sort of protocol, whatever that is, whatever the organization wants it to be.

It could be that they lost some local community support. It really just depends on each individual food bank and the set of circumstances. Our job is to try to have a dialogue with them and say, how can we better support you when we hear those stories in the media?

MR. BAIN: So depending on size, food banks can be working on a weekly or a biweekly or a monthly basis?

MS. SWINEMAR: The normal stated rule is that clients can come once a month. The reality is the service is being provided twice a month in general. Our deliveries to the food banks are based on they get once-a-week delivery. We're trying to provide them with enough support that they should be able to serve every family that is coming to them with an adequate supply of food - fresh, frozen, and non-perishable product.

MR. BAIN: And if there were emergency situations, the individual food bank deals with that.

MS. SWINEMAR: They can or they can call us and we can provide support if we have it available.

MR. BAIN: Thank you very much.

MR. CHAIRMAN: Thank you, Mr. Bain. Mr. Ramey.

MR. RAMEY: So the Interchurch Food Bank in Bridgewater, there is a delivery made to them once a week?

MS. SWINEMAR: Absolutely.

MR. RAMEY: Excellent.

MS. SWINEMAR: And the family resource centre. Actually, there are a couple of schools involved that have programs in Bridgewater.

MR. RAMEY: Excellent. I know that the churches are really quite involved in my area and I know they run all kinds of strange things like Souper Bowl. That was a soup day so everybody brought soup to church and they had so much of it they weren't really adequately geared up to accommodate it in the sanctuary the other day so that caused a bit of a really good problem. In any event, that did happen. I know the churches there are very supportive and so I'm really glad that we're pulling some of our weight down there.

One of the things I was impressed with today - and others were asking you questions, which pointed this out to me - is the very good economic data on the Province of Nova Scotia that you have without necessarily you trying to go out and do economic research. I found that very interesting. There were some real surprises in there for me. I mean, I was glad to see, for instance, our numbers didn't look too bad on the South Shore. I get no small comfort in that because there may be a lot of people who need it and who just aren't going or something. To see not much change in some places and then significant changes in others and then you commented, I think, regarding Mr. Morton's question about issues, for instance, in the Valley that would have impacted on that or the information you'd have from your help line on abuse cases and so on. I just found that particularly interesting. Do you share that information on Web sites or is it out there for public consumption or is it your own internal statistics, which you've shared with us but which is not available to the masses?

MS. SWINEMAR: We have put some of the information on our Web site and we certainly encourage you to contact us whenever we're making presentations and want information and we want to have better information. We're actually in the process of having a program designed for us, a new data system that will, as the client information is put into the system, it will actually inform the warehouse on how much product to go out so it's going to be in time and not just based on March. We're also having it built so that Statistics Canada information can be imported into it so that we can look at it based on electoral constituencies, based on county, based on all kinds of information, so we have good, raw data. We know there's a lot of information there so we welcome - come pay us a visit, call up, whatever. We will share the information.

MR. RAMEY: I just have a quick one here and that's regarding your truck fleet. You said you had eight trucks.

MS. SWINEMAR: Eight vehicles.

MR. RAMEY: And they're getting old or getting well worn.

MS. SWINEMAR: They're like me, they're getting real old. (Laughter)

MR. RAMEY: Me too. I was just wondering, when the time comes to replace those vehicles - which ultimately everybody has to do that at some point - do you have any arrangements with the car dealerships or with second-hand car dealerships or truck dealerships or anything like that to get special breaks on pricing, or have you ever gone that route?

MS. SWINEMAR: We've made arrangements with some of the - like Parts for Trucks and companies like that because they're larger vehicles. When it comes to replacing, one of the things that I alluded to is that we had a mandate to close and then all of a sudden we found ourselves in a situation of growth so some of our own policies and fundraising and that sort of thing is catching up with that. We had a capital campaign back in 1999, which got us into our facility, got us some vehicles and enabled us to do what we're doing right now.

