Canada: Groups divided over food donations to Occupy Montreal activists

The Quebec chapter of Humanity First was contacted by Occupy Montreal organizers for ready-to-eat foods and will start providing the food this weekend.

Ahmadiyya Times | News Watch | US Desk
Source/Credit:The Gazette | Montreal
By Ashliegh Gehl | October 25, 2011

MONTREAL - Diverting goods that could help local food banks to the Occupy Montreal kitchen has some aid agencies at odds with one another.

“I think a lot of those activists are not needy people,” Cyril Morgan of the Welcome Hall Mission said of the campers in Victoria Square. “If you are needy, you don’t have food on your table to eat.”

Unable to assess the level of their need, Morgan said he’s hesitant about giving food – especially when excess food at the mission can be distributed to homeless shelters and food banks.

The Welcome Hall Mission operates one of Montreal’s largest food banks, servicing 1,200 families every week. The mission also delivers 70 tonnes of food per month.


“Delivering food, I guess, would be a nice thing to do, but so would the city of Montreal supplying electricity so they could plug themselves in and listen to music, have heaters in their tents, and have a great time,” said Morgan, executive director at the mission.

“But I don’t think this is what it’s all about.”

The Quebec chapter of Humanity First has a different view.

“I saw that the Occupy Montreal needed food,” branch co-ordinator Naeem Akmal Shaheen said after visiting the site last week. “It’s not because we support their idea. It’s because we know that there are humans there and because they need food.”

Shaheen said he was contacted by Occupy Montreal organizers for ready-to-eat foods and will start providing the food this weekend.

Humanity First is an international organization that aims to alleviate hunger, poverty and disease where people struggle with basic needs.

The group has carried out relief efforts in drought-stricken Africa as well as in Haiti and Japan. It is non-political, with a food bank servicing human needs – not political agendas.

“I think that if they ask for food, then our duty is to provide them with food,” Shaheen said.

Occupy Montreal supporter Paul Bode, 31, has witnessed the growth of the communal kitchen since its inception on Oct. 15.

“It started with a tarp with two baguettes sitting on it and it basically turned into this,” he said, referring to the fully functional kitchen operated by five volunteers serving three meals a day plus snacks to more than 500 people.

“We’ve had an issue with spoilage from the rain and just from having too much stuff here. We’re getting that sorted out, getting that organized.”

Bode said the majority of those using the kitchen at Victoria Square do not rely on food banks.

“There’s certainly a lot that do, but you know there’s plenty of working people – students, older people.”

Matthew Pearce, general director of the Old Brewery Mission, said if Occupy Montreal is facing a spoilage issue, participants should redistribute the unneeded food.

The Old Brewery Mission serves about 300,000 meals a year, relying mostly on donations from food suppliers.

As for whether food banks should be supplying the activists at all, Pearce said it depends on the circumstances.

“If they’re using food that would otherwise go to the needy, they ought not to do so.

“If, on the other hand, the remaining supply of a small enough quantity that they can’t really make use of it and think that rather than discarding it, for example, they would offer it to Occupy Montreal, I would say why not – because it’s not directly taking from the needy.”

Occupy Montreal activists have begun live-streaming from the site, at livestream.com/occupymontreal



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