Ontario food banks sounding alarm as demand reaches “crisis” levels

By ZACHARY ROMAN

Local Journalism Initiative Reporter

Carolyn Stewart doesn't use the word crisis lightly. 

In her 14 years as CEO of Ontario's largest collective of hunger-relief organizations, Feed Ontario, she's never used that word to describe hunger in the province.

Feed Ontario has just released its 2023 Hunger Report, which contains data from April 1, 2022 to March 31, 2023. Its findings have leaders in the food bank sector asking: at what point will the province's food bank network collapse?

“You can only use the word ‘crisis' once… and we have started using the word ‘crisis,'” said Stewart during a December 6 presentation at Caledon's home for food support, The Exchange.

“That's because over 800,000 people have accessed a food bank in the last year, and they visited just under six million times.”

That's a 38 per cent increase in unique food bank users in Ontario compared to 2021-2022, and a 60 per cent increase compared to pre-pandemic levels.

“Hitting new highs in every category is a very unfortunate reality,” said Stewart. 

Stewart said Ontario's social support systems are failing because there are too many people now needing to rely on food banks. She said food banks are meant to be a response to an emergency need — but emergencies are supposed to end. 

“40 per cent increases year-over-year, we can't keep up with that because we weren't intended to,” said Stewart.

In a letter written in the 2023 Hunger Report, Stewart said hunger is becoming an accepted norm in Ontario. 

“Food banks are becoming a way to subsidize governments' balanced budgets and corporations' profit margins,” she wrote.

Caledon Community Services (CCS), which runs The Exchange, is a member of Feed Ontario. CCS CEO Geraldine Aguiar spoke at the December 6 presentation.

“The face of poverty, the face of hunger… looks different than whatever that Hollywood picture is you have in your mind,” said Aguiar. “It could be your co-worker at their desk at lunchtime, looking like they're busy, but, really, they don't have lunch. We have to challenge our perceptions.”

One in six people accessing a food bank now cite employment as their primary source of income, an 87 per cent increase from 2016-2017 and a 37 per cent increase from 2021-2022.

This means more people than ever with jobs still can't make ends meet.

CCS staff have even seen people with multiple jobs needing to access food support. 

In a Feed Ontario survey of food bank users, two-thirds of respondents reported they had less than $100 left each month after paying for housing costs, with 22 per cent of respondents having housing costs that exceed their monthly income.

At present, 28.3 per cent of food bank users cite disability benefits as their primary income source; 25.5 per cent cite social assistance (Ontario Works); and 17.1 per cent cite employment. 

Currently, Ontario Works provides recipients with $733 per month and the Ontario Disability Support Program provides recipients $1,308 per month. 

“When you're relying on $733 a month, you can't even get your housing… these programs were intended to be transitionary, to help people get back to work, but unfortunately they're keeping people in poverty,” said Stewart. “This is why Ontarians can't get ahead, they're so far behind the starting line there's no way for them to get there.”

Other top income sources for food bank users include old age pension (9 per cent), employment insurance income (2.4 per cent) and “other” (14.7 per cent).

Stewart said food banks believe everyone that can be employed should be employed, but they deserve quality work that will keep them out of poverty.

Overwhelmingly, the reason survey respondents accessed the food bank was cost of living: nearly 87 per cent of respondents said housing, food and utility costs were the reason they needed help. 

Michelle Venoit, Director of Community Resources at CCS, said things are just as bad in Caledon as they are in the rest of Ontario. She said CCS has seen a 30 per cent increase in people using its food support services.

“In the history of our organization, we are seeing the highest number of new people accessing our services; it almost doubled in 2023,” said Venoit. “We're trying to keep up with that demand when there are no additional resources coming our way.”

Venoit said food bank clients are reporting an extreme sense of hopelessness for their future, and have high levels of anxiety about what the future will bring. 

“In the last year, we served about 950 individuals who accessed our food support program about 2,600 times,” she said. 

CCS has a model that prioritizes client choice, but Venoit said as demand increases, clients get less choice as food supply has to be rationed accordingly.

Stewart said everyone in Ontario should “sound the alarm bells” because there's something wrong when so many people have no choice but to rely on emergency support to get by.

“This is not on the shoulders of a single organization or a single level of government,” she said. “This is a collective problem with collective solutions.”

Feed Ontario says governments can take the following actions, among others, to help address Ontario's hunger crisis: increase provincial social assistance rates and reduce clawbacks on earned income and government benefits; invest in building and maintaining social housing and improve tenant protections; reduce the precarity of the labour market through improvements to labour laws and reducing barriers to unionization; and reform employment insurance and improve access to tax benefits through automatic tax filing.

Stewart said Ontario's reliance on food banks has gotten to be so high because of precarious work, erosion of social support programs, and a failure to invest in affordable and supportive housing. 

“There's no greater day for collective action than today,” she said. “So, we encourage everyone to get involved.”

Feed Ontario is encouraging people to see what it's like to live in the shoes of someone who accesses a food bank, having to make impossible choices. It's created an online tool for this, which can be accessed at the following link: feedontario.ca/fork-in-the-road.