Vince Barletta: Manitoba Food Banks Weren't Supposed to Be Permanent

When Harvest Manitoba opened in 1985, it was meant to be temporary. A stopgap for a rough economic patch. Today they serve 1,200 families a day, and 30% of them have jobs.

Stuart Murray sits down with Vince Barletta, President and CEO of Harvest Manitoba, to talk about what that shift means, and what it would actually take to build a Manitoba where the food bank isn't a permanent fixture.

In this episode, Vince shares:

• Why 30% of people coming to food banks in Manitoba today are employed, and what that shift means for how we understand food insecurity

• Harvest Manitoba's journey toward indigenous reconciliation, including serving nine remote fly-in First Nations communities and a new indigenous-led urban food bank coming soon in partnership with the Ma Mawi Wi Chi Itata Centre

• The scale of Canada's food waste problem ($50 billion annually) and the Manitoba Food Transformation Centre Harvest is working to build

As Vince puts it: "It takes a province to feed a province."

Get Involved:

• Visit harvestmanitoba.ca to volunteer, donate, or learn more about partnering with Harvest Manitoba.

• Read Harvest Voices, Harvest Manitoba's annual community survey on food insecurity.

Episode Transcript:

Stuart Murray 00:00

This podcast was recorded on the ancestral lands on Treaty One territory, the traditional territory of the Anishinaabe, Cree, Oji-Cree, Dakota, and the Dene peoples, and on the homeland of the Metis Nation.

Amanda Logan (Voiceover) 00:19

This is Humans on Rights, a podcast advocating for the education of human rights. Here's your host, Stuart Murray.

Stuart Murray 00:30

We're talking about one of the most fundamental human rights, the right to food. My guest, Vince Barletta, the President and CEO of From Harvest Manitoba, the province-wide network that works with hundreds of food banks and community agencies to support Manitobans facing food insecurity every day. Harvest Manitoba sees the realities of poverty, affordability challenges, and the growing demand for emergency food assistance. We'll discuss what those realities tell us about our communities, our responsibilities to one another, and what it would take to build a Manitoba where everyone, everyone has access to food they need to live with dignity. One person that can make that happen and is working to make that happen is my guest today, Vince Barletta. Welcome to Humans on Rights.

Vince Barletta 01:19

Great to be with you, Stuart.

Stuart Murray 01:20

So, Vince, just for those listeners and those watching us on video that don't know you, just take a moment, if you don't mind, to introduce yourself and just a little bit about what you do.

Vince Barletta 01:32

Yeah, so as you mentioned right off the top, Stuart Harvest Manitoba is the provincial food bank, we're the food distribution agency that supports at this point, if you can believe it, over 100,000 Manitobans every month through a whole variety of programs, and I know we'll, we'll talk about that here in the city of Winnipeg, but in communities all across our province in a variety of different ways. I've been in the CEO role now for, it'll be five years coming up later this summer, Stuart. Congratulations, time flies when you're as busy as we've been, and so, but you know,

Stuart Murray 02:04

congratulations on that.

Vince Barletta 02:05

Well, thank you. And it's a, it's a rewarding place to work. We got a great team of people that are dedicated, some people that have been working here, who you know for a long, long time, who've been at this project of food banking and this project of Harvest Manitoba, as it was for many years, would it be years

Stuart Murray 02:23

if somebody were to say, for example, just kind of just not it down for a sec, Vince, like, what would a day in the CEO of Harvest Manitoba look like? What's your day look like?

Vince Barletta 02:33

Yeah, well, for me personally, I mean, a big part of what what I do is deal with our incredible stakeholders that we have across the province and across the country and beyond. I mean, an organization like Harvest Manitoba really runs on three things. We run on food, and that food comes from partnerships that we have all across the country with retailers, wholesalers, direct from agriculture, manufacturers, other organizations. Maybe we'll get into that. Obviously, fundraising a key piece of what we do, this is something where you know we get some government support, Stuart, for certain programs, but the reality is the day-to-day operations of this place are funded by donors, individuals, corporations, foundations that support our work. So, obviously, you know, those donor relationships are a key piece, and then just the incredible energy that volunteers bring to this place, volunteers who help us with our work in the warehouse, volunteers who help us with our advocacy, with our training and education, with our fundraising, so you know, I get to spend my day with just incredible people, our staff and people from the community who support our work. It takes a province to feed a province, as I like to say, and truly no one does that better, in my opinion, than than we do right here in Manitoba. It's that incredible spirit of generosity and community that we have here. So, I'm a pretty lucky guy. I get to spend, you know, my days really mustering that generosity and making sure we make the most effective use of it.

Stuart Murray 04:01

Yeah, and you know, Vince, one of the things that I've always thought interesting about Harvest Manitoba is, you know, you have a tremendous number of volunteers, people that want to give back, involved in the community, but I do believe that at one time, and please correct me, I know it's all always about language, making sure that I'm saying it properly, but a lot of the people that use Harvest Manitoba are volunteers, and vice versa. I mean, you have that kind of that symbiotic relationship, you know, people that are there because of the necessity of food are also prepared to sort of volunteer and work for the organization. Is that a fair assessment?

