Toronto food banks face empty shelves amid record demand, advocates warn

When Julie LeJeune came into Fort York Food Bank on Sunday to take stock of its supplies, the executive director realized she had a crisis on her hands. 

About 450 people came in Saturday alone, she says, leaving the food bank, which is closed Mondays, without enough staples to reopen on Tuesday.

"We don't have anything to put on our shelves,"  said LeJeune.

"I have not seen us be completely out of staples like this."

Thanks to a desperate plea for donations and a huge response from the community, the food bank now has enough supplies to open its doors at College Street west of Bathurst Street as usual Tuesday. But it doesn't have enough to serve the number of clients staff expect to show up.

LeJeune isn't the only one seeing an unprecedented increase in users. There are now 160,000 client visits per month across the city, according to the Daily Bread Food Bank, up from 60,000 two years ago. Food banks saw 5,700 new clients last month — a record, Daily Bread says. Advocates say increased donations aren't matching the need due to rising grocery costs and continued challenges like a lack of affordable housing and low rates for social services like the Ontario Disability Support Program (ODSP).

While this week's crisis was acute, it's not an isolated problem, says LeJeune.

The Fort York Food Bank has had milk, potatoes and several other items, but canned tuna, rice, pasta, beans and canned vegetables — food bank staples with a long shelf life — were down to almost nothing, she says.

Too often lately, staff have had to give clients one can of a protein-rich food like tuna, when they would have hoped to give two, she says, but this shortage was unprecedented and the timing couldn't have been worse.

"Tomorrow's a special day. We're reopening for the first time in two years to have clients come back inside," she told CBC News on Monday.

Since the pandemic began, the food bank was only providing people in need with ready-made bags, a decision that meant clients couldn't pick items they might prefer, something that wasn't ideal, she says.

Not sure what to do, she began to tweet about the food bank's needs and emailed Coun. Mike Layton, who represents the ward where the food bank is located, to spread the word.

Community members who had seen the tweets began arriving on foot, by bike and car on Monday with items on LeJeune's list. But even as the donations arrived throughout the day, at the other door, clients who had not realized the food bank was closed came by, hoping for anything at all to tide their households over. 

"Our numbers are going up every day. We register new clients daily," LeJeune said.