The food bank at St. Mark’s Anglican Church in Halifax, N.S. is facing a “perfect storm” this year, says the Rev. Tammy Hodge Orovec, the church’s rector.
People already living on the edge of poverty have felt rising costs especially profoundly and are more in need of its services; meanwhile, increased numbers of newcomers to Canada still trying to get their feet under themselves mean more mouths to feed.
“That’s coupled with the fact that we’re a congregation that’s getting older,” she adds. “We just don’t have the volunteer base that we once had.”
St. Mark’s food bank has been running for almost 50 years, she says, but all these factors, plus the rise in food costs, have created a unique challenge: demand is high and resources don’t go as far as they used to. This year marked the first time it had to turn away people who came for fresh protein and produce after its supplies ran out.
According to the Hunger Count, a report on food insecurity across the country by Food Banks Canada, Nova Scotia saw a 21 per cent increase in visits between 2023 and 2024 alone, the largest in Canada during that time period and compounding a 53 per cent increase from 2019 to 2024. But it is far from the only province seeing greater food insecurity than before. Since the pandemic, every province the organization surveyed has shown an increase in total visits, including jumps of about 80 per cent in British Columbia, 109 and 116 per cent in Ontario and Quebec and 92 per cent in Alberta.
This is all symptomatic of an affordability crisis which requires urgent corrective action on the part of policy makers, says Richard Matern, head of research for Food Banks Canada. And while food banks run by religious institutions remain a vital part of the country’s food security safety net, he says, both they and the system as a whole are feeling the strain.
For the first time this March, food banks across Canada saw a record 2 million visits in a single month, “a grim milestone,” says Matern. “Poverty in Canada is spiralling out of control.”
Increases in visits may not reflect the whole scope of Canada’s affordability problems, either, he says. Many food banks have had to cut down on the supplies they offer and ask clients to come in less frequently for visits because their donations and funding haven’t increased at the same rate as demand and prices. As a result, he says, the higher numbers of visits reflect only the additional demand the food banks were actually able to meet. It’s possible there were even more people in need who didn’t receive help and therefore weren’t counted.
“Food banks do everything they can to make sure everyone gets something—that no one gets turned away … but indications are that they’re having to take greater steps to manage this extreme increase in demand and the supply has not increased nearly as much.”
Orovec says food bank volunteers have also seen a change in the demographic makeup of St. Mark’s clients. Previously they primarily received visits from single men and people on fixed incomes, including retirees and people living on disability checks. Today, however, they are seeing more young families, many of whom are refugees or recent immigrants, often with multiple children, and more new Canadians than before.
“When you’ve got somebody coming into the food bank who’s shopping for one person versus [shopping for] eight people, it’s a big transition for the food bank, too. We’ve got a lot more produce going out with each person who comes just because we’re trying to help them meet the needs for a much larger family.”
One such client is Oksana Heretsun, a Ukrainian who recently arrived in Canada from Poland with her husband and two children, one of whom has a degenerative disability. She describes the process of getting settled in Canada as full of difficulty with communications and paperwork. Acquaintances helped her husband find a job, but after nine months in the country, she still doesn’t have one herself, she says. The difficulty, she says, is mainly with the cost of housing, which exhausts the majority of her husband’s salary.
“I hope that in the future, I will also be able to find a job for myself and it will be a little easier financially,” she wrote in an email to the Journal.
New Canadians, are more likely to be among the “working poor” and dependent on part-time or gig work, employment categories not protected by unemployment benefits, says Matern. That makes them a large proportion of those hardest hit by the affordability crisis, he says.
Meanwhile, in Dawson Creek, B.C., another Anglican church, also called St. Mark’s, is facing a similar set of challenges. The church runs both a food bank and a soup kitchen and both have been finding it harder to keep supplies coming in amid rising costs, says the food bank’s treasurer, Rupert Kirk. Much of the charity’s funding comes from the local Anglican, Catholic, Lutheran and United churches, many of whose congregations have shrunk in recent years, making for a smaller pool of funding and resources. And while private and corporate donors have stepped up with some funding as well, the bank has nonetheless had to start cutting down on the content of its food hampers to have enough to go around. Dena Batt, lead volunteer at the St. Mark’s Dawson’s Creek food bank, says the hampers have shrunk significantly over the past few years.
“We used to be able to do hampers for a family of six to eight, four to six and two to four. We can’t anymore. It’s just one size only and it’s pretty small. We took out our cereal, powdered milk, crackers, juice boxes that we can’t afford to put in anymore.”
Part of a food bank’s mandate is to find ways to support clients to the point where they won’t need food assistance anymore, says Batt. “But how do you do that when honestly what’s getting everyone down is the cost of everything? That’s why they’re suffering … That’s all I can say, is bring [food prices] back town to where they used to be. But I don’t know if that will ever happen.”
Food Banks Canada is calling for urgent action on income security to support people who are more likely to struggle with affordability says Matern. The interventions it recommends include a monthly groceries and essentials benefit for the lowest income households where people are often working but not earning enough to afford both housing and essential goods. It also recommends modernizations to unemployment benefits, including broadening the definitions of employment to include gig work and other precarious job types, making those who lose those jobs eligible for benefits. In the longer term, it calls for the government to investigate the possibility of a rent assistance program for low-income households and invest in and incentivize more supportive and affordable housing. Supports are also needed in Northern Canada, it says, where shipping logistics tack huge premiums onto prices.
In late November, the federal government introduced an “affordability package” which would send $250 cheques to Canadians making less than $150,000 per year as well as cutting GST on children’s clothes, toys, pre-prepared meals, restaurants and alcohol until the end of January.
“It’s encouraging to see a step taken. There’s an acknowledgement there about affordability and lower income brackets definitely will feel the impact,” says Matern. “However, it’s very short term and we’re encouraging them to actually implement … longer term changes.”
Representatives from Food Banks Canada brought the charity’s policy proposals to MPs in December, along with a petition to implement them signed by 100,000 Canadians. Matern says he believes no party can afford to ignore the rising urgency of the affordability crisis as brought to them by Food Banks Canada and their own constituents.