Vince Barletta 04:35

Well, that's a very fair assessment. 10s of 1000s of people that are supported by Harvest every month, you know, one way or another, and so many of them who are able to give back with their time, again, you know, if you're going to a food bank, you know, money is not how you can give back, there's other people in the community that that's how they can give back, but for folks that are visiting our food banks, you know, their time, their energy, volunteering in our warehouse. Helping us to do various jobs here, helping us to advocate in the community, sharing their stories. We have so many people like that who give back each and every day, and you know, I mean, you've been here many times, and you know one of the, one of the things that's special about Harvest, and quite frankly, a lot of organizations around the country that do the kind of work that we do at a volunteer level is, you might be volunteering in a warehouse with your company, or your faith group, or your sports team, or your family, and you know you may have an executive from a bank volunteering alongside someone that is a client at a food bank, or someone that is accessing another one of our programs, so really the work that we do here brings people from all walks of life together, and that makes it pretty special to have that experience. Yeah,

Stuart Murray 05:50

yeah, and I, you know, from a human rights perspective, and this being a human rights podcast, Vince, the way you just sort of eloquently put that, that you've got a CEO beside somebody who could be a client working side by side, I mean, what it does, it, it just humanizes the issue that we're really struggling with and trying to deal with, and in fact, what under your leadership, what Manitoba Harvest is actually, or Harvest Manitoba, I should say, is actually doing, so you know, as you say, it's, it's, it's a beautiful place to work, and I say that in a way that it's such, such a, the energy that you, you know, sort of feel every time you walk into Harvest Manitoba, there's there's a real sense of community pride, and you know everybody is kind of at one level, and that is they're there to have a sense of dignity, who they are, to make a contribution, or whatever. So, you know, I just think a lot of that is, you know, sort of attributed Vince to you under your leadership, and I kind of wanted to probe a couple of areas of your leadership, because I, you know, I have to always do a little bit of research for these things, I don't just show up, you know, so, but I did think that there were kind of three things, Vince, I'd love you to kind of talk specifically about, but I, so when I look at some of the things that I've changed, and when I can sort of glean from it, is that you've been doing a lot of speaking. Every time I hear you talk in public, you're kind of moving beyond emergency food relief. In other words, you speak about food security rather than just simply food banks. And I think that's a strong message. I wonder if you just want to tell us, from your leadership standpoint, what does that mean, and how are you embracing that in terms of your conversation with the community at large?

Vince Barletta 07:27

Well, but maybe what I'll say, Stuart, is just to take a bit of a bit of a step back and a bit of a walk down memory lane, because last year, 2025 Harvest recognized 40 years of service to community, so you know we started this operation in 1985 Obviously, I wasn't here at that time, but there were some wonderful people, like Lee Newton, who was heavily involved as the founder and really brought the concept of food banking to Winnipeg from, you know, New York City Food Bank, and no, there were a few other food banks that were popping up in the US and Canada at that time, David Northcott, who came in as the, as the first executive director, and and other people that that were around this, I mean, when this project started, Stuart, it was meant to be a temporary response to what was seen as being a temporary challenge of some of the economic hardships of the early 1980s and some of the challenges of significant unemployment and inflation that people were seeing at that time. And you know, when Harvest started, we were the first year of operations of Harvest, we served 600 families a month. Today we serve 1200 families a day.

Stuart Murray 08:42

Wow, so I

Vince Barletta 08:43

mentioned that because

Stuart Murray 08:44

the

Vince Barletta 08:44

scale of what we do has changed significantly, and when the scale of what you do changes significantly, how you do it, you know, also has to change and respond, and I mean to me the bottom line is that food insecurity and people who are struggling, that demographic of people is so much more broadly based. I mean, if you'd gone back a few decades, there would have been sort of a - this is a bit of an oversimplification - but there would have been kind of a typical person that came to a food bank, and that may have been an unemployed individual, somebody that was on social assistance, who needed that extra help to stretch their, to stretch their budget, maybe someone that was in some temporary financial crisis, or or something of that, of that nature. But now you know, here we sit in 2026 and we're seeing people with jobs come to food banks, and you know, about 30% of people that come to a food bank here at Harvest Manitoba have a job, full or part-time employment. That's something that you know a decade or more ago, Stuart, if you had a job, you didn't need to come to a food bank, right? And that was, you know, so that's a big change, and there's a lot to be said about that, senior. Years, who are you know, hitting their retirement years without the savings they need or their fixed income, simply not keeping pace with the rising prices of everything that we've seen in recent years. People with kids, you know, so as the, as the demographics of who comes to a food bank changes, you know, the way that we serve community has changed as well, and, and gone in a whole variety of new directions.

Stuart Murray 10:24

Yeah, and so you know, Vince, when you first arrived, you know, I'm always interested in somebody who has held positions in leadership positions in other organizations, as I had you have done, and you arrive at Harvest Manitoba, you know, what were your sort of expectations, what were you thinking about the role that you might through just who you are, Vince Barletta, CEO, you've got leadership skills. How did you see that you could make an impact in terms of what is happening at Harvest Manitoba?

