INFLATION BITES: High grocery prices continue to drive food bank use
“Without food banks – I feel like, not just me, but a lot of people would be extra stressed out and suffering": Christine, food bank client
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Like tens of thousands of people in Toronto, Christina lined up at her local food bank to get her weekly, additional supply of food because she said persistent inflation continues to keep food barely affordable.
“I got salad dressing, three large butter tarts, a pack of flatbread, a package of potatoes, a bag of coleslaw, a container of tomatoes, a container of cheese sauce, two pre-made meals of pasta and veggies,” Christina said in her Scarborough apartment.
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The SOSO food bank is one of about 200 in Toronto.
Overall inflation is unmoved at 6.9 per cent.
But food inflation is taking a deep bite into family budgets — at almost 11%, Statistic Canada revealed in its monthly picture.
“Without food banks, I feel like not just me, but a lot of people, would be extra stressed out and suffering even more than we are now,” said Christina.
They are one of almost 190,000 clients who used food banks in Toronto in the last month.
Before the pandemic, the Daily Bread Food Bank said it had about 60,000 monthly clients.
Its projections for six months from now show that client base could balloon to 250,000 a month.
“It’s absolutely horrific,” said Neil Hetherington, CEO of the Daily Bread Food Bank. “So many are just a few paycheques away, if that, from having to make use of a food bank.”
This week, Daily Bread released its annual ‘Who’s Hungry’ report, a profile of food insecurity in the city.
Usage has skyrocketed.
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More relying on food banks are people who are employed.
“The people making use of food banks are literally the people across the cubicle from you,” Hetherington said. “Affordability is hitting homes all across the city, so people get it. They understand why people are coming to food banks.”
There has been an aggressive move by the Bank of Canada to push down inflation by rapidly raising interest rates over the last eight months.
Still, Stats Canada’s monthly report showed little change.
“Despite the slowdown in price growth, prices for food purchased from stores (+11.0 percent) continued to increase at a faster rate year over year than the all-items CPI for the eleventh consecutive month,” the agency said.
Food inflation continues to batter Canadians.
Among other foods, shoppers paid more for dry or fresh pasta (up about 45%); margarine (up 40%); lettuce (up 30%) rice (up almost 15%, and soup (up 18%).
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