There was no plan put in place to replace those vehicles so that's our challenge at the moment, that's an internal challenge. We're working with those in the automobile industry, if you will, to help us find ways to get the best deal on the truck. We've had a number of events to raise money for a new five-ton truck that we have to put on the road, it's ordered so that's a good thing. The two vehicles that we use for the prepared food recovery, one is a 1999 and the other is a 2000, I think, or a 2001, so they need to be put out to pasture big time, so we're leasing vehicles to replace those. We've got now a bit of a plan put into place to try to do that and add vehicles to increase that capacity. We have had vehicles given to us as part of estates, but they're minivans and cars and can't transport much food in them.

MR. RAMEY: Does the United Way support you?

MS. SWINEMAR: No.

MR. RAMEY: Have you ever asked the United Way to support you?

MS. SWINEMAR: No, actually we declined because of the blackout period. We would not be able to do fundraising in the time that's most significant for us, so we've declined. People can designate us.

MR. RAMEY: Thank you very much, I appreciate that.

MR. CHAIRMAN: I was thinking we were coming close to the end of our list, but just so you know I now have Ms. Regan, Ms. Conrad and Mr. Bain back on my list. Ms. Regan. You're not done yet.

MS. REGAN: Sorry, Dianne. (Laughter) In Halifax, 53 per cent of your client base is either a single person or a single parent heading up a family. Do you know what percentage of that is women?

MS. SWINEMAR: I probably could tell you if I had time to go through my material and look it up. Actually if I recall, Kelly - and I'm speaking out of turn - it was a 50-50 and I remember reading that just recently. I will check and I will confirm that.

MS. REGAN: Do we have a breakdown on what percentage is working poor versus people on assistance?

MS. SWINEMAR: On the HungerCount report we did have that, yes.

MS. REGAN: Sorry, I don't have the whole report sitting in front of me.

MS. SWINEMAR: In this piece here that we sent out, it would be in there.

MS. REGAN: Okay.

MR. CHAIRMAN: Sorry, I was looking at your numbers. In fact, what your numbers say is that in the province 59 per cent of users are receiving income assistance. Ms. Conrad.

MS. CONRAD: You chatted briefly and I believe you called it the national support system?

MS. SWINEMAR: National Food Sharing System.

MS. CONRAD: Yes, could you explain that is more detail because it sounds quite intriguing because you have, if I understand correctly, you get a drop-off once a month by CN?

MS. SWINEMAR: It's a program of Food Banks Canada, our national organization. A number of years ago, probably 15 to 16 years ago, I was chairing the national board and I had the opportunity to meet with national food companies. My request to them was to set up an advisory to help us in the world that we found ourselves in. We found ourselves in the world of transportation, warehousing and that's not what we set out to do or be. We wanted them to advise us on how to work smart.

In the course of a conversation with Kraft Canada, the young woman I was speaking with indicated that they were getting 300 letters a week from organizations all over Canada asking for food support and they were trying to do that, they would look wherever they had a plant or operation and tried to respond. She made the comment that they had just given a fairly large donation to a shelter located in downtown Toronto. I asked the question, did they support Toronto's Daily Bread, which would have been our equivalent as Metro Food Bank and she said all the time, regularly. I said, every time you support Toronto's Daily Bread you are, in fact, supporting hundreds of smaller organizations in the Greater Toronto Area. She said, do you have that system across Canada and I said yes, it's a hub-and-spoke system - larger food banks supporting all the little food banks. She said if you give us the food, can you move it across Canada? I said yes. I didn't know at the time how it would happen, but I knew we could do it.

We've engaged CN, CP, different trucking companies, so the bulk of that food is coming out of Toronto. Every time there is food available, it could be near code date - the agreement they made is that if there was 40 days retail on the code they would not move it into retail and move it out, they would just automatically transfer it to our product - it could be mislabelling, that they would take that product, move it virtually into the custody of Food Banks Canada - at the time it was a different name - move it into our custody, and then we would find a way to move it across Canada. We called it a national FoodShare program, and it has been going ever since then and going quite effectively.

One little story: the president of Kellogg's thanked me for saving them millions of dollars and I said, what do you mean? He said every time you write a thank-you letter to thank us for a big donation we have to go down to the plant to find out what we're doing wrong and fix it. I said maybe I shouldn't be sending thank-you letters and cut off the source, but nonetheless, we still send thank-you letters. But that's the program.