Vince Barletta 10:55

Well, well, to me, I mean, and we've known each other for a number of years, you know, I've done work in government and in economic development and in fundraising, and so you know, in a place like Manitoba, you spend time with a lot of, you know, generous people from the corporate world and individuals and some wonderful families that that we have in Manitoba, and beyond that, that support our work, and you get to see them in a different light when you're dealing on the charity, on the charity side of things, then then perhaps on the economic development or the or the government side of things, so I mean, when I came to this organization, if you could turn your mind back five years, we were still in the midst of a global pandemic, and you know that certainly set the tone for the challenges that we had as an organization, so you know, for me it was a matter of how do we get volunteers back into the building, because that was a big issue with the public health challenges. How do we get food into the building? How do we raise the funds that we need to support the growing need, and so to me, you know, leveraging the relationships that I've had, and you know, just the compassion of Manitobans and folks beyond, who really, if they can hear the compelling story of what's happening here at Harvest, they respond with incredible generosity. And so, you know, since that time, it's been increasing relationship building with government, and we've started to work now with both federal government and provincial government on delivering some new program areas, including school nutrition, our meals to go program, including working with Nutrition North Canada to get food to remote First Nations communities across northern Manitoba, which is quite frankly one of the pieces I've been most proud of that we've been able to serve, and maybe we'll talk more about just the unique and persistent challenges facing remote First Nations communities in this country, when it comes to food as a, as a human right, but really, you know, mustering relationships, and that, and that's what I love to do, anyway, you know, is to, is to find the passion of people, because people, I mean, as you know, you know, you and your family, Stuart, you know it, people want to help, but they want to know how, and they want to know the impact, and I think that, you know, being able to communicate how people can help in the impact they're going to have. People want to give to those sorts of things, and we certainly benefited from that generosity here at here at Harvest Manitoba.

Stuart Murray 13:18

Well, and I think you kind of, you kind of a bit of a mind reader, Vince, because as you talked about the northern communities, etc. Again, I put sort of three points I wanted to talk about your leadership. The second one I wanted to talk about was specifically that indigenous reconciliation. You know, I think that Harvest Manitoba has expanded its focus on serving northern indigenous communities and has incorporated reconciliation into its organizational mandate, and again, I look at that falling under your leadership, so that's an amazing attribute, because I think reconciliation falls on all of our shoulders. So, talk a little bit about how you've managed that, how you've looked at that, how you've incorporated that into kind of the mandate or the DNA of what makes Manitoba Harvest go

Vince Barletta 14:01

well. As I mentioned, you know, I, when I came here, we were still in the pandemic, and you know, as that started to lift, and the challenges started to shift and change. I mean, like most organizations, we didn't have a plan going into the pandemic, but we sure needed a plan to get out of it, and you know, as we were coming out of it, we developed our new strategic plan, and as with four pillars, but one of those central pillars was around our own journey of truth and reconciliation here as an organization, and we had someone had and have some wonderful people that have surrounded themselves with harvest to help us on that journey, including the late Justice Murray Sinclair, who was a member of our board as we were going through that process prior to his passing in recent years, you know. Currently, Diane Redsky, who was executive director, longtime executive director at the Mama Wichita Center, who's on our board now, really incredible national leaders in the indigenous community are. Around truth and reconciliation, who've helped us with with our journey, and you know, part of that was acknowledging the truth, and the truth for Harvest was that there were a lot of communities, especially in the remote north, that we weren't serving, and we weren't serving them in large measure because we didn't have the resources to do it, I mean, these are fly-in communities, and for your, for your listeners that may not know, I mean, in Northern Manitoba, like many parts of the country, but Northern Manitoba, in particular, we have so many First Nations communities where there's no all-weather road access, you have a very limited winter road season to bring supplies up, so everything's coming by air cargo and incredible rates of unemployment, incredible rates of challenges like juvenile diabetes, that I mean, in some of these communities 10 to 15 times higher than the national average. I mean, you know, some of these statistics, you've been to these communities, and they didn't have access to food banks, they didn't have access to the same services that really just about any community has in southern Manitoba. So, a big part of that journey for us was, how do we get those services to those communities? For us, that meant working with community, talking with chiefs and council, talking with community leaders, visiting those communities, spending time there, learning the realities, the very difficult realities of infrastructure, and how can you bring services there and partnership with the Government of Canada, and I have to say that we've had really good partnership with Northern Affairs Canada. We were the first food bank in Canada, Harvest, to be accredited under the Nutrition North Canada program, so the federal government now provides us with freight subsidies to be able to deliver essential food goods to those northern communities, so we're serving nine remote fly-in First Nations communities on a regular basis, a number more on a semi-regular basis, and then you know supporting some large food bank operations in places like Thompson, so that's been a big journey for us, and in the city as well. You know, working with organizations like the Mama Wichita Center on a new project, which will soon be opening, a Sikka can, which is a partnership with Mama Way to have an indigenous-led food bank right here, and in the heart of the city of Winnipeg, where they are serving their families with harvest in a supporting role, and they'll be as a centerpiece of that project, a grocery store style food bank, which is, which is going to be operated by the Mama Wichita Center, which again provides tremendous service to 1000s of indigenous families all across the city of Winnipeg. So we've been on a journey, we've got a long way to go, and as, and as Justice Marie Sinclair reminds us, you know, it, it took us seven generations to get into the situation that we came to in this country around our treaty relations, and it's going to take us really seven generations for that healing process to fully work itself out, but I, I truly hope that we're on the other side of that hump, and as a community we're all pushing in the same direction to make progress, and we're, we're just trying to do our small, our small part here at Harvest.

Stuart Murray 18:11

Yeah, and I mean, you know, we all have a part to play in reconciliation. So, Vince, thanks for sharing that. Just so, just to back up for a quick second, just so I understand, so the new Manitoba Harvest piece that will be available for Indigenous First Nations, Manitoba Metis Federation, etc. all of the, all of the above that are encapsulated in Indigenous reconciliation, is that going to be a separate standalone facility, or will it be a part of something you're doing it at Manitoba Harvest,

Vince Barletta 18:42

so our northern community work, we deliver out of our main facilities here on on on Winnipeg Avenue, but we have a secondary site, 563567 Notre Dame, for your listeners that may know where that is in here near the Health Sciences Center, the Mama Wechita Center has is under construction now their newest community care site, where they help support moms, families who need help, particularly folks getting settled into the city or facing other challenges, and nutrition is a big one, right? So it's it that's where the new facility, so it's a separate facility from our primary facility, and it's something new, really, the first of its kind, a big city food bank operating under the leadership of an indigenous-led organization for an urban indigenous partnership. So that's going to be opening its doors in the months ahead, and we're pretty excited about it, and it's a big part of our learning and reconciliation journey.

