THUNDER BAY — The potential for a trade war with the U.S. to drive up food prices and unemployment is a cause for serious concern at the Regional Food Distribution Association (RFDA) of Northwestern Ontario.
The association provides food to nearly 50 different municipalities and food banks, alongside First Nations and feeding programs all the way to the Manitoba border and north to Fort Severn, Hudson Bay and James Bay.
Following the high cost of the pandemic on the organization, which officials said the RFDA was not ready for, tariffs are also expected to affect them greatly.
The RFDA’s executive director, Volker Kromm, said it could become unsustainable.
“We’re struggling now with being able to find enough food for the members and the individuals that come to us,” said Kromm.
With the rumblings of higher unemployment, factories and businesses shutting down, he expects a lot more people will turn to the food banks for help.
“Other food bank hubs in Ontario... had to scale back. They had to lay off people. They've had to close down various food banks (and) deliveries so that they're serving fewer members. We don't want to do that, but we have to be prepared,” said Kromm.
On top of these concerns, he said public donations have also dried up when the word of tariffs came out, both monetarily and with food coming in, which he understands with people hanging on to their dollars, but with the donations down, the RFDA can't afford costs.
“Suddenly, we're in a position where we can't afford to buy. We're desperately in need of donated food or cash so we can buy food, but then it's a sort of an escalating event where suddenly the food prices are higher, the availability isn't there, so it's all coming together in one big tsunami for us,” said Kromm.
As such, he said operations are also a key concern because if the volume doesn't come in and demands increase, there will be an off-balance with operational costs, hydroelectricity and staffing, among all the other things that the RFDA has to deal with.
It has begun reaching out to Food Banks Canada and Feed Ontario to develop a collective solution to feed the demand, as well as look nationally and work to have a strategy in place.
“There is available food or surpluses in Canada that we can probably turn into other products and then share with the rest of Canada, but in a lot of cases (it) requires education,” said Kromm.
Kromm said he hopes Doug Ford comes to the rescue and helps them out in that capacity, giving them the tools and regulations actually to do the education and share some traditional foods.
At the end of the month, the RFDA will meet with members to discuss what happens if they have to use smaller hampers and serve fewer members.
“There's been a lot of difficult questions that we hope that we don't actually have to address. That we worry about, but we hope that they don't ever come or they're in the future,” said April Mercier, the RFDA’s office manager.
“...These questions that we've been able to put off because we've been able to sustain funding or we've been able to meet our needs. Now we're going to have to look at really what we're going to do when those decisions face us head-on.”
Mercier said things were tough last year before they started having these conversations about tariffs.
Now, she added that costs continue to rise and getting money is also more difficult.
“A lot of people in the government (and) people in the city are busy trying to address what these tariffs are going to mean. It's keeping them busy with that and it means we can't work on getting the funding that we need to sustain,” said Mercier.
For the RFDA, she explained the biggest thing they have to deal with is they want to give a hand up, not a handout — take a step towards education and programs that can help eliminate the need for food banks and even eliminate the organization one day.
However, she added that, unfortunately, it looks like the shift will be a lot more towards giving and providing the food and emergency needs.
"It takes away our ability to focus and our ability to raise money on providing education and providing the things that could actually help with our big picture goal and that's very unfortunate,” said Mercier.
