More Canada for Everyone, Now!

This morning I toured the Open Hands Food Bank with Green Party leader Jim Harris.

Though, we almost didn't.

What they do at this food bank is amazing. It is a big, cold warehouse, with a large hole in the front room ceiling from water damage. They have one paid staffer, Linda, a tiny, energetic, take-no-guff woman ("I'm the Mother Superior," she said, "and Betty is Mother Hubbard. I wish I could work as hard as she does."). She used to wear suits, but it's cold, and the volunteers dressed for warmth and comfort, so so does she. They all work way more hours than they're supposed to, they can't afford to get the roof fixed, and they're dealing with people who are hungry, broke, desperate, and often not in the best state of mind. That Linda and Betty still care - and it's obvious they do - is miraculous by itself.

I got there early, since my mother knows where everything is in Moncton. Tracy from CTV was already there with her cameraman.

Linda told us about Operation Christmas Child, a program that gives Christmas gifts to children overseas. A lot of the donated gifts can't be shipped, though, because they're perishable or breakable. These are distributed to food banks here instead - shampoo, candy, little toys - and given out with the food.

Then Jim arrived, unfortunately late, since they'd gotten lost. He was wearing a dark blue suit and a green-striped tie. He tried to get straight into the bank tour, starting with a sound-bite about poverty - how the balanced budget was balanced because the Liberals had taken 45 billion dollars of Employment Insurance premiums - and remember, this is a fund people pay their own money into so they can get it when they need it - and cut eligibility and benefits.

I think this felt to Linda like some guy in a suit had barged into her space and was trying to make political coin out of human suffering - it must have been something on the level of that badness because she completely flipped out, on camera. Refused to take us on the tour; lectured Jim for a good stretch of time about inadequate government attention to poverty because it was full of people who'd never been poor. Her speech was so damn amazing I wish I'd given it myself. I'd love to see people like her running the leaders' debates - people who work unnecessarily hard with pitiful resources - with leaky roofs! - because our government is - whether it consciously realizes it or not - engaged in social Darwinism.

After she'd vented a while she did seem to realize Jim was actually a decent guy, and later even teased him about the suit, ruffling his lapels and saying, "I know you have to dress like that." She took us around the food bank and told us about how when she gets eggs - she buys eggs, hot dogs and bologna with the $2 food bank coupons we donate with at the grocery store - she cuts the cartons in thirds and gives out four eggs at a time. "It looks like we have a lot of food," she said, pointing at a dozen large packing boxes, "but those are all just cookies. We take what we can get."

Linda apologized for "shooting my mouth off," and Jim said, "we like people who shoot their mouths off in the Green Party." I said, "I hope that's true!" and pointed to myself, grinning.

I chatted a bit with Betty, and told her, I did know about being poor, that I was disabled myself and scraping by on a pitiful disability stipend... Then we all went back out front, and did a nice picture with Linda, me, Mom and Jim.

Then Jim, David, Mom and I went over to the CTV station. Jim took out a beautiful little Green logo lapel pin, and said, "this is like the Green Party's Order of Canada. David Suzuki has one, and he wears it." He pinned it to my lapel, thanked me for being one of the 308 men and women standing as candidates this election, and said I was his heroine. And I, it's true, I blushed. Aw shucks, Fearless Leader. You'll make a believer of me yet.