Stuart Murray 19:41

Yeah, I bet. So, you know, Vince, it's there's a third piece I want to talk about your leadership, but just want to kind of sort of dive a little bit deeper into this conversation around this issue that we're talking with indigenous reconciliation. The fact that you have aggressively looked at how to include some of those northern. Immunities, which is so important, and you've got a relationship with the federal government, as you say, to sort of subsidize or give you a better rate to make sure that you can get food out there, which is always so prohibitive, you know. When you start to see the expanding numbers of people that are looking for Harvest Manitoba as a way to get food security, tell us a little bit about the process of how you're getting access to the food that you're able to deliver to some of these people.

Vince Barletta 20:27

Yeah, well, that's been a journey as well. And again, you know, when organizations like Harvest were set up, you know, decades ago, really, they were they were focused on capturing particularly non-perishable foods, the kind of foods that you buy on a grocery shelf at Safeway or Sobeys or Superstore, and taking those surplus goods and redistributing them. Now, as the numbers have grown and grown, we still do that work, but so many of those partnerships now have gone further up the value chain in the agri-food sector, and so the partnerships that we have today again in the Manitoba context with organizations like the Manitoba Dairy Farmers, peak of the market, the potato growers and vegetable growers, Manitoba pork, the egg producers, the chicken producers, with individual farmers in those sectors and manufacturers, processors. Again, you know, we're moving now more than a million pounds of food every month through our facility, so you know that's more than we're going to capture out of retail reclamation. We really need to get further up the food chain, want to get healthier food, more fresh food, more vegetables, more produce, more protein, more dairy, not just the canned goods. The canned goods are important, and you know the shelf stable goods, but again, you know this isn't the food banking of years ago, you know, Campbell soup and craft dinner, you know, we're talking about a lot of other, a lot of other commodities, which, which means partnerships, it also means more infrastructure, because it also means we have to be maintaining cold storage and cold chain, and and making sure that we work with all of our partners and communities, so that they have access to that infrastructure too, so that's really another frontier for us, as our volume has grown and the way we work has grown to be able to invest in our own infrastructure, and we're looking at some significant expansion in our work here, but also new ways of doing things through food transformation to be able to take advantage of really the enormous amount of food loss and waste that happens in this, in this country, and you mentioned, you know, the whole context of the discussion around human rights, food is a human right at the same time as we have one in four Canadians that faces some level of food insecurity. Over 2 million Canadians a month go into a food bank somewhere across this country. At the same time, across this land, we waste about $50 billion billion with a B, $50 billion of food every year. So, there's there's a systems change that needs to happen in this as well, and I think that's really the next, the next big frontier, especially with our partnerships with government and industry.

Stuart Murray 23:08

Yeah, and I, you know, that's again, I did have down here food waste, because as I was reading some of the background information on Harvest Manitoba, you know, that was a big, big number, and you know, if you were to say, the, you know, how many steps would you look at to start to say, here's how we need to mitigate this food waste. I mean, it's not a magic bullet, I get it, but you know, there's so many things that are endemic. I mean, I just remember, you know, it used to be that if you had an event and you had a little bit of food left over at that event, you could take that food and donate it to a worthwhile charitable organization who's helping people, and through, you know, health reasons, COVID, different things, and all of that, you know, that kind of stopped. So, when you think about food waste, is there somebody, you know, that you say an organization, or maybe there's something internally at Harvest Manitoba that is kind of looking into how we can start to sort of mitigate that food waste, which is so horrific.

Vince Barletta 24:06

Yeah, well, it is horrific, and again, you know, $50 billion of food waste in this country every year, and that's all along the value chain, that's from crops that don't even get harvested to food products, produce that doesn't meet retail specification, and you know, I mean, you go to the grocery store, and you look at the tomatoes, you look at the apples, you look at the cucumbers, they're all perfect. What happened to the ones that weren't perfect? Where are they going? And the reality is, they're not even, in many cases, ending up in the food system at all, and they're getting discarded, they're considered surplus. So, for ourselves and working with organizations like Food Banks Canada and our partners across the country, getting more of that perfectly good food into our system, so that we can distribute it is really a big piece of the equation, but for us the big challenge is infrastructure, and you know we've grown so much. In terms of volume, more than twice as many people were serving as just even a few years ago on the food bank side of things, so our infrastructure is at capacity, our warehousing, our cold storage, our vehicle fleet, our ability to ship and receive. So the next frontier for us is to develop what we're calling in Manitoba Food Transformation Center, a place where that excess produce from whether it's Manitoba potatoes or other root vegetables or our strawberries or animal protein or other products can come into harvest, and we have the appropriate facilities to be able to repackage them, grade and sort them, in the case of seasonal produce, cut and wash and flash freeze and bag those products, so that they don't go to waste, because so much of it today does, and again it makes no sense in the context where we have so many Canadians going hungry, so the big disconnect is really on the infrastructure side, the will is there, and I speak with industry all the time, food. I was just at a conference in recent months with, with the Canadian Produce Marketing Association, you know, producers, and in that industry from Canada and around the world, everyone's talking about this issue, because they acknowledge that food waste is not what industry wants, but you know, we need to have a change in our food systems and our infrastructure to be able to handle it, so that's that's a big frontier for us, and we're working with our partners to really be able to have our infrastructure, so that those donations can come in, and we can, and we can handle them, and get it, get the food to people who need it.

