The Yukon Anti-Poverty Coalition will hold its annual general meeting tonight, when the agenda will be dominated by the basics of survival: food and shelter.

"We are going to be supporting the development and opening of the new food bank and we'll be setting up sub-committees to deal with housing issues," coalition co-chair Ross Findlater said today.

The goal of opening a full-time food bank in Whitehorse was originally spear-headed by the coalition, but is now in the hands of the Whitehorse Food Bank Society.

"We pursued it with vigour for many years," coalition co-chair George Green said. "We eventually realized that we wouldn't have time to manage a food bank along with all the other things we are mandated to do."

But the need for reliable emergency food services in Whitehorse is still a major concern for the group.

In town to speak to the coalition's members is Adam Spence, the executive director of the Ontario Association of Food Banks.

He was invited to address the group after several members read his report entitled Our Choice for a Better Ontario: A Plan for Cutting Poverty in Half by 2020.

It was created in response to the Government of Ontario's promise to create a poverty reduction strategy, and goes far beyond the food bank's traditional mandate of simply handing out food.

In fact, the report's first goal is to provide housing for all Ontarians. Food is not even mentioned in the report's 12 stated goals, which also include improving education, employment opportunities and health for people living in poverty. This is because hunger is a symptom of poverty, Spence said, one that can be eliminated by treating the cause.

"Ultimately, a food bank has two goals," Spence said. One is to meet the immediate need for food, the other is to put ourselves out of business by eliminating the root causes of poverty."

Spence is very aware of the criticism launched against food banks, that they provide a crutch which people come to depend on.

"It's the old ‘give a man a fish or teach a man to fish' question," Spence said. "Just the same as a shelter doesn't solve the housing problem, a food bank doesn't solve the root causes of poverty.

"What it does do is provide food and support for people while they work on the deeper issues."

Food banks in Ontario, he said, are branching out beyond simply giving people food on a day-to-day basis.

"We are opening food centres in remote communities where we can teach empowerment around food."

This includes developing local small-scale agriculture and teaching people about healthy eating.

This is particularly important in northern first nations communities, he said, where diabetes and obesity rates are dangerously high.

"We are trying to promote a return by choice to a traditional diet of high protein and available fruits such as berries."

Eddie Taylor, the recently-elected chief of the Tr'ondek Hwech'in First Nation, wants to do something similar in his community.

Part of his election platform was to get his community growing more of its own food, for reasons of both economic and physical health.

He said today it is something he and his council will be working on over the winter months.

In Whitehorse, a food bank is scheduled to be opened in the old Royal Canadian Legion on Alexander Street early in the new year, leaving the Yukon Anti-Poverty Coalition to work on the problem of available, affordable housing in the territory.

"We're looking at the Landlord and Tenant Act, which needs to be brought into the 21st century, in terms of tenant rights, but also landlords' rights," Findlater said.

"It doesn't reflect the current knowledge of what is happening in other jurisdictions in Canada."

The larger challenge is to convince government and private businesses to build more affordable housing, he said.

The society's AGM will be held at 5:30 tonight at 306 Alexander St. Adam Spence will speak at 7 p.m.