MS. CONRAD: That's incredible. One last question and I know I asked earlier if your mandate was changing, but now I want to ask you if your original mandate, when you were director of Metro Food Bank Society and your mandate and mission at that point in time, in the early 1980s, was to put food banks out of business - is that still your mandate today?

MS. SWINEMAR: That is still the desire. We know that it's a long way out and it's going to take many, many factors to make that happen, but I think my answer to the question about where would the money go, I don't think it belongs to us. I think there are things we are doing well. I think the fact that we're rescuing so much food that went to landfill, there was nothing that could happen to that, I think those are all great and wonderful things and we would have to look at that and say, where would we redirect that if there was no need in Nova Scotia or Canada? But we're here for the duration until there is a change and we know we need to do the best job possible for the families that we're serving every day.

MS. CONRAD: Could I just make one last comment?

MR. CHAIRMAN: I guess you could.

MS. CONRAD: I thought that was my last comment, but it wasn't. You had mentioned, too, that each of the 150 organizations, they all have their own board and their own policy structure, and basically Feed Nova Scotia attempts to influence some of the direction in terms of food safety and handling, and local governance - was I correct in . . .

MS. SWINEMAR: We have our own governance structure.

MS. CONRAD: Okay, so it's a model you're hopeful all of the other organizations follow to some degree?

MS. SWINEMAR: We operate under a policy governance board. Most of the front-line food banks are operational, but what we want them to do is to adhere to the code of ethics, that they treat people properly, that they're handling the food safely and properly. If you look at some of the operations there are some things happening out there that shouldn't be happening. If you go into a local food bank and you see used clothing in the same room as the food, that's bad. It's really convincing them that these are things that are food-safety issues and they need to change. We know that we have an uphill run ahead of us, but we're taking it on.

MS. CONRAD: I know I have the utmost respect for the board of our local food bank in Queens. Anytime that I have approached them, when I'm making a personal donation or others in the community are asking where they should be making their donation, they have been just stellar in the understanding of our community needs.

MS. SWINEMAR: I would concur.

MS. CONRAD: Yes, absolutely, some great people that support community. Thank you.

MR. CHAIRMAN: I think that takes us to our last questioner. Mr. Bain.

MR. BAIN: It's not even going to be a question, Mr. Chairman, it's just a comment. I think we all realize the tremendous work that Feed Nova Scotia does and you've increased our awareness here today. You have gone beyond just providing food banks and I think it's important that we all know that. I think each of us in our own individual way do what we can to support our local food banks and we'd all love to see them go by the wayside, but at this point that's not a reality so we have to try our best to make things work.

You mentioned that Feed Nova Scotia serves over 22,000 individuals and you also mentioned 700 volunteers. My comment is we have to recognize the tremendous work of those volunteers because if those 700 volunteers weren't there, these 22,000 wouldn't be looked after.

MS. SWINEMAR: Those 700 volunteers are Feed Nova Scotia volunteers, that's not even counting all across Nova Scotia, it's huge.

MR. BAIN: And I think that's the bulk of it and I think that's what we really have to recognize. Thank you.

MR. CHAIRMAN: I don't see any other questions or comments. Are there any final words or wrap-up comments, Dianne, that you'd like to make?

MS. SWINEMAR: I'm not sure if it's appropriate or not, but one of the things that I hope will be taken into consideration is that health card numbers are a very important component of what we do. Our new database system is being developed with that built into it, that we will continue to be able to collect health card numbers and there will be an encryption to make sure that it's protected from a privacy perspective. We've applied to become custodians of health card numbers, so if there's room to influence that decision, we know there are other provinces where this has happened and provinces where it hasn't happened, but for us, I think, that's an important element and certainly for the integrity of the data that we're collecting, for sure, but also more specifically for our ability to appropriately service the client families that are coming to us. If there's a way of influencing that decision, I would certainly appreciate it. Thank you.

MR. CHAIRMAN: Thank you for bearing with all the questions and of course, for some very helpful information. I think what we'll do is take a very brief recess to allow Ms. Swinemar to move out of the room because we have a little bit of committee business to complete.

[2:32 p.m. The committee recessed.]

[2:37 p.m. The committee reconvened.]