Stuart Murray 26:35

Yeah, so, and Vince, who would drive that discussion, or who would drive not so much even the discussion, but to sort of the point where it becomes policy or decision making, or like, who would you, in your opinion, should or is driving that?

Vince Barletta 26:47

Well, I think we've got a few players at the table, certainly food banks and food security organizations have been, I would say, leading the way on that work, and it's, you know, Harvest Manitoba here in the Manitoba context, but there's other really good organizations around the country, Greater Vancouver Food Bank, doing some wonderful work. I think of loaves and fishes out on Vancouver Island, who are standing up their own food transformation center to handle produce that's that's there regionally. I think of Daily Bread Food Bank in Toronto, and their large commercial kitchen facilities, where they're able to take food and process it. I think of our friends in Leamington, Ontario, Windsor Greenhouse Country, who are looking to create a facility to take advantage of those products. So we have food banks and those charitable organizations leading the way, but industry as well. You know, and I think I mentioned our Manitoba Food Partners. Industry also wants to deal with this issue, and then, of course, you know the third leg in that stool is government, and from a food security perspective, but increasingly, Stuart, from a national security perspective, and we think about the challenges with trade and with commerce and tariffs and all of these issues, and I think it's put an even bigger focus on what is grown in this country, what is produced in this country, in Canada, and what that means for our ability to have a healthy and sustainable economy, and to have an affordable standard of living here. So, you know, my sense is that the stars are aligning, government, industry, and not-for-profits like ourselves to push the elephant in the same direction, so to speak, around food loss and waste, and to make sure that that food ends up on on kitchen tables. We're not at the finish line yet, but I think we're all, we're all moving in the same direction, and that's important.

Stuart Murray 28:36

Yeah. No, listen, I agree, and by the way, it's, you know, I never send sort of questions to people that I have on this podcast, and I never, and I did not send you questions, but when I talked about the three areas of leadership, the third one was innovation and food recovery, which you talked a little bit about the Manitoba Food Transformation Center, so you know you talked about it, Vince, let's kind of dig deep into what, what does that look like? What does that mean? Where are you going, you know, from a financial standpoint, and sort of the outcomes that you're looking from the Manitoba Food Transformation Center.

Vince Barletta 29:12

Yeah, so you know, I talked earlier about the, you know, the big number Canada-wide, $50 billion of food loss and waste. So we did a study here to really get to a finer grain in the Manitoba context, so we did. We retained MNP to do a study for us, engage with the agri-food industry and stakeholders. They identified that here in the province of Manitoba alone, about 1 million tons of viable food loss and waste, just within our province, and again, different parts of the country, the types of food are different, but here in Manitoba, you think of the cereals, you think of the potatoes, you think of the seasonal produce, you think of the animal protein, the dairy products, I mean, all of those sorts of things that they don't meet spec. Their surplus, you know, all sorts of reasons why that food doesn't end up in the supply chain, or it gets lost in, lost, or wasted in the supply chain. So, you know, we really are taking three areas of focus. One is being able to, on the potatoes and root vegetable side, we got, we got so many potatoes in Manitoba Stewart, as you know, and really enough surplus potatoes to be able to not only meet our needs here at Harvest Manitoba, but even to take those, take those crops to other parts of the country, other food banks around Canada who need access to them. So one of those processes to bring in higher volume potato grading and bagging processes, so that we can take the potatoes right off the truck, we can get them bagged, have the proper storage to be able to store them here for extended periods of time, and and use them for our own use and distribute them around the country. Similarly, with onions, similarly with carrots, seasonal produce, as I mentioned, you know, to take, you know, whether it's the broccoli, whether it's the strawberries, whether it's the asparagus, depending on the commodity, you know, washing, grading, flash freezing, bagging, and having that available for distribution, and in many cases that's that's import replacement as well. I mean, some of the product, because we buy a lot of food as well to keep our our shelves up to snuff, and you know, a lot of that program, a lot of that product comes from outside the country, and so if we can take advantage of the surplus that we have and just manage it more effectively, that's huge. And also, commercial kitchen is a big piece of this, and I mentioned Daily Bread, they have a wonderful operation in Toronto. We have a small commercial kitchen facility, as you know, which has been busy in recent years, and I just, you know, we talked about the North forest fires and climate change, and you know, these last couple of years, last summer in particular, where we had real challenges with forest fires and 1000s of evacuees from First Nations who were in communities like Winnipeg, elders who are going from being in a community where they're able to access their traditional foods to now being in Winnipeg and in a shelter situation or a hotel situation, eating food which is not healthy for them. I mean, quite frankly, in spite of the best efforts of many people, we were preparing hundreds of traditional meals a day here in our existing kitchen, moose meat and pickerel, and making bannock and wild rice to get those prepared meals to elders who were evacuated to forest fire, so they can, they can maintain good health, so that commercial and expanded commercial kitchen facility gives us more capacity to do that. The other exciting part, all along the way, is that each of these processes, whether it's kitchen, whether it's vegetable processing, bagging, and warehousing, which we already have, each of these creates opportunities for employment training, and that's a big piece that I think a lot of people don't know. Stuart, I know you do. That you know, here at Harvest, you mentioned you know folks that visit food banks and use food banks who put in their time.

