Nov 28, 2022
By Christine Ross
Ontario residents have been visiting food banks in greater numbers and more often for six years running.
And the troubling trend escalated this year according a new report from Feed Ontario, a group of 1,200 hunger relief organizations.
The annual report The Deepening Cracks in Ontario’s Economic Foundation found almost 600,000 adults and kids visited Ontario food banks 4.3 million times between April 2021 and March 2022.
That’s a 15 % spike in the number of people turning to food banks, and an alarming 42 % surge in the number of visits compared to 2019.
The report finds one in every three visitors was a first-time food bank user.
“It is the largest amount of people accessing our services on record since we’ve started collecting data and writing these reports,” Feed Ontario Executive Director Carolyn Stewart said.
The organization is urging the province to invest in government assisted housing, among other initiatives.
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