The Bay of Quinte Greens hosted an evening of discussion about social services for the hungry and homeless at St. Andrews last week. Speakers from Belleville and PEC offered analyses of local and systemic problems.

All levels of government allocate billions of dollars every year, and yet the results are consistently worse. The need is acute, both in terms of numbers and severity: homelessness is proportionally greater now than it was during the Depression.

Dominique Jones of the County Foundation. (Submitted photo)

Bill Sandison, a former Belleville councillor, looked at the governmental structures Canada has in place at federal, provincial and local levels. “Our system is working as intended,” he noted, “not to eliminate the cause, but to treat and manage the effects of poverty.”

The system is set up to deal with poverty only after it has taken root. It fails to fund prevention, or to address first causes before it is too late. The problem is related to the divisions be- tween multiple levels of government. On those rare occasions when they act in unison, as they did during the Covid pandemic, they can produce significant results.

He urged that change is necessary to produce different, better, results.

A series of speakers from local institutions, Natalie O’Toole for the Three Oaks Foundation women’s shelter, Ashley Vader for the Grace Inn Shelter, Dominique Jones for the County Foundation (whose Vital Signs report is a significant tool for many organizations) and JJ Cormier for the Belleville John Howard Society, offered impassioned descriptions of the work they do, trying to make the system function for those it is intended to serve.

The common theme was the value of pro-active prevention. Another was coordination. Although different individuals and grass roots organizations are doing a lot of the heavy lifting, collaborative action is vital: “we are greater together,” as the County Foundation’s Ms. Jones put it.

Each of the organizations represented urged citizens to volunteer, to donate and to write to government representatives at all levels, to find active solutions to the current steep increases in poverty.