Canada

Food bank use across Ontario has reached record highs, with Toronto’s Daily Bread Food Bank reporting its largest increase in the 41 years since it opened.

According to the Who’s Hungry 2024 report, there were 3.49 million client visits to Toronto food banks like the Daily Bread and North York Harvest — a 32 per cent increase from the 2.6 million visits recorded the previous year.

According to the report, one in 10 Torontonians are using food banks to make ends meet and more than 120,000 people accessed food banks for the first time this year. Over half of these new clients come from households with at least one working member.

In Toronto, food bank visits have increased every year since 2019, with 935,000 visits recorded that year. Numbers have almost tripled since then, a trend the report describes as “a grim harsh reality.”