Community services minister to meet with Feed Nova Scotia as demand for help increases

Community Services Minister Brendan Maguire is scheduled to meet later this month with officials from Feed Nova Scotia as the organizationand food banks around the provinceface continued and increasing demand for their services.

Maguire told reporters in Halifax after a cabinet meeting Thursday that officials in his department were also meeting to discuss short-term funding to help get the agencies through the approaching holiday season.

The upcoming meeting is to discuss "the needs and the long-term viability" of Feed Nova Scotia, Maguiresaid. He said his department would work to help as quickly as possible.

"We're going to sit down with them and do what we can to ensure that they're able to provide the best possible services for our vulnerable Nova Scotians."

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Officials with the food bank in New Glasgow reported earlier this week that they're now providing services to about a third of all of Pictou County. That level of demand has caused them to change policies about how often someone can receive afood bank order and what the food bank isable to afford to shop for.

Meanwhile, Feed Nova Scotia is changing its approach to the holiday season in an effort to reach a broader group of people, as the makeup of their clientele changes.

Last year, the provincial government gave an additional $3 million to food banks and other support networks. Maguire said he doesn't want to see anyone needing a food bank,but support will be there as long as they do.

He pointed to recent policy announcements, such as the indexing of income assistance rates to the rate of inflation and the introduction of a school lunch program, as measures that could help people as they struggle with the climbing cost of living.

"I always say one person using a food bank is one person too many. We do want to get to a point where people don't have to use them. That's obviously a larger discussion."

Opposition leaders said the Progressive Conservative government is not doing enough to help the people struggling the most.

"How about instead of giving $1 million to Sobeys where people can't afford groceries that are on the shelves there they give [that money] to the organizations that are actually helping put food on the table for people, or giving money to people to help them feed themselves," Liberal Leader Zach Churchill told reporters in Halifax.

His comment was a reference to the government's decision to give an untendered$900,000 contract to Sobeys earlier this year to cover the cost of Scene rewards points at the grocery giant's stores as part of the province's Nova Scotia Loyal program.

Churchill said the government's priorities are out of place.

NDP Leader Claudia Chender said food banks are a policy failure and increased demand for their services is "a symptom of an enormous failure of government to create the conditions for a good life for all of the residents of Nova Scotia."

Chender said the Tories have not done enough to address areas such as rising housing costs. She said the government should be doing more to help food banks in the short term, as well as farmers in an effort to improve local food production and food security.

"There's a lot the government could be doing and they're doing precious little."

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