Tag Archives: Angelica Raaen

Food, Food Security

The Face of Poverty on Cortes Island

In 2015, the year Justin Trudeau was elected Prime Minister of Canada, more than 5 million Canadians were living in poverty. This number came down every year until 2020, when Canada reached its goal of cutting the number of people living below the poverty line by 50%. However, a new report from the Auditor General of Canada states this was ‘mainly due to the emergency benefits the government temporarily provided because of the COVID-19 pandemic.’ Thanks to inflation and the phasing out of these benefits, close to 4 million Canadians were once again living in poverty by 2023. According to the 2025 Hunger Count, put out by Food Banks Canada, the situation has deteriorated since then. In today’s story, Angelica Raaen from the Cortes Food Bank described what poverty looks like on a remote island.  

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Food

Cortes Food Bank Needs $35,000 For A More Perminent Home

The Cortes Food Bank is trying to raise the $35,000 needed to relocate their base of operations to two sea-cans in the Village Commons at Manson’s Landing.

Operations Manager, Angelica Raaen, explained, “We have raised $14,000 so far, and we have a generous donor who’s offered to match donations up to $10,000. So we’re hoping that by the end of this month we can get $10,000 in community donations to match the $10,000 this donor has offered.”

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Food

Cortes Island Food Bank Drive To Meet Rising Local Need

The Cortes Island Food Bank recently launched a food drive to meet unprecedented need. Cortes Currents met with two of the charity’s key personal in the garage where most of the food is stored. Executive Director Filipe Figueira explained :

 “The situation is getting worse on Cortes. It is the same as across the country.  Two years ago, we had 100 client visits  a year. This year we had 600, that’s about 50 clients a month. People are really suffering economically. The good news is that we’re in a better situation to help those people. We’ve really built up the capacity of the food bank to deal with this emergency. We’ve got some really good staff and good food, but it’s not a good situation.” 

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