Demands for the Ottawa Food Bank’s help have surged over the past year, but pleas to the City of Ottawa to substantially increase funding have not yielded additional support.
As a result, Food Bank CEO Rachael Wilson says the organization faces the prospect of drastically reducing the amount of food it distributes to programs around the city.
“We are having to cut back the amount of food distributed in 2025. Depending on the type of agency, it will be about 20-to-50 per cent less food,” Wilson said in an email.
Last year, the Food Bank received $440,000 from the City of Ottawa — about 1.5 per cent of its budget. For 2025, it will receive $463,000 from the city, Wilson said, which still works out to 1.5 per cent. Most of its money comes from donors. Food donations are also made.
The Food Bank expects it will be unable to supply the 98 food programs it serves with the same amount of food it has in previous years, even though donations remain robust.
Persistent food inflation
That’s because food insecurity is on the rise. According to Ottawa’s Poverty Reduction Strategy for 2025-2029, “between 2022 and 2023, the percentage of households experiencing food insecurity in Ottawa increased by 8.9 percentage points from 14.8 per cent to 23.7 per cent [respectively].”
As well, the price of food in September was 2.4 per cent higher than at the same time last year, according to Statistics Canada.
Tricia Johnson, a director at the Ottawa Food Bank, said this year the Food Bank spent more than $9 million on food purchases for the bank’s network of food banks and programs.
“The previous year we were spending approximately $6.3 million. So it’s quite a significant increase to go from six to nine.” The Food Bank’s partners also donate $10 million worth of food, said Wilson.
“This year we’ve received over 556,000 visits to the Ottawa Food Bank network.” This number is a 12.6 per cent increase over last year and an 89 per cent increase when compared to 2019 before the pandemic, said Johnson.
Johnson said though there have been times when the food bank has faced difficulties getting selected products, this has been no fault of the stores that donate to it, but is a general supply and demand problem.
One item food banks frequently struggle to obtain is baby products, said Johnson. “They’re very expensive and they’re the category that’s least donated by the community due to their high cost.”
Those most in need of food banks are families. Johnson said of the people the food bank serves, 37 per cent are children.
“Single-parent households and single-households (people living on their own) — that demographic is quite vulnerable to hunger because they’re relying on one income to make ends meet.”
An issue of government funding
The Ottawa Food Bank has been vocal over its funding concerns. In an article in the Ottawa Citizen, Wilson noted that not only does the city not provide much money, “we receive no funding from any other level of government. … We are at a breaking point, and the city must step up as a true partner in the fight against food insecurity.”
The Food Bank still has a lot of support from the community, said Johnson. “Individual donors, foundations, even corporate supporters often help through fundraising or “food-raising.”
But the Food Bank wants different levels of government to step up, said Johnson. “Food security is not really owned by any one level [of government].”
Rideau-Jock Ward Coun. David Brown, who sits on the city’s community services committee, said the main contributors to food insecurity are wage stagnation and inflation but the city has no direct role in addressing either challenge.
The city can work in other ways toward providing greater support to those in need, said Brown. “Budget 2025 … nearly [doubles] the city’s investment into the community safety, well-being, policy and analytics group which will deliver on the poverty reduction strategy.”
Recently, Mississauga City Council declared food insecurity an emergency.
“They’ve recognized it as a crisis,” said Johnson. “We’ve asked Ottawa to do the same but they’ve declined.”
