As 2024 looms, GTA food banks worry demand will continue growing

Food banks in the Greater Toronto Area are looking to 2024 with concern after the high-cost of living and food inflation led reliance on food banks to skyrocket in 2022 and 2023. 

Both Food Banks Mississauga and Toronto's Daily Bread Food Bank released their annual reports this week, reporting double digit per cent growth in the number of visits to member food banks throughout 2022 and 2023. 

Meghan Nicholls, CEO of Food Banks Mississauga, said without government action, the number of those needing food banks will rise. She said this year was unprecedented, with the non-profit seeing the highest increase in its 37-year history. 

"If our fundraising doesn't grow at the same rate as the demand for service, we will have to start looking in 2024 at: Are there caps to service? Are there new programs we can't launch? Are there things we have to hold back on?" said Nicholls. 

For Food Banks Mississauga, from June 2022 to May 2023, they saw food bank use that was 82 per cent higher than pre-pandemic levels. According to Nicholls, about five per cent of the city's population now use a food bank. In Toronto, Daily Bread Food Bank reported a 63 per cent year-over-year increase in use between July 2022 and June 2023.

Leadership of both major food banks say without government support to reduce poverty in the community, food banks will continue to see massive amounts of use. 

Talia Bronstein, vice president of research and advocacy at the Daily Bread Food Bank, said one bright spot of the past year has been the way staff, volunteers and donors have stepped up to meet the growing challenge. 

But the rising cost of living isn't just impacting the number of people who visit the food bank, it also means less people can afford to donate to the food bank. 

The combination of rising demand and food inflation has caused Daily Bread's spending to balloon, Bronstein said. The food bank used to spend $1.5 million annually on food, now it's $22 million. 

"We want to make sure every single person walks away with food," she said. "But how do you maintain that when numbers just keep rising and rising and rising?"

Lori Nikkel, CEO of Second Harvest, a national organization that redirects surplus food from businesses to non-profit organizations like Daily Bread and Food Banks Mississauga, is also worried about the year ahead. 

She said they support more than 500 organizations in Toronto but have a waiting list of about 60 others, the non-profits they support include things beyond food banks like community centres and addiction services centres. 

In Mississauga, Nicholls said they've seen a shift in people coming to their food banks. 

"We're starting to have people say to us, I used to donate, I used to send cans with my kids to the food drive at school and now I'm here needing the food bank," Nicholls said.