Please pass the gravy

The nutritional key to better health doesn't lie in a great meal, but in a consistently good diet.

      Through an abundance of governmental and non-governmental agencies, our nation extends food, clothing and shelter to persons in desperation world-wide. As individuals, we support local causes in relief of the less fortunate. It's never enough, of course, and these actions seldom, if ever, “cure” whatever problems have put populations in such need that dependence on the charity of neighbours is their only hope.

      Of course, emergency charitable giving is essential. Foreign aid, food banks, soup kitchens, Christmas hampers, emergency shelters are expressions of our compassion and generosity while bringing at least some comfort to people in dire straits.

      There are, however, bad, indifferent and better ways to respond to recognized need. As the opening sentence says, it's “diet” that needs to be secured more than a dinner provided for, for instance, a struggling family. A useful analogy might lie in the economic sphere: it's not the cash you have today that matters; it's cash flow that secures sufficiency.

      All of which has led some charities to rethink their approaches. The family that frequents a food bank for whatever reason is not short of food, per se; it's short of the means to buy food. Our stores are overflowing with great food. The food bank—if it only provides groceries in a regulated manner to persons passing (failing?) a means test—is a good thing as an emergency measure and as a way of mitigating wastage, but the need on a deeper level is for a change in food and wealth policies that would render the need for handouts obsolete.

      I won't save the teeth of a poor family's children by giving them a tube of toothpaste—unless I'm prepared to provide a new tube every week. A Christmas Hamper can be a real treat, but if there's not a week-after-Christmas hamper and a two-weeks-after-Christmas hamper, what exactly is it we're doing besides stroking our own generosity-ego and paying for one meal?

      I'm perplexed that in a country where universal health care is equally distributed to everyone regardless of means, those amenities that equate to healthy “diet” (solid, comprehensive education; abundant healthy food; comfortable shelter; community leisure infrastructure; etc.) are not. Healthcare as we deliver it is remedial; it exists to correct health breakdown, much of which would be cheaper to prevent than to remediate.

      Yes, I know. Socialism. That pariah to the part of the population that thinks the road to happiness relies on its naïve definition of personal independence and liberty at all costs—and the devil take the hindmost. But the personal independence impulse is selective: it rails against perceived infringements on privacy and personal freedom but assumes entitlement to a whole gamut of things already provided under the social(ist) contract, like roads, schools, airports, public transit, child benefits, old age pensions, employment insurance, water, sewer, parks, swimming pools, etc., etc., etc. Preferably without paying taxes.

      Successful, sustainable economies are generally mixed economies. They prosper through private and public entrepreneurship and controlled capitalism in partnership with social democracy. To campaign for either one over the other is a fool's errand that results in division, wasted potential, and—at it's worst—an ungovernable state in which a negotiated directions become practically impossible to achieve. 

     A culture of winners and losers. Life as a zero-sum game.

      Which brings me back to the beginning of this diatribe. Generosity, charity, Christian obligation to “feed the hungry, etc.” absolutely must get political. To put our efforts into patching up what our failed politics has torn just won't get us to a better place. Reactionary political policies must be rooted out of our institutions of power, we just can't afford to have every social advance torn down by neoliberalism. The means to doing that lies in the ballot box and the voice God gave us to advocate for policies that produce justice for everyone.

      Canada has the resources, the skills and expertise to make of itself a country where every person lives in a safe, comfortable shelter, eats three nutritious meals a day, has access to quality liberal education, is able to enjoy sports, arts, culture and community amenities, and is near enough to good healthcare when its needed.

      If I don't believe we can ever make that happen, and if that makes me apathetic, I'm part of the problem. 

“When I give food to the poor, they call me a saint. When I ask why the poor have no food, they call me a communist.” --Dom Helder.