My Canadian hopes for the UK’s all-party parliamentary report, Feeding Britain, quickly faded on reading that charitable food banks and the church, along with supermarkets and food manufacturers, are proposed as core agencies in a new national network to abolish national hunger.

Yes, there’s government representation – but there’s no mention of the right to food contained within the international covenant on economic, social and cultural rights, which was ratified in 1976 by Jim Callaghan’s Labour government, and placed the primary obligation on the state to ensure food access for all.

Given the “urgent issue” of food poverty, this is a glaring omission; a missed opportunity to change the public and political conversation from food charity to the right to food, informed by internationally recognised human rights principles and framework legislation. This would require new ruling that entrenched the covenant language into domestic law, while creating a national, joined-up, food policy action plan based on measurable indicators of food insecurity, benchmarks, targets and timelines.

The all-party inquiry has no desire to see food banks take the place of statutory welfare, nor to simply call upon the government to deal with the issue. Whose heads are in the sand? Food banks already create a second tier of the benefits system (we also see this in Canada) and wealthy nations always have the power and resources to combat poverty, so why not make the call? Under-resourced food charity and the private sector will never achieve a “zero hunger” Britain – there are too many conflicting interests at stake. Moreover, the UK does not have any national food insecurity indicators, so how would it ever be measured?

The sad fact is that in Canada, with its 30-year track record of increasingly corporatised food charity, recent national data shows that one in eight households or 3.9 million individuals (11.6% of the population) are still experiencing food insecurity.

The report rightly supports Prof Elizabeth Dowler’s long-held advocacy of the need for the poor, like anyone else, “to have enough money, and to be able to reach the kind of shops which stock the foods needed for health at affordable prices”. It makes a series of constructive income and social security recommendations based on analysis that food poverty is primarily caused by rising prices, a devalued national minimum wage, income poverty and a flawed benefits system rife with complex policies, programmes and eligibility criteria. It recommends a living wage, but astonishingly does not directly discuss the adequacy of state benefits.

Feeding Britain then muddies the waters by arguing food poverty is a food supply issue and, worryingly, recommends a vanguard role for the charitable food industry and food waste in the battle against structurally caused food poverty. This can only lead to the long-term institutionalisation of food banking and diminish political appetite for progressive reform.

This is precisely because the long-term entrenchment of the Canadian food charity industry has fostered the de-politicisation of hunger and its social construction as a matter primarily for community and corporate charity, and not a human rights question demanding the urgent attention of the state. Today, Canadian public perception of food charity is that it should take care of domestic hunger. Governments can look the other way.

Ergo, public policy neglect, an increasingly broken social safety net fed by punitive welfare reforms, the continuing neoliberal mantra of lower taxes and the minimalist state.

As leading US food policy expert Janet Poppendieck argues, food charity’s primary function is one of “symbolic value” … “relieving us of guilt and discomfort about hunger”, while serving as a moral safety valve as hunger marches on. Food banks are part of the problem, not the solution to food poverty. Tellingly, Canada’s nationally institutionalised food bank network lacks empirical evidence that food charity is an effective response to systemic food insecurity. Food banks consistently run out of food, distribution is tightly rationed, pressures mount to source food, eligibility criteria are vague, volunteer fatigue grows, and the stigma of food aid keeps many away. And as Prof Valerie Tarasuk’s data shows, food bank usage significantly underestimates the prevalence of national food insecurity. And surely, channelling ever-increasing tonnes of corporate food waste to feed vulnerable people is ethically unacceptable, to say nothing of the long-term economic and social implications of creating secondary food markets.

So what’s to be done? Even Food Banks Canada now acknowledges that food charity is unable to address food insecurity over the long term; and as Finnish food policy expert Tiina Silvasti says: “In spite of goodwill, charitable food aid is nothing more than a gift. It is not a collective right or entitlement that can be claimed by a hungry person or by a family in need of food.”

The UK’s political parties – as well as those in Canada – should revisit the right to food, and think through its practical application for addressing food poverty. Make the moral, legal and political case for its entrenchment in domestic law and set an international standard for first world wealthy societies. The point is this: charity is never the answer to food poverty.

In the words of Louise Arbour, former Canadian supreme court justice and UN high commissioner for human rights: “There will always be a place for charity, but charitable responses are not an effective, principled or sustainable substitute for enforceable human rights guarantees.”