MR. CHAIRMAN: Order, please. I think we can call the meeting back to order. I don't think we have much business left to attend to. You'll see under our next meeting date - which is March 6th, 1:00 p.m. to 3:00 p.m. - we have, as I understand it, the Retail Council of Canada scheduled to present to us. Kim has made contact with them and they have agreed to be here, so I think we can count on that.

Is there any other business that anybody has? Ms. Regan.

MS. REGAN: I was just wondering if we had heard back from Community Services at all about having them come in and make presentations in the future. We had discussed it at a recent meeting where we would get them in on a regular basis so that we could talk to them about their programs.

MR. CHAIRMAN: I don't know, Kim, if you have anything you'd like to add to that. I don't think we've made any formal requests to them at this point because we have a number of other items on our forward agenda, so we haven't made a particular request.

MS. REGAN: I think it was mentioned at the meeting that perhaps it would be a good idea, since we are the Community Services Committee, to have Community Services making regular presentations on programs before us, especially in light of the fact that our presentation on the ESIA regulations was cancelled at the last minute, so maybe it would be helpful to have that. In fact, we do know there have been some changes around that so it would be good to have, so that we all understand what the new regulations are and where people go if they want to appeal, that kind of thing.

MR. CHAIRMAN: My memory is that there was certainly a general willingness on the part of the committee to move in that direction, but I would think one of the things we need to do is we have a number of presentations on our schedule and I think we need to allow those things that we've agreed on to kind of move forward and probably need another opportunity to do some agenda setting. I would think that a presentation from the Department of Community Services would be a very important thing to have on that list. Is there any other business?

MR. BURRILL: Do we know where we stand or are we in indefinite limbo about the federal reports?

MS. KIM LANGILLE (Legislative Committee Clerk): I've contacted them and it has been a back and forth. They're looking to see if there's someone who would be appropriate to come, and actually Mr. Morton and I did speak about that today, as well, as to who else we may go to if that doesn't pan out. So that's kind of where it is.

MR. CHAIRMAN: At this point I've made a few phone calls to see if we could identify someone who might be able to come. As Kim has said, she's making a number of calls. I wouldn't say it's completely a closed door, but one of the things that has occurred in terms of the committee that was responsible for the report is that the committee's membership is almost, if not totally different than it was at the time the report was prepared, so there is, in essence, no one who sits on the committee - whether on the government side or from some other Party - who would be familiar with the work that led up to the report and that's a bit of a complication, I think.

We also had some conversation about if we weren't able to access somebody to speak about that report it might be possible to look at the report that came out of the Senate, so that's still an option as well. I would say that iron is still in the fire, although I'm not aware that we've had any definite response from that yet. I think it begs the question though, is this something that we should continue to pursue at this point? Are there any thoughts about that?

MR. BURRILL: My feeling is that they are both very significant documents and will be landmark matters in the social policy world, particularly because of where they stand on this whole history of the question of guaranteed annual income and particularly how that affects the disabled. That's what was new in both of those reports and this is of major significance, and I think it's important for it to be registered and also registered here.

MR. RAMEY: I would concur with that.

MR. CHAIRMAN: Great, thank you. So we will continue to pursue this and I guess if anybody on the committee has a lead or a thought about how we might accomplish this goal, I would certainly appreciate hearing from them, either to myself or to the clerk would be helpful. Please don't hesitate to pass along your thoughts. Mr. Ramey.

MR. RAMEY: May I just say that perhaps one of the ways that all of us could try to help move it along might be to contact our local MP and ask our MPs to encourage someone to come and speak to us about it, since we are a provincial committee that's very interested in hearing someone speak on that report, and work on it from that angle?

MR. CHAIRMAN: I think that perhaps could be helpful.

MR. RAMEY: So I'm prepared to certainly do that with my person and if anybody else wants to do that, that's fine as well.

MR. CHAIRMAN: Thank you, that's a good suggestion. Is there any other business? We may well need - we do have witnesses for next time, but as of this moment I don't think we have a witness scheduled for after that - it may well be helpful for each of us to be thinking from our various caucuses about the kinds of witnesses we might like to consider in the future, in addition to the Department of Community Services which I think we'll find on that list. I think it will be timely to begin that work.

All right, if there is no other business, I declare the meeting adjourned. Thank you.

[The committee adjourned at 2:43 p.m.]