Give us your Loblaws gift cards, says Wesley Urban Ministries

If you're one of the Canadians getting a Loblaws gift card this spring, Wesley Urban Ministries has a suggestion. They'd like you to give it to them.

The charity is urging people who get $25 gift cards to make up for Dominion/Loblaws price-fixing scandal to hand them over.

Wesley would like to use the cards to buy food for the meal program, said Andrea Buttars, manager of resource development. That program, which serves snacks for kids and hot meals, can make $25 go a long way, she said.

Wesley would also like to use them to help people in the life skills workshops, which are attended by Hamiltonians in some of the greatest need.

Those workshops include subjects such as parenting, harm reduction, budgeting and finding and maintaining housing, Buttars said. Attendees also learn how to have a keen eye for savings while grocery shopping.

For most Canadians, "it was a gift card they weren't expecting to receive," Buttars said. She hopes that will make it easier to hand over to charity.

The gift cards stem from the grocer's admission last year that from 2002 to 2015, it conspired to inflate the price of packaged bread. That scandal has prompted a number of class action lawsuits.

Anyone who purchased a number of bread products from a Loblaws store – which includes No Frills, Superstore and Zehrs – in that time is eligible for a card.

Those bread products are as follows:

• Ben's Bread.
• Bon Matin Bread.
• Country Harvest Bread.
• Dempster's Bread.
• D'Italiano Bread.
• Gadoua Bread.
• McGavin's Bread.
• No Name Bread.
• Old Mill Bread.
• POM Bread.
• Weston Bread.
• Wonder Bread.

Customers can sign up for a card at loblawcard.ca

Wesley has created a web page outlining how people can donate.

The organization isn't alone in making the call. Food banks from B.C. to St. John's, NL are asking people to do the same.