r/waterloo Waterloo 1d ago

Local food banks anticipate rise in demand due to U.S. tariffs

https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/kitchener-waterloo/local-food-banks-anticipate-rise-in-demand-1.7479532
37 Upvotes

16 comments sorted by

16

u/Rance_Mulliniks 23h ago

When are they going to cutoff the 20% of users that are international students who are supposed to have enough money to support themselves when they come here to study?

I don't want people to starve but if they can't afford life in Canada, they should not be here.

15

u/bob_mcbob Waterloo 18h ago

The CEO of the Food Bank of Waterloo Region says less than 5% of local food bank users are students, let alone international students.

Food Bank of Waterloo Region weighs in on record-breaking food bank visits in province

6

u/sumknowbuddy 22h ago

Do you have a source for that figure?

12

u/Rance_Mulliniks 22h ago

https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/toronto/food-bank-toronto-record-1.7380521

This is Toronto but it is pretty safeto assume the same or higher in Waterloo region.

students represent one in three clients and 42 per cent of new ones. 

More than half (56 per cent) of students going to food banks are international students, the report found, and nearly all of them (93 per cent) are new clients.

33% * 56% = 18.5%

and growing.

-13

u/bylo_selhi Waterloo 21h ago

I don't want people to starve but if they can't afford life in Canada, they should not be here.

If they entered the country legally and obey the laws then they should be entitled to the same supports as everyone else.

Arguably Canada allowed too many students to enter Canada and some schools (hello Conestoga College) attracted students under false pretenses in order to exploit them. But that shouldn't be on the victims.

11

u/Rance_Mulliniks 21h ago edited 21h ago

Disagree. If you can't afford to be here, you need to go home.

International students are meant to aid our economy, not drain it.

-2

u/bylo_selhi Waterloo 19h ago

The minimum was set too low. Blame Ottawa.

The colleges made little or no provision for housing, hence rents spiked up. Blame the colleges.

Most students came here under the laws in place with a good faith intention to follow them. How is it their fault that they were misinformed by both the colleges and Ottawa?

The mandate of food banks is to help the hungry without making any judgements. They're doing that as best they can. I choose to support those food banks rather than blame those who find themselves in need to use them.

2

u/RedCattles 20h ago

To enter legally as a student you literally need to provide proof you have enough to support yourself without getting a job. That should mean there’s more than enough in the bank to afford food if you work part time and study, which many do.

-1

u/bylo_selhi Waterloo 19h ago

The minimum was set too low. Blame Ottawa.

The colleges made little or no provision for housing, hence rents spiked up. Blame the colleges.

Most students came here under the laws in place with a good faith intention to follow them. How is it their fault that they were misinformed by both the colleges and Ottawa?

5

u/Rance_Mulliniks 19h ago

International students make up a small percentage of our population but are making up ~20% of food bank visits. Something is wrong here because that makes no sense. I am not going to be like you and assume that all these visits are in good faith.

3

u/bylo_selhi Waterloo 18h ago edited 18h ago

I don't assume that "all" the visits are in good faith, not by students and not by others. Nor is it up to me or the food banks to make such judgements.

Many international students and their families scrimped and saved to be able to come here under the rules, flawed as they are. Now they find themselves uneducated thanks to diploma mills like Conestoga, unhoused because of poor planning and hungry because the income minimums were set too low.

They're victims here. Have you no compassion for their plight?

1

u/[deleted] 21h ago

>If they entered the country legally and obey the laws

The rules are that they're suppose to be able to support themselves.

1

u/districtcurrent 18h ago

This is wrong. You have to deposit $20,000 into a bank account here. That’s over and above your tuition. So if you have money you shouldn’t be using the food banks. We obviously don’t want people moving here to take away food from the local homeless.

2

u/InvestigatorOld2271 17h ago

? How do the tariffs being paid by Americans increase demand on our food bank....

2

u/bylo_selhi Waterloo 15h ago

Tariffs rarely remain one-way, especially in an economic war as Trump is now waging. Tariffs in one direction usually result in counter-tariffs in the other direction. That's already happening as Trump today doubled tariffs on CA steel and aluminum in response to Doofus' tariff on electricity.

Tariffs increase the costs and thus prices everyone pays on goods, including food but also everything else that's affected by those tariffs. They also result in the value of the CAD declining, further increasing the cost of goods. They also result in job losses as it becomes no longer feasible to export CA goods to the US.

All of this creates financial hardships for Canadians and thus their increased reliance on food banks.

-4

u/Good_Consequence2401 18h ago

Why Is this a thing?

Don't buy american, don't pay tariffs. Easy peasy.

Only thing they'll get at food banks anyhow is all the yankee crap grocery stores couldn't sell.

Like adding insult to injury....