The Assembly of Manitoba Chiefs recently severed its relationship with the Food Fare grocery store after two incidents where advocates accused staff of “racially” targeting Indigenous customers.
In response, one Food Fare manager, Tarik Zeid, promised to train workers — many of whom are immigrants and have little knowledge about Indigenous peoples — on “conflict resolution, de-escalation techniques, and appropriate responses to challenging situations.”
It’s entirely possible Indigenous customers are being targeted by Food Fare staff. I don’t know and my attempts to find out resulted in a lot of hearsay.
MIKE DEAL / FREE PRESS
The Assembly of Manitoba Chiefs recently severed its relationship with the Food Fare grocery store after two incidents where advocates accused staff of “racially” targeting Indigenous customers.
What’s definitively possible is this is not really a racial conflict but one that derives from history, poverty and Canada’s affordability crisis.
Several sources have pointed out (from the AMC and elsewhere) that at the centre of all the violence at Food Fares is one simple thing: meat.
Meat may be the problem. Let me explain.
In a 2018 interview, I spoke with Russ Rothney and Louise Champagne, the former owners of Neechi Commons — the community-based grocery store, artisan co-operative and restaurant in Winnipeg’s North End.
It was surprising to learn the store’s downfall was not due to a lack of shoppers or increased food costs, but theft — particularly of frozen meat.
Everyone knows the most expensive item at a grocery store is often meat. For people on very tight budgets, meat (decent versions of it, anyway) is often out of reach.
Steak, pork, chicken and ground beef are some of the most lucrative items to sell on the streets.
Theft of frozen meat was what forced Rothney and Champagne — who operated a successful store on Dufferin Avenue before expanding — out of business.
That interview was the first time I heard of the black market for meat in Winnipeg.
Since then, I’ve had police officers share stories of trunks full of hamburger, back lane sales of steaks, and fistfights over prices and quality of meat.
This all may seem a bit weird for those who have not struggled to pay for groceries, but it’s true.
Frozen meat constitutes a large foundation of the underground market in Winnipeg and appears to be the common denominator in the Food Fare incidents.
Check the evidence.
Last March, Winnipeg police arrested 32-year old Keifer Kent and charged him with more than a dozen grocery store thefts and stealing more than $10,000 in goods.
The primary stolen items? Meat.
“In many of the incidents, the suspect would physically assault security or store employees and threaten them with bear spray or sharp-edged weapons,” police said in a news release at the time.
Sound familiar?
The Free Press reported violent incidents between Indigenous customers and Food Fare staff on two occasions this spring: April 28 and May 5. Both times, individuals were accused of shoplifting meat.
On May 14, another young man was accused of shoplifting and left, only to come back later and allegedly confront and assault workers — sending three to hospital.
The motivation for the incident is unknown and the investigation is ongoing, but what is more likely: a teenager stealing food for himself or selling it?
Poverty is driving individuals who don’t want to enter the highly profitable but highly illegal and dangerous drug trade and instead sell something easily shoplifted and sold for a high margin.
It may also be that the stakes of thefts in smaller shops like Food Fare are much higher, leading to the spate of violent incidents.
Ask any of the big-box grocery stores on the outskirts of the city and they will tell you theft of meat is their primary problem. Stealing from a big corporation isn’t often noticeable or cause for the business to fold.
Meat thieves may also be providing an essential service.
As one source who works for a front-line, North End social justice agency told me, it’s a way “poor families” can get cheap access to decent meat.
Add in that much of Winnipeg’s North End, Point Douglas and downtown communities are located in a “food desert” — where fresh food is almost impossible to find, never mind afford — and buying stolen meat sort of makes sense.
Sprinkle in an unaffordable economy and what was a petty crime in the downtown can turn into an epidemic of crime that can lead to violence.
It may just be more than racism.
niigaan.sinclair@freepress.mb.ca
Niigaan Sinclair
Columnist
Niigaan Sinclair is Anishinaabe and is a columnist at the Winnipeg Free Press.
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