Shelly Panczyk is the chairwoman of the Queens County Food Bank in Liverpool. (Rick Conrad)

Queens County has one of the highest rates of child poverty in Canada.

A new report on child and family poverty in Canada ranks Nova Scotia as the worst in Atlantic Canada and one of the worst in the whole country in reducing child poverty. And Queens is a top problem spot in the province. 

The 2024 Report Card on Child and Family Poverty in Nova Scotia looked at household incomes from 2022, based on tax filings.

Lesley Frank, the co-author of the report from the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives, is also the Canada research chair for food health and social justice at Acadia University.

She told QCCR that the province doesn’t have a great track record on child poverty.

“Nova Scotia has had a lacklustre performance in child poverty reduction,” Frank said. “We’ve typically over the last several years had the highest child poverty rate in Atlantic Canada, the fifth highest in Canada including the territories, third highest provincial rate.”

The report found that more than one in five children live in poverty in Nova Scotia, or 23.8 per cent. That amounts to 41,500 kids, an increase of 16 per cent over the year before.

Frank and her co-authors say that’s the biggest increase in a single year since 1989, when the federal government promised to eradicate child poverty by the year 2000.

In Queens County, the numbers are even worse, where 31.5 per cent of children live in poverty, the fourth highest rate in Nova Scotia. That’s a 10 per cent increase over the numbers from 2021, representing 510 children in Queens County.

The rate is higher still in Liverpool at 32.8 per cent.

“Typically if you look at Canada as a whole, generally there tends to be higher poverty rates in urban areas as opposed to rural,” she said. “That doesn’t really hold for Nova Scotia. There are a lot of high rates in rural Nova Scotia. … There’s a rise in rates in western Nova Scotia in general.”

The numbers are no surprise to Shelly Panczyk, the chairperson of the Queens County Food Bank.

She said they see about 240 families a month, a 30 per cent increase over previous years. Combined with the numbers who use the Community Food Resource Network in Caledonia, Panczyk estimates more than 300 Queens County families rely on food banks every month.

She said she and other food bank volunteers served 85 families on Tuesday alone, the last pickup day before Christmas.

“That’s a lot of families in a small community. I don’t see it getting any better for the next little while. It’s going to get worse before it gets better.

“About 20 per cent of our clients are two-income families.”

Panczyk points out that there are few opportunities for high-paying jobs in Queens. And low wages directly lead to family poverty, including food and housing insecurity.

Frank says governments know how to fix the problem.

She points to the federal and provincial programs offered during the pandemic. Those had a marked impact on lifting families and children out of poverty.

“We have demonstrated that we can swiftly reduce child poverty with adequate income supports. We just didn’t stick with it,” Frank said.

“We really shouldn’t be that surprised that the child poverty rates increased in 2022 in such a dramatic way because all those benefits that were there two years ago that lowered it were gone. If you do nothing, you can expect that to be the outcome. That’s why it keeps happening. We don’t do the things that we know will work.”

Frank and her co-authors call on the provincial government to create a poverty elimination plan to reduce poverty rates by 50 per cent by 2027.

That would include things like making the Nova Scotia child benefit available to more families and have it indexed to inflation.

The plan would also address social assistance rates, create a living wage standard and establish a child and youth advocacy office.

“Children have a right to food, and those that are living on government transfers only as their only source of income it’s shockingly immoral on how much those families are receiving. A one-parent family with one child has to live on $21,000 a year in Nova Scotia for all its needs. It’s impossible.

“Many of these children are living in families with full-time working parents so that has to do with establishing conditions for decent work and quality job creation, bringing incomes to living wages so people can afford basic necessities of life and have quality of life.”

The food bank’s Panczyk said all governments – municipal, provincial and federal – have a responsibility to lower child poverty.

“They have to make it that it’s affordable for people to live. It’s like anything: Do I eat? Do I pay rent? Do I pay some on my light bill?

“Everybody has to step up in the government and try to help in some way.”

Email: rickconradqccr@gmail.com

Listen to the audio version of this story below

Shelly Panczyk is the chairwoman of the Queens County Food Bank in Liverpool. (Rick Conrad)

More people are using the Queens County Food Bank at the same time as donations are dropping.

Shelly Panczyk, chairwoman of the food bank on Main Street in Liverpool, says the charity saw 4,993 people last year. Of those, 1,494 were children. 

That’s up markedly from when she started at the charity four years ago. She said back then, they’d see 40 families a week. Now, it’s closer to 55 families a week.

“I just want people to realize that this is a very, very busy place. I call this the third grocery store in Queens County.”

“This situation (our clients are) in, they can’t help it. We’ve seen people in here, husband and wife, each of them working. This is going to get worse before it ever gets better.”

Clients can go to the food bank every 21 days to stock up on food and household items. The food bank also operates a thrift store on Main Street, about a block away.

Last year, revenue at the food bank alone was down by $107,000. But expenses climbed by $17,000. The thrift store, though, generated $82,000 in net income for the food bank. 

Panczyk and the board reported those figures at the charity’s recent annual general meeting. She clarified that part of the reason for the revenue drop in 2023 was that they didn’t receive any large grants like they did the year before.

Panczyk said the food bank does have savings in the bank. But she said in an interview that without the income from the thrift store, they would be in trouble.

“Without that store, this food bank would not be running,” she said.

Both the food bank and the thrift store are run entirely by volunteers. They have as many as 50 through the year. There are no paid staff.

“It costs $140,000 a year to run this food bank, just this building. And we don’t get that in donations. That store … is our little gold mine.”

Panczyk said that older people and churches used to be among their biggest donors. 

“The donors were the people that are in their 80s and 90s and now have died. Churches were always a good donation, because churches were the ones that started most food banks. Churches are closing, their parishioners are down.”

A study released in February by food rescue organization Second Harvest showed that demand for food charity in Canada is expected to rise by 18 per cent this year. The study found that on average, each charity needs an extra $76,000 to meet that increased demand.

Panczyk says monetary and food donations have dropped, though she says that the local Sobeys and Superstore are still major food donors. And they receive regular shipments from Feed Nova Scotia.

But she said she still has to buy a lot of food to serve their clients. 

“My grocery bill here for a month is anywhere from $4-6,000.”

She said four years ago, the food bank would buy 200 pounds of hamburger to distribute over three months.

“I’m buying 500 pounds. They used to pay $2.99 (a pound) and I have to wait until it goes on sale and I pay almost $5 a pound. And I give out 200 pounds of that a month now.”

The food bank is also required to stock 14 staple food items such as peanut butter, crackers, pasta sauce and spaghetti. They have to buy many of those items. 

And Panczyk says she has to make sure she can cater to more diverse food needs, as more families of various backgrounds move to Queens County.

She has applied for grants to begin to stock more food variety, such as halal meats or basmati rice.

“So this is a whole new scenario for food banks, especially in these smaller communities that we never had before.”

Panczyk said she’s grateful for the donors they do have and for the community support of the thrift store. 

But she said they need more cash donations so that they can continue to serve a growing and more diverse clientele.

“I don’t think I  want to be starting out again not what these people are going through. I think this is almost as bad as the Depression, trying to fight your way through.”

Email: rickconradqccr@gmail.com

Listen to the audio version of this story below