Daily Bread to cut off Scarborough food bank after reporting financial concerns to police

Toronto’s Daily Bread Food Bank is cutting ties with one of its largest member agencies after the charity uncovered discrepancies with invoices Feed Scarborough provided to support grant funding and reported those and other financial management concerns to police.

Daily Bread’s board of directors decided not to renew Feed Scarborough’s membership agreement last week, so it will no longer receive food deliveries or funding from Daily Bread after its membership expires at the end of this month.

The charity’s CEO Neil Hetherington says Daily Bread had previously paused funding to Feed Scarborough while it investigated financial irregularities, but continued providing the organization with food so residents of south Scarborough wouldn’t be impacted.

“The concerns that we had were, were those funds directed towards the charitable purposes that they were intended to go to?” said Hetherington in an interview. 

“Ultimately it boils down to making sure that every single dollar is spent on the food that Toronto needs … if there is a dollar that is not used towards those charitable purposes, that's a meal.”

Feed Scarborough has received millions of dollars’ worth of food from Daily Bread each year as one its largest member agencies and was provided $620,000 in grant funding for operations and capacity building projects from 2021-23, according to Daily Bread’s police report. 

CBC News reviewed that report along with corresponding invoices, corporation records, property records and emails, which together raise a number of concerns about Feed Scarborough’s financial spending and management. 

Those issues include $18,000 of invoices Feed Scarborough provided Daily Bread to support grant funding which the vendor has no record of, more than $100,000 of expense claims paid to then-board chair, now CEO, Suman Roy that were self-approved, and using grant money to buy $10,000 worth of food from Roy’s own company.

None of those allegations have been tested in court and no criminal charges have been laid. 

“If those financial irregularities prove to be true, obviously there is a great sense of betrayal of trust,” Hetherington said. 

In a statement, Roy — who founded Feed Scarborough in 2018 — wouldn’t address those allegations in detail, citing a third-party investigation his charity commissioned for which it has not yet received the final report.

“I am confident that with the conclusion of this investigation all allegations will be proven unfounded,” said Roy, in his statement. 

“I adamantly deny that any Daily Bread dollars were spent with any vendors with conflict of interest, related to me, any Feed Scarborough staff and Board Members or with vendors offering services that were not received.”

In its police report, Daily Bread said Feed Scarborough assured the charity it would provide documentation in response to the irregularities, but months later denied access to those records.