Vince Barletta 33:08

Here we have 100 people a year who graduate from our warehouse training program, six weeks on our warehouse floor, their forklift operations, order fulfillment, food safe handling, all of the skills that you need to work in a warehouse distribution logistics facility, and the technology that we have now is this. I mean, you're using the same scanners and software and processes that you'd see in industry, and they're getting jobs, you know, about an 80 80% success rate getting employment. So all of these things put together, that's really the next frontier for us in Manitoba, and for many food banks around the country, and, and, and in the US, much of this is already going on, so there's incredible opportunities to really create a center of excellence here around food transformation that's going to waste less food, which has a big environmental footprint as well. Sure, get training for folks, and most importantly, get that food on the kitchen tables.

Stuart Murray 34:08

Yeah, yeah, you know, just a whole lot of information there, Vince. I just want to kind of go back and kind of touch on a couple of things you said. Number one is you said some of the product or some of the food is coming from outside of Canada.

Vince Barletta 34:20

That's right. Okay, can you

Stuart Murray 34:21

give us some examples of that? I'm surprised by that. Yeah,

Vince Barletta 34:24

so, so for us, again, you know, we, a lot of the food that we get at harvest comes by way of donation, but we also purchase a lot of food to keep our, to keep our shelves full, so particularly things like frozen vegetables, frozen fruit, oftentimes, you know the best pricing we can get on those things, we're buying it from the US or even overseas products like Baby Formula, and you know, whether you follow it or not, but, but over the last number of years, there have been ongoing supply shortages and shocks around things like Baby Formula, where we have a real, you know, sort of Baby Formula secure. Challenge in this country, just about all of it comes imported out of the US, and so those are products that we're buying from outside the country as well. I think of our school nutrition programs, you know, buying fresh fruit at various points in time as well, and you know that's coming from stateside, so you know, and a lot of manufactured goods as well, some are Canadian, but some really are still coming out of the US, so there's a whole resiliency piece, I think, as, as the whole, as the Canadian economy and the world economy adjusts to new realities, and you know, looking at ways to take better advantage of and have more secure domestic supply of certainly our food security and our food industry, I think, is growing in importance.

Stuart Murray 35:42

Yeah, no, that the baby formula one is really quite troubling. I mean, you know, you think about, you know, the vulnerability of infants. I mean, why that should be so, so challenging. But regardless, I, you know, as you say, there's some things that you are doing from Harvest Manitoba's perspective, which, which is important. But, you know, and Vince, I just think that you know the conversations that you know, just sharing the information you do, and hopefully those that listen to this podcast might be troubled by that as well, and say, you know, kind of, we're always looking to see through the podcast, you know, how can people help, how can they get involved, how can they make a difference, so when you think about some of those things, I mean, I'd love to get your, you know, your sense of, anybody's listening, saying, "Gosh, I've heard of Harvest Manitoba, but I'd love to get involved. What sort of ideas would you come up for that?

Vince Barletta 36:30

Well, again, you know, Harvest Manitoba, we run on three things: we run on people's energy, we run on food, and we run on funds, and you know, for anybody that wants to learn more, harvestmanitoba.ca there's all kinds of great content there about how you can get involved volunteering, again, you know, a pretty low barrier way to get involved. We have folks always working in our warehouse, you know, corporate teams, individuals, I, we have some folks for them, it's a bit of a free gym membership, you know, because they're coming, they're lifting boxes, they're they're doing other work, but you know, even if your physical capacities are somewhat limited, we have people here that are answering phones. We have a call center where we register the clients that need to come to a food bank, so there's a whole customer service aspect to what we do. We have folks that are driving trucks and, and doing all kinds of other other work. Certainly, the fundraising, you know, can never lose sight of that, you know, for those that are able to make those gifts to support our programs. That makes a huge difference. That keeps our lights on, it keeps our staff pays, it paid, it keeps our trucks running. Purchasing food as well is a big piece of it. And for our friends in the agri food industry, and we have so many partners, really hundreds again, retail manufacturers, processors, producers. If you're not already engaged with Harvest, and you want to be, again, you know, reach out to us, Harvest manitoba.ca There's all kinds of ways to get involved, and again, as I, as I always say, it takes a province to feed a province steward, and in our case, even, even a little more than the province, because we have so many supporters from, from other parts of the country as well, who, who support our work. So, there's no shortage of ways to get involved in Harvest Manitoba. If you're one of Stuart's listeners from from outside the province, you know your food bank that's in your province or your community, there, these organizations are all over the country, and all over, all over the world, increasingly, and so, and they all need help, so you know, wherever you happen to be listening from, get involved, because you'll, you'll be better for it, and your community will be better for it.

Stuart Murray 38:32

Yeah. No, thanks for that, Vince. I appreciate that. I want to just come back to one other thing you said, because I was aware of it, but I'm glad you brought it up again. It's something that's not well known, but if you're working, if you're driving a forklift, you know, for Harvest Manitoba, or say you're getting skill sets that will take you into the workplace. I was just curious, Vince, does Harvest Manitoba have the ability to sort of qualify somebody as a forklift operator, or are you working through an institution to get that kind of qualification?

