1970s Economic Crisis

The uncertainty and hardship of the 1970s financial insecurity continued to be experienced in the mid-1990s. A temporary sense of relief was felt as the Canadian economy improved markedly (Baily & Elliott, 2009, p.5). The relief was an aftereffect of the federal and provincial government objective to create economic growth and increase "workforce flexibility". The workforce flexibility gave employers more flexibility in hiring and firing, in addition to making it more difficult to qualify for Employment Insurance, and social assistance benefits (Pegg & Stapleton, 2013, p. 13). A decision based on the theory that this will provide an incentive for people to work rather than collect public benefits. However, this actually made it harder to find jobs for people and did not decrease the number of users who have a reliance on food banks.

These factors triggered the recession to spread globally. Eventually, this caused a worldwide economic slowdown and marking the beginning of the 2008 financial crisis (Centre for Social Justice, 2009, p. 15). The crisis threatened to prolong unemployment as institutions began to shut down. Ultimately, resulted in a failure of key businesses, a downturn in consumer wealth, economic activity, and government funding (Baily & Elliott, 2009, p. 6). These factors affected markets, as well as allocated stress on to organizations within the social economy, like food banks, which were left with the responsibilities of the government 's social assistance programs due to the lack of funding