Thanks, Mr. Chairman.
Thanks to the witnesses for their appearance today at committee.
Mr. Moss, I'll start with you. As a city councillor in 2017, I worked with my residents to open a food bank. My ward was about 50,000 residents in size, and I worked with volunteers on that project to make that facility a reality. I know that, through the pandemic, it was an incredibly difficult time for our volunteers and for the social agency, the non-profit that we partnered with, Mission Services, here in Hamilton. We were forced to drop our volunteer base, because of the pandemic and some of the restrictions that came with the lockdowns. We were forced to use full-time and part-time staff at Mission Services, which increased our costs.
During that time the federal government and other levels of government provided financial support to organizations to help offset some of the labour that volunteers had provided to us. I know that the emergency community support fund, which was provided by the federal government, through Community Foundations, Food Banks Canada and others, provided tremendous support.
Could you highlight for us the challenges that you faced through the pandemic with volunteers, and how income supports from municipal, provincial or federal governments helped assist you through very turbulent, rocky times?