Vince Barletta 39:00

Well, it's interesting. That's really the next frontier for us. So, our, so the existing six week warehouse training program that we have, we have a regimented curriculum around it, and we do very much bring in folks that are food bank clients, a real focus on youth, especially new Canadians, for whom they've been made perhaps struggling to access the Canadian labor market, as well as indigenous youth, so we do the forklift theory here again. Food safe handling, like they come out with those certifications, and again, you know, we have a whole slate of employers who are coming and meeting with those graduates and giving them jobs, so but moving forward into a future state where we have additional food transformation processes, we are having discussions with with some of our post-secondary institutions to look at the potential to create micro credentials

Stuart Murray 39:50

right

Vince Barletta 39:51

around those programs,

Stuart Murray 39:52

perfect,

Vince Barletta 39:52

so that folks are able to now they've got a connection to a institution of higher learning, which for many. Of them means that you know a six week training program with harvest, in addition to getting them into a job right away, which is what they need to help themselves and their families, maybe it's their first foot in the door to an education journey as well. So, yeah, which is an exciting new frontier for

Stuart Murray 40:17

us. Yeah, I think it's fantastic, because I mean, it, you know, the thing about it, Vince, as you say what people might have thought about, or they think about with, you know, with respect to Harvest Manitoba, you know, it's like more tin goods and different things, and of course that's still part of it, but you have developed so much more to become more of a transformational center, and I think that is really, really important, and I wanted to just kind of probe another question, and you know, it's not - I don't want to go down a path at all with, you know, Vince, I don't try to get sort of too political on this podcast, it's really, it's really about you, your organization, what you're doing, but I just would love to get your thoughts on this notion that as you're growing and you're becoming, you know, bigger and by necessity, because you're providing a service for people, it's not that you want to grow, you're growing and you're trying to keep up with the incredible demand, but I guess the question becomes, you know, when does the conversation move from being a charity story about Harvest Manitoba and sort of a public policy failure, and I'm not here to throw shade. I don't want to point fingers at government. I guess if you were going to look at that, you'd say governments, plural, all parties, provincial, federal, whatever. But you know, if somebody were to say, you know, I'd love your thoughts on it, which is what I'm asking you. How do you feel about that question?

Vince Barletta 41:39

Well, you know, for us, advocacy with government and with community has always been sort of in our DNA. It's always been a big piece of what we do, along with education. And just to touch on the education piece first, I mean, we, we have programs here that provide curriculum for, you know, grade three, grade four students around issues like nutrition, you know, later years, you know, how would you set your grocery budget all the way through to post-secondary to a partnership we've had for more than two decades with the Max Rady College of Medicine. As I like to say, you can't become a doctor in Manitoba without spending a day at harvest, and that's been the case for for more than two decades, we get second year medical students, all of them, the whole class comes through harvest, learns about the work that we do, and the connections between nutrition and poverty and health, and the realities, if you're, you know, you're going to be a doctor someday, and you've got patients who are coming to you with complex health issues, and understanding that perhaps a good portion of their diet is coming from a food bank, and you know the challenges that that creates. So that's part of our education piece on the advocacy side with government. Again, that's always been a big component. We provide every year we do a report called Harvest Voices, and you can find that on our website as well, Harvest manitoba.ca Harvest Voices. We survey hundreds of people that visit food banks from all walks of life, and we ask them, you know, what would need to change in your life so that you wouldn't need to access a food bank, or you could be less reliant on a food bank, and you know those recommendations that come from people that live with poverty really cover the waterfront, from access to childcare to disability benefits, and we've worked with a lot of our partners across the country on advocacy for the the new National Canada Disability Benefit, and there's more work to be done on that, but that's been, that's been an important one, housing affordability, employment, and training, again, you know, 30% of folks that we serve have a job, and for many of them, they're looking for better opportunities for employment. Even more recent concerns, and we work - I mentioned Food Banks Canada a few times, and when we're a part of that national organization that releases a report every year, a poverty report card, and I was just earlier this week in Ottawa, meeting with some of our parliamentarians to talk about that report, and I'm perhaps not surprisingly, Canada and most provinces continue to get a failing grade in terms of the absolute amount of poverty that we have in this country, but there are some signs of hope in terms of some of the policy solutions the government of Canada's moved forward on the establishment of a grocery and essentials benefit to replace the GST rebate, that's been a subject of ongoing advocacy from Food Banks Canada and organizations like our own. Universal School Nutrition is another big one, and and we're delivering some of that programming here in Manitoba through our Meals to Go program. We serve about 7000 students every week during the school year with that program here in the province of Manitoba. So, there's a whole lot of advocacy areas, you know, from benefits to EI employment insurance. Currents modernization, a lot of issues that we've been advocating for with our partners at a government level, that each of them could play an important role in helping to alleviate poverty in this country and help people be able to get over this challenge of affordability that's just increasingly creeping into a challenge for the middle class, not just for those at the bottom of the economic ladder, but increasingly again for folks with jobs and groups that traditionally really didn't need services like like a food bank, but now are starting to come to be with

Stuart Murray 45:34

us. Yeah, and that's, you know, I just have this kind of this image in my mind, Vince, a little bit like, you know, parliamentarians having, you know, sort of a session with you, you know, you talking about the great work you do, and your team, which you do do great work, and as you always say, more to be done, you're very humble about that, but you talk about the good work that's being done, and I just wonder, from the parliamentary Terians experience, they look at it and sort of say, wow, we're really fortunate to have people, you know, from like Harvest and others that are operating, versus kind of the notion about what, what should we be doing, what more can we be doing. I mean, I look about that public policy thing, and as you say, the advocacy piece, which you're involved in, is really important, but it's rather than them saying, "Gee, you're doing great work, thank you so much, governments, we need you to do more, so that we're not expanding and growing and making bigger facilities, we're reducing them, because public policy around food security is starting to make more from a human rights perspective, starting to settle in more in the country.

