Imagine you went to the grocery store and purchased these items: a dozen potatoes; two pears; a couple of carrots; 12 small onions; a litre of milk; a small box of cereal; some canned soup; a couple chocolate bars; some yogurt, peanut butter and a package of chicken wieners. Now, imagine something else: that this was all you had to live off of for a week.
Oh yes, and there are some other provisos to include, such as: no accepting free food that you might come across during your day (unless said food is found in a soup kitchen or drop-in meal centre); no using the stuff already stocked in your pantry, with the exception of the five basic staples of flour, salt, oil, coffee and tea; and no grabbing a quick coffee or snack while passing by the convenience store or local café. Sound ludicrous?
Well, this is pretty much the exact situation 10 prominent Torontonians found themselves facing this past week. As part of the second phase of the Stop Community Food Centre’s Do the Math campaign — a project that aims to shine a spotlight on what the anti-poverty agency calls “the failure of Ontario’s current social-assistance rates to support healthy, dignified lives” — folks ranging from Toronto Medical Officer of Health Dr. David McKeown to Damian Abraham of Polaris Prize-winning punk-rockers Fucked Up entered into a project that you might call Survivor: Ontario Welfare Edition.
Each picked up a food-bank basket (which they gave money to the Stop to cover the cost of), containing what was supposed to be enough food to provide sustenance for four days or so, and attempted to live off its contents. The goal for the participants was to try and stretch the basket to last a week and, through relating their experiences in essays, help make Ontarians aware of just how inadequate the current social-assistance rate — $27 per week per person — really is.
Of the five participants I caught up with, only one (Dr. McKeown) had managed to make it past the four-day mark (which he did with the help of visits to drop-in food centres). And as is completely expected, all expressed that, while it may be technically possible to scrape by under these circumstances for a while, it is certainly not something any of them would want to face on a long term basis.
“What I’ve learned is that it’s very hard living on social assistance; it’s virtually impossible,” says Ward 21 Toronto city councillor Joe Mihevc, whose two daughters and partner participated in the project with him. “You become obsessed with food within a day and a half. You get tired more quickly, and your engine just isn’t firing on all cylinders.
“We all ate a lot less. We went to drop-in centres to get a free meal, and we ate a lot of flat bread," he continues. "You know papier-mâché? Well, you can also bake that flour-and-water mixture to make a flat bread. We did this for a week, but I wouldn’t want to do this month in month out. You can make it, but boy you wouldn’t want to."
For Damian Abraham, the challenge was eye-opening on a number of levels. Not only did he gain better insight into just how unhealthy the food those relying on food banks have to live on, but also on how closely connected food is to your mental health.
“I knew going in that it was not going to be a fun or pleasant experience,” Abraham says. “But this gave me a greater sense of just how challenging [living on social assistance] is.
“It became a real eye-opener in how restrictive it is. You don’t have a lot of choice, and you eat a lot of processed food. Of all my friends, I have the least healthy diet, yet even I manage to not eat processed food at least one day of the week,” Abraham says. “And it does affect your mood. In a real way you feel kind of defeated — it’s a very real thing: the connection between food and mental health. It’s hard to feel happy when you’re miserable about you most basic sustenance."
The project, as participant Dr. McKeown tells me, is in no way meant to be a slag against food banks and the work they are doing. Knowing exactly what it costs to provide oneself with a healthy, balanced diet, Dr. McKeown is quick to point out that food banks are, in fact, an outright necessity under our current social-assistance paradigm. What the project really is attempting to do is point out that this shouldn’t be the case.
“When it comes to food, we have a road map to measure the cost of a basic diet, and so that information should be used to set social assistance rates,” McKeown says. “We know the cost and the gap between that and what social assistance provides, so there’s an obvious policy option to use that information to provide an appropriate level of support.
“Once you decide you’re going to provide assistance, that level of support should be set at a level where people can live a healthy and dignified life."
Fellow participant Michael MacMillan, former executive chairman of Alliance Atlantis, echoes that sentiment. “This begs the question, why do we have social assistance?” says McMillan, who found himself almost completely out of food by the fourth day. “Is it to kick them when they are down, or help them up?
“We acknowledge that [the campaign] is a publicity stunt; we can get off this regime after a week,” MacMillan adds. “The reason for it is to draw attention to the ludicrous nature of the public policy. What is the rationale for the dollar level being what it is? It’s clearly not based on health, or dignity, or getting these folks up and into a better situation."
Tonight MacMillan, along with the other participants and the Stop, hope they can get the ball rolling faster toward changing that. With the week-long project coming to a close, they’ll be holding a Town Hall meeting at the Wychwood Barns starting at 7pm.
The evening will include a discussion with the Do the Math participants about their experiences and how to continue to put pressure on the provincial government to address gross inadequacies of social-assistance rates. On top of moving the conversation on this issue forward, they’ll also be looking for more support in their campaign to have the Ontario government immediately introduce a $100-per-month Healthy Food Supplement for all adults on social assistance, and to establish a clear and transparent process to set rates based on what it actually costs to live a frugal but healthy and dignified life in this province.