The Battlefords District Food and Resource Centre is responding to comments made by Councillor Kent Lindgren at Monday’s North Battleford city council meeting.
Lindgren has been opposing changes to the panhandling bylaw that would increase the distance in front of places where people weren’t allowed to panhandle.
At council Monday, Lindgren said “I’ve also heard from the food bank that’s downtown as they recently had somebody say ‘they want them to be using the back alley. We don’t want those people coming in the front door of downtown.’ There’s people in our community who have every right to be in our community and to me this goes against, I guess, really good governance of people in our community. And so for that I will be voting against it again in further readings.”
In a statement, executive director of the Battlefords District Food and Resource Centre Erin Katerynych responds that the food bank’s desire is for people to be using the front door of the location.
“I would like to clarify that the food bank does not want people to use the back alley nor will this ever become a practice. People who need to come to us for food are to use our front door. Our purpose is to give food hampers to people who have food security issues. Our goal is to help people to keep them from becoming homeless. Very few clients are homeless, as they have The Lighthouse to assist them. Thank you.”
