Recent data paints a dire picture of food bank use in Ottawa.
In its eighth annual Hunger Report, the Ottawa Food Bank (OFB) reported that one in four households in Ottawa experienced food insecurity in 2023, up from one in seven households in 2022. In 2023 there were 556,232 visits to food banks.
During the Nov. 22 launch for this year’s Hunger Report, Ottawa Food Bank CEO Rachael Wilson said that without additional funding, the food bank will be forced to reduce its distribution of food to community food banks by 20 to 50 per cent beginning in Jan. 2025.
For 2023, $424,247 of the OFB’s budget came in municipal funding through the city’s sustainability fund, representing 1.5 per cent of their operating revenue. The vast majority of OFB funding and product comes from community donations and food donations. Audited financial statements show that for 2023, the OFB ran a deficit of $531,229 — its first post-COVID.
Wilson called the dependence on donations “unsustainable.”
Speaking at the launch event, Alta Vista Coun. Marty Carr said she has witnessed first-hand the rising demand in her community as her office shares space with the Heron Emergency Food Centre in the Heron Road Community Centre.
Carr called for systematic overhauls, including an increase to the Ontario Disability Support Program (ODSP), and a universal basic income. She said there are better ways to spend money than the forthcoming stimulus cheques from the Ford and Trudeau governments.
In its demographic breakdown, the new report illustrated that 37 per cent of visitors were children and youth younger than 18 years of age. Forty-two per cent of visitors were single adults, 39 per cent of visitors’ primary income source is social assistance. The report went on to list that there is a growing trend of food bank visitors whose primary source of income is employment — a trend that Wilson said illustrates a growing gap between wages and the cost of living.
“This gap means impossible choices, skipping meals to pay rent, delaying medication to afford groceries, or going without essentials altogether,” she said.
Patrick Morley, communications manager for Bruce House, a housing-first operation for people living with HIV, said that the surging increase in food needs in the community is “cannibalizing” their resources to work towards their original missions.
Morley said that their food program began as a pantry program in 2019 as a way to supplement Bruce House clients that needed extra food or who had an emergency shortage. Now, he says, clients are coming in twice a month as part of their groceries.
As a result of dedicating more of their resources to serving the pantry service, Morley feels as though Bruce House is failing their other missions — namely providing support to clients living with HIV. He says the staff at Bruce House is the same as it was in 2019, though their demand for food distribution has “roughly doubled.”
Morley, too, wants to see better spending decisions to support people experiencing poverty and food insecurity.
Ottawa City Council approved a new poverty reduction strategy in October. Despite the initiative, Ottawa’s budgetary constraints are making it difficult for funding to flow where Wilson and Morley would like to see it go.
In an interview with CBC, Somerset Coun. Ariel Troster said “We are not funded to solve hunger and to solve homelessness, and increasingly we’re being asked to do so. That is the quagmire that we’re in.”
As Ottawa continues to allocate what funding it can, both Morley and Wilson would like to see better social safety nets in place. During the event, Wilson said “poverty has long been a policy choice in this country.”
Morley’s pitch to the average person to care about poverty was simple: “If it isn’t you today, it could be you tomorrow.”
