Feed Ontario highlights record food bank use in annual report

December 15, 2022 · 0 Comments

Written By SAM ODROWSKI

As food costs continue to rise, more people are accessing support than ever before.

Canada’s food bank usage hit an all-time high earlier this year with nearly 1.5 million visits in March. Provincially, food bank usage has risen for six years straight with more than 600,000 people accessing them last year, accounting for 4.3 million visits.

Representatives from Feed Ontario delivered a presentation to the Orangeville Food Bank on the organization’s newly released 2022 Hunger Report on Dec. 5. They went over food bank use within the province over the last year.

“Food bank use across the province has hit record highs. We are seeing more people than ever before and people are visiting food banks more frequently than ever before,” said Amanda King, director of government relations and advocacy at Feed Ontario, a not-for-profit collective of hunger-relief organizations. “In fact, when we look at it provincially, there is some concern that the rate of growth could outpace the capacity of the network.”

Many communities in Feed Ontario’s network of 134-member food banks have had their inventories cut back from two to three months’ supply of food down to two to three weeks, due to increased demand, King noted.

At the current rate of rising demand, she said food banks around the province could reach a tipping point where they don’t have the resources to feed everyone trying to access them. To help avoid this, good public policies need to be enacted that reduce the need for food banks, said King.

“We also need to make sure people have the income that they need to afford today’s cost of living,” she told the Citizen.

The demographics of people accessing food banks are those with precarious employment, unaffordable housing costs, black and Indigenous people, and those who rely on social assistance as their primary source of income.

The number of different people accessing food banks in Ontario climbed by 15 per cent since 2019 and there’s been a 42 per cent rise in the total number of food bank visits, Feed Ontario’s report noted. The report also shared that over the same period, there’s been a 64 per cent increase in first-time users of food banks, who now represent one in three people that visit them.

The Feed Ontario report highlights a key statistic – it’s harder to break the cycle of poverty today than ever before.

A child born in the 1980s is 22 per cent more likely to remain in poverty as an adult than a child born to the same circumstances in the 1960s, and that trend has continued.

Many things have changed over the last 40 years. One of the biggest factors is that the jobs aren’t the same.

“We used to be a manufacturing powerhouse in Ontario. It was very common to have long term jobs, stable jobs, jobs that offered employer benefits, pension programs, sick days, all sorts of things that really helped to support workers,” said King. “But those jobs are becoming few and far between. As time goes on, they’re actually becoming almost an exception in many cases.”

Instead, there’s been a rise in precarious employment or the gig economy, which is employment through corporations like SkipTheDishes, Uber, and Instacart. This type of work now represents almost one in 10 workers in Ontario.

This, in part, has led to a 47 per cent increase in the number of people with employment accessing food banks, King noted.

“People working today still cannot earn enough money for the cost of living, so consequently, they’re coming to the food banks to help fill that gap and get that support,” she explained.

In addition to employment, another significant change over the past four decades leading to increased poverty is that employment supports are not the same.

Employment Insurance (EI), a government program every working Canadian pays into, has the worst coverage in Ontario. Just 27 per cent of Ontarians who were unemployed in 2019 collected EI benefits.

Workplace Safety and Insurance Board (WSIB) has also become harder to access and has seen a reduction in investments over the years.

“When it comes to just our workforce, we have poorer jobs, lower quality jobs, and fewer worker supports to help people get back on their feet between employment opportunities,” said King.

Another challenge today that wasn’t present 40 years ago is a lack of funding for social support programs.

Ontarians denied EI often collect Ontario Works (OW) instead for $733 per month, which is significantly below the poverty line at around $2,600. Meanwhile, the Ontario Disability Support Program (ODSP) pays $1,228 per month.

With the average cost to rent a basic single-bedroom apartment in Orangeville ranging from $1,200 to $1,800, it’s no wonder many people who rely on social support programs end up accessing food banks.

A Feed Ontario survey last year showed that one in three respondents reported having less than $100 after their rent payment each month to pay for everything else.

A divestment in affordable housing has also created a cost-of-living crisis in Ontario over the past few decades. Since the 1990s, investments in co-ops and supportive housing have dropped significantly.

“It actually used to be approximately one supportive or social housing unit per 14 people in Ontario was built, now it’s one in 200,” King remarked.

To help with the food insecurity crisis hitting Ontario, she said there are two main things people can do – talk to their government representatives and support their local food bank, whether that’s volunteering or donating.

“Talk to your MPPs and elected officials, ask for poverty reduction to be prioritized,” King noted. “So that’s increasing the support provided through social assistance, increasing investments in supportive and social housing, as well as improving Ontario’s labour laws to help support workers – ensure they are able to earn sufficient income for today’s cost of living.”

One of the key takeaways from Feed Ontario’s hunger report this year is that solutions are possible, King said.

“What we’re seeing is an accumulation of a lot of long-term income insecurity issues and contributors to [food] insecurity that have progressed. And we’re seeing that in conjunction with the pandemic and inflation rates all coming to a head. But prior to that, 30-40 years ago, we actually had fantastic job opportunities, a social safety net, great access to EI and other supports for workers and people who perhaps had fallen on hard times,” King stressed. “The solutions are there. We just need to bring them back.