Kingston, Ont. food services feeling the squeeze

There’s no question that, between inflation and the COVID-19 pandemic, food insecurity has become a larger issue over the course of the past few years.

Lines at drop-in lunches have gotten longer, while food banks have had to hustle to keep up with demand.

“This past year was a record year for us. We handed out over 16,000 food hampers and that’s 7,273 people in the Kingston area we helped,” said Dan Irwin, executive director for Kingston’s Partners in Mission Food Bank.

He said it’s the first time they’ve served more than 7,000 people in a year, and it signals what he says is a “very tough point in Ontario.”

One of the turning points came with the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic.

With many people out of work, Irwin said that many sought out help in a place they’d never had to turn to before: the food bank.

He also said that crisis is only worsening with skyrocketing inflation.

“Right away people can see on the shelves we’ve got a food inflation factor going on. That’s a known,” he said.

So far, Irwin said, this year hasn’t shown signs of slowing.

He said that up to the end of March, the food bank is up 6.1 per cent in terms of service this year over 2022.

Meantime, The Food Sharing Project, a non-profit that provides meals to children at school, said it is disappointed that there wasn’t money included for a national school food program in the 2023 federal budget.

“It seems to me that it, perhaps, is a competing interests kind of situation, and we’re going to keep advocating for the program,” said Brenda Moore, the non-profit’s chair.

Moore said that before the onset of the pandemic, the program was sending $12,000 of food into schools every week.

Since the pandemic began, that number has more than doubled to $25,000.

“School co-ordinators are calling and saying, ‘We’re really sorry, we have to increase our order for next week because the kids are just so hungry.'”

Despite this, she said they’ll be OK thanks to some reserves until the end of this school year, and will to find ways to cut costs in the meantime.