The Ottawa Food Bank is struggling to maintain its services in the face of unprecedented demand and declining food donations, according to its CEO.
A report released by the charity Nov. 20 indicates client visits have increased by 22 per cent in the last 12 months, marking the highest demand the food bank has ever seen.
Over that same period, food donations declined by 20 per cent, according to Rachael Wilson, CEO of the Ottawa Food Bank.
“Because we rely so much on donors and we know donors are affected by inflation just as much as people accessing food banks, we know that’s impacting food donations,” Wilson said.
Statistics Canada reported that 2022 saw the largest Consumer Price Index increase since 1982, with food prices rising more than 9 per cent.
According to its 2021-2022 financial statement, the Ottawa Food Bank purchased roughly 75 per cent more food compared to the previous year. When facing shortfalls, Wilson said, the food bank will typically buy supplies from local grocery stores.
“There are definitely agencies that will have to pull back on the number of hours that they are open,” Wilson said. “We’re already planning a $2.6 million deficit for this year, so that deficit will just have to grow if we’re forced to purchase even more food.”
Gabby Sanabria, who volunteers at the Centretown Community Food Centre on Catherine Street, said clients are noticing the pressure the food bank is facing.
The centre receives most of its stock from the Ottawa Food Bank’s central warehouse and also buys food from local grocery stores when volumes are low. But Sanabria said even the maximum allotment from the warehouse in addition to local shopping can’t keep up with recent demand.
“The last two weeks have seen quite an increase,” she said. “Clients who have come in before […] feel that they’re not getting as much help as they were previously, because we’re having to ration.”
Demand at food banks has spiked across Ontario. In a report released Monday, Feed Ontario reported a record high 800,000 people in Ontario turned to food banks between April 2022 and March 2023. The report added one in 19 Ontarians are now relying on a food bank, a 41-per-cent increase from 2019-2020.
The Unified Support Centre, a volunteer-supported department of the Carleton University Students’ Association, runs a food bank on Carleton’s campus. Open seven days a week, it allows for two food allotments per person each month.
A mature student at Carleton with a wife and two children said he uses the food bank twice a month. The student requested to remain anonymous due to the stigma of using food banks.
“If you’re not working, living on OSAP, you need to go to the food bank if you have access to it,” he said. “I could manage. If you live on a budget, you could manage, but when you get the food bank you can do more with it.”
Tim Li, a research program co-ordinator at PROOF, an interdisciplinary research program which studies food insecurity policy interventions at the University of Toronto, said these latest demand statistics are a “canary in the coal mine.”
“Everything that we know about the problem and what we’ve seen over the year, 2023 is likely going to be worse than 2022,” Li said.
Reversing these trends will require provincial and government interventions to improve the amounts of money given by Ontario Works and Ontario Disability, Li said.
“[Those programs have] long been inadequate for people to afford food and other costs of living, but as we see things getting more expensive and these programs not keeping up, it becomes even harder for these folks to keep up,” he said.
Featured image by Chris Edwards.
