“There's still a deep justification of continuing to grow endowments, and paying out very little, while those endowments are inextricably linked to the very things that are causing a lot of the catastrophes,” says Murphy, from the Transition Resource Circle.

That's pretty gross.

There's a weird tension: without charity, a bunch of people won't get food. But charity fills a gap that Canadians expect the government to fill.

Canadaland had a great op-ed about politicians doing photo ops at foodbanks around Christmas. In a lot of cases, the politicians own policies could alleviate the need for foodbanks, but the photo-op is easier.