The Vancouver Province may have a "new look", but its editorials in support of the Campbell government are as old as ever. Under the heading "Groups that count on public donations must first learn how to count", its November 17th editorial criticized the Canadian Association of Food Banks (CAFB) for an error in its report, HungerCount 2004, which claimed that use of food banks in BC increased by 16% between 2003 and 2004, an increase of 42% for children. The Province claimed that the increase was more like 2% and then went on to say "… a retraction that explains the real numbers and exempts the B.C. government from any culpability would count in their favour". Don't hold your breath waiting for a similar editorial on the misleading government advertising campaign, including ads run in the Province.

The Province was correct in saying the CAFB made an error with its numbers, but they should have kept the error in focus. First, they ran a "major" story on discovering the error, the next day they ran an editorial calling for the CAFB to apologize to the Campbell government. That is way over the top. If CAFB had done a proper analysis of its data, the results would have been equally damning.

Talk about shooting the messenger! Is the paper upset because it reported the higher numbers without checking the story? Anyone checking CAFB's previous reports would see that for BC they show growth of about 2.6% per year in the total number of people using food banks; that's more than twice the annual rate of population growth.

CAFB's criticism of government is confined to stating two facts: 1) "In January 2002, the government announced cuts to welfare benefits and further tightening of eligibility", and 2) "In the winter of 2003/04, the government asked people who were on disability allowance to reapply for their pensions." Unless the Province wants to rewrite history, Campbell is the one who should apologize for his attack on the poor. Food bank use increasing by more than twice the rate of population growth is a serious problem.

CAFB is a national association of about 235 food banks. They say their members serve about 90% of the people who use food banks. Their purpose, according to their website, "is feeding hungry Canadians. In the longer term, we are working together toward a hunger-free Canada." Since 1997 they have surveyed their member agencies in March with questions on food bank usage. All of their reports are available for download from the research section of their website.

CAFB does advocacy work for hungry Canadians; it is not a research or statistics agency. It's unfortunate that no government agency tracks the usage of food banks. Researchers taking the time to read through the eight reports published since 1997 will note that, like many experimental series from Statistics Canada, the methodology used means that the figures have to be taken as ballpark concepts, a rough picture rather than something that is reliable to the third decimal point. In 1999 CAFB didn't publish detailed provincial figures; for the other years they noted that not all food banks and their agencies collect data by age. Their BC figures for total food bank usage in 2003 are suspiciously low, 72,573 compared to 80,844 in 2002, and 75,987 in 2001. The recent 2004 report showed 84,317 people using food banks in BC. The 11% increase from 2000 to 2004 means an average annual increase of 2.6%. Maybe the real number is 2% or maybe it's 3%, one way or the other, it is not good.

My response to the editorial in the Province was to take out my checkbook and send a donation to the Greater Vancouver Food Bank Society. An editorial in the Vancouver Province calling for others to do the same would be a small way for them to apologize for their lack of support for a very good cause.

A retraction that explains the real numbers and condemns the BC government would count in their favour.