Vince Barletta 46:34

Yeah, well, and I think you know that last piece is the most important, that you know, starting with a baseline of food as a human right, and you know the same way that Canadians need water and Canadians need housing and need security, you know, food is a huge piece of that equation, and again, you know, you've, you've had a political life steward, and you know, you know, when it, when it comes to these sorts of issues, you're going to have some officials who are very keenly interested, and others that are, that are maybe less so, but you know, I think everybody, regardless of political stripe, and we have relationships, and great relationships with people all across the political spectrum, at all levels of government, who are sincerely interested in these issues, and maybe the policy solutions that they favor are might be different from one to the other in terms of how you

Stuart Murray 47:23

for sure

Vince Barletta 47:24

you do tackle these challenges, but I think you know in today's context there's nobody who is not thinking about the challenges of affordability for Canadians, the price of food, the price of housing, childcare, fuel, all of those essentials that allow you to live a life in this country and provide for your family, so I mean, to be fair, we get a pretty good reception from the vast majority of our, of our parliamentarians and elected officials at the provincial level, and I mean, we spend time with a lot of them, we always get a pretty good reception, and usually a very good reception, and people are interested to hear what we have to say, and we do provide recommendations, you know, to the provincial government each year, a set of policy objectives that we advocate for, and federally we do the same with Food Banks Canada, and in some cases, such as the grocery and essentials benefit federally, you know, governments taking that advice to heart and implementing some of those recommendations. I mean, the challenge is we have some Canadians, many Canadians who live in such deep poverty below the poverty line and have fallen so far behind that there's really no one single silver bullet that's going to solve for the issue of poverty in this country. There's going to be one set of policy changes that will provide benefit to folks, for example, with disabilities. There'll be another that helps families with children. There'll be, you know, another that helps folks that are new to this country or First Nations community. So it's going to be a whole series of policy changes, but I would say government listens, and they don't always take our advice, but they generally listen to it. Yeah, that's an important first step in a dialog.

Stuart Murray 49:06

Oh, no question about it, Vince. And, as I said, I, as you said, you use the term, there is no silver bullet. It is a complex, lots of things bound into it. So, just kind of as the sands of time kind of run in to the end of the podcast, Vince, I have two questions for you. One of them is, what's one thing that you really believe that Manitobans don't know about Harvest Manitoba?

Vince Barletta 49:30

I think one thing that people don't maybe know is that while we do have, we serve 10s of 1000s of Manitobans through food banks and through other agencies in our cool nutrition program, the food bank side of it, which is what we're sort of most known for. We have so many people, and I see them every year, especially at the holiday time, people who pop into harvest and they'll drop off a check, or they'll make a donation, or they'll, and they'll say, look, you know, you don't know me, but you know, 10 years ago, 50. Years ago, five years ago, I needed your help, and your organization was there for me, and you helped me get back on my feet, and now I'm able to give back, and I want to give back, and I want to do this to you, and I think for so many it's easy to get disheartened, I think, especially in today's world, and lose hope that there's any solution, and just things seem to go from bad to worse, but the reality is, you know, our organization has always been about so much more than just hampers, it's always been about hope, and there are so many stories of people who, you know, we've been part of their journey, now you know they're part of our journey, and helping us give back to the people in the community, so it's not, it's not a hopeless cause. I mean, you know, the work that we do really does help people get back on their feet and get into a great place, and I don't think enough people hear that part of the story, that hopeful part. Yeah, and so we always like to share that piece, and I, you know, I, I certainly would never say any names on a show like this, but you know, you may well be surprised by some of the people in our community who have needed the help of Harvest Manitoba at some point in their life, who've gone on to do many, many other things and make many, many contributions to this community in this country, and I think it's a testament to people's resilience, but also to the importance of these kinds of programs to help Canadians.

Stuart Murray 51:19

Yeah, and you know I can't think of a better person right now to be heading up Harvest Manitoba than you, Vincent. You're so positive, you've got great leadership skills, and clearly working with a great team there and making a making a huge difference. So, thank you for that. So, my final questions I usually ask to people that are on the Human Rights podcast, you know, is there any question that you kind of were thinking about when you said, yeah, I'll jump on that podcast and have a conversation. Is there any question that you were thinking, I wonder if he's going to ask me about X, and I haven't asked you? Is there any question I haven't asked you that you'd like to sort of talk about before we, we sign off?

Vince Barletta 51:52

Well, I mean, I'll just say that, you know, certainly just for you, Stuart, you know, a big, a big thanks on bringing me on, and I mean, the tireless work that you've done around human rights, I mean, with the museum and, and more broadly, in community, and you know, and with, you know, the work of your family and others to really elevate these issues. I think that framing food insecurity in the context of human rights is the right place to put it. It situates it in a global context as well, and you know, as we think of all the challenges in the world today, and particularly in recent years, you know, creating resiliency here in Canada and supporting resiliency globally, you know, in the global south, and on those parts of the world that are facing very severe challenges of poverty, and here at home, this is such an important issue. So, I just say to you, Stuart, you know, thank you for bringing me on and having, you know, a really very good conversation today. And I appreciate the work that you do, and you've been doing for many years in this area. I think it means a lot.

Stuart Murray 52:50

Yeah. Hey, Vince, I appreciate the shout out. Thank you so much. And thank you for finding the time to do this. Vince Barletta, President, CEO of Harvest Manitoba, difference maker in the community. Vince, thank you so very much.

Vince Barletta 53:02

Thank you, Stuart.

Matt Cundill 53:04

Thanks for listening to Humans on Rights. A transcript of this episode is available by clicking the link in the show notes of this episode. Humans on Rights is recorded and hosted by Stuart Murray. Social media marketing by Buffy Davey. Music by Doug Edmond. For more go to Human Rights hub.ca

Tara Sands (Voiceover) 53:24

produced and distributed by The Sound Off Media Company,