Advocates say Toronto’s food insecurity has hit “crisis levels” as a new report shows one in 10 people in the city are relying on food banks.
The annual Who’s Hungry report reveals millions of visits to food banks in the city every year. It chronicles an ever-growing reliance on non-profits to make ends meet.
“Food banks are at their breaking point,” Ryan Noble, of the North York Harvest Food Bank, and Neil Hetherington, from the Daily Bread Food Bank, wrote together. “Food is a human right, yet governments are failing to ensure every person living in Canada can live a life of dignity.”
The new report is based on 79 participating food banks and 1,384 people using food banks who were surveyed. It recorded 2.5 million food bank visits between April 2022 and March 2023, an annual increase of over 50 per cent.
The number of visits to food banks jumped most starkly in Etobicoke, where visits were up 66 per cent. In central Toronto, visits increased 50 per cent and 54 per cent in North York. Scarborough saw a smaller increase in the number of food banks at 36 per cent, but still reported more than 750,000 overall visits.
The report came almost without good news. For the first time since the annual Whose Hungry report was released, “every single food insecurity indicator measured” has worsened.
High costs mean many are making impossible choices, the report shows. One woman using a Toronto-area food bank named Marigold in the report has been unable to work since the pandemic but was told she did not qualify for government-funded disability support.
“Before I used to borrow money from those lending places like Money Mart and those places and I just wind up getting into a lot of trouble,” she said.
Marigold said she had to choose between paying medical expenses, internet, rent and food.
“I wasn’t eating because I didn’t have enough money to buy food. And then I started going to the food bank, and it helped me out a little…I was just getting really sick,” she said.
The report points to issues with the cost of rent, wages that fail to match the cost of living and high transit costs as some of the pressures forcing people to food banks for help.
“Everything is so expensive now, especially the rent, and I find myself cutting back on other essential things just to keep a roof over my head,” one person interviewed by the report’s writers said.
The report also found 69 per cent of people relied on public transit to get to food banks, but only 39 per cent of those eligible had received money off their fare.
The Who’s Hungry report called on elected officials to make changes, including funding transit and improving non-profit housing provisions where rents are unlikely to rise as rapidly as the market overall.