As cost of living soars, millions of Canadians are turning to food banks

Every Friday, people line up around the block to pick up dinner from a tiny church off College Street in downtown Toronto. Volunteers working for the food program inside serve a hot casserole, some rice, and maybe fruit and yogurt if supplies come through.

Rev. Canon Maggie Helwig, who helps run the program out of St. Stephen-in-the-Fields church, said it regularly serves 130 people for dinner on Fridays — compared to the two dozen they saw a few years ago. 

On Saturday and Sunday mornings, the lineup for breakfast is even longer — with hundreds of parents, seniors, students, working adults and those who are unemployed.

"Every week we are scrambling," Helwig said. "Every week we run out of food and start foraging in the cupboards and in the freezers for something that we can give to people.

"It's terrifying."

That staggering demand is also playing out at food banks and other food programs across the country. A new report from Food Banks Canada released Wednesday found that this year, with the cost of living skyrocketing, food bank usage rose to its highest level since the survey started in 1989.

The annual HungerCount report is based on surveys sent to food security organizations, tracking their usage in the month of March. This year's report found that nearly two million people — including more employed people than ever — used food banks March 2023 alone.

That's a 32 per cent increase from the same month last year and more than 78 per cent higher than in March 2019.

It's data that comes as no surprise to staff and volunteers who have been trying to keep up with demand.

"Anyone who works in any kind of food-security programming knows that things have gotten astonishingly worse," Helwig said.

A few years ago, unemployment was a major factor in the number of people seeking support, as the early months of the pandemic brought the economy to a halt. The report said food insecurity is now being driven by inflation and the high cost of living — with more Canadians struggling to afford basics like housing and food.

The study said demand for food banks started exploding around the same time inflation shot up, doing so at its fastest rate in the last 40 years.

"It's not necessarily that there's not enough food," said Larry Mathieson, who runs the Unison for Generations 50+ program for older adults in the Calgary area. "It's that we can't afford the food."

The study said 17 per cent of clients this year had jobs, but they didn't earn enough to make ends meet.