(rdnewsNOW/Josh Hall)

By rdnewsNOW Staff

HungerCount 2023 Report

Red Deer Food Bank sees 81 per cent increase in demand compared to pre-pandemic

Oct 26, 2023 | 2:21 PM

Food banks across the country are feeling a drastic increase in demand for their services, including the Red Deer Food Bank.

According to the HungerCount 2023 report recently released by Food Banks Canada, there were a total of 1,935,911 visits to food banks just this March, marking a new national record. That represents a 32 per cent jump compared to 2022 and 78.5 per cent from 2019.

“Relentless inflation and a broken social safety net has caused many people who never thought they would need a food bank to walk through the doors for the first time. With food banks across Canada in crisis mode, as demand reaches new all-time highs, we must ask: when is it enough before we act?” said Kirstin Beardsley, Chief Executive Officer of Food Banks Canada.

The report is the only research study encompassing the country’s roughly 4,750 food banks and community organizations. The organization says statistics have shown the devastating impact of rapid inflation and inadequate social supports on poverty, food insecurity and hunger in Canada.

RED DEER

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In response to the report, the Red Deer Food Bank stated on their website that they are 81 per cent busier than they were in March 2019, noticing a toll on the mental and physical health of those accessing support.

READ: Non-profit Green Iglu to hold first food security forum in Red Deer

“Food insecurity can be described in levels. At the entry level, home occupants are stressed about their finances and worry they will not be able to afford food. At the mid-level, adult occupants are choosing cheaper foods and reducing their food intake. They are starting to feel hunger. In the third level of food insecurity, the occupants, both adults and children, are experiencing hunger because they are going without food for periods of time,” wrote Executive Director Mitch Thompson in a report.

At their Annual General Meeting on October 25, their Board of Directors released a 2023 Fact Sheet with some of the following statistics about their services:

• 59 per cent of applicants for support claimed that cost of food was the primary reason for assistance.
• 38 per cent of households served have three or more people in the home. 41 per cent are individuals.
• By September 30, 2023, they had served 20,787 people, an increase of 15 per cent by this time last year.
• The Food Bank was accessed 70,219 times between August 1, 2022, and July 1, 2023, with the emergency hamper program and the community pantry.

The Food Bank said that so far this year, they have already supplied over 14 per cent more hampers than in 2022. However, on a more positive note, from September 2022 to March 2023, 64 per cent of clients served only used the hamper services one or two times over a six-month period, rather than once per month as they are allowed. From March to August 2023, demand continued to decrease.

“We understand that collecting and redistributing food does not do enough to change the cycles of poverty,” said Thompson in his report. “It is part of our effort to reduce the barriers our food-insecure clients face. We must help them to establish improved financial foundations so our limited resources can be used to assist the most vulnerable,” he wrote.

The Food Bank does various other initiatives as a result, like supporting a volunteer income tax program to ensure clients are eligible for benefits, offering culinary educational sessions, preparing food for sale with their food truck to raise funds, and soon producing food themselves.

ALBERTA

According to the HungerCount 2023 report, although Alberta saw a smaller one-year increase of 12 per cent to 174,311 this year, it is also an increase of 94.1 per cent from the last pre-pandemic year. Other provincial food bank stats include:

• 33 per cent are children
• 43.8 per cent are single-adult households
• 42.4 per cent are on social assistance or disability-related supports
• One out of six are employed

In 2022, Alberta led the nation as the province with the greatest proportion of people, 22 per cent, impacted by food insecurity, according to a report by the University of Toronto.

READ: UCP must act now for Albertans struggling with food insecurity, NDP says

CANADA

The report shows that food bank use among people who are employed continued to increase to record levels. In 2023, 17 per cent of food bank clients reported employment as their main source of income, compared to 12 per cent in 2019. One third of food bank clients are children, representing over 600,000 food bank visits in March 2023.

They say the top reasons people accessed a food bank this year were food costs, housing costs, low wages, or not enough hours of work.

Several Canada-wide recommendations were made in the Hunger Count report:

• Rebuild the broken social safety net
  • Increase benefits for seniors and those living with disabilities
  • Continue top-ups to tax-related benefits until inflation has returned to two per cent
  • Allow all households with low incomes to access non-cash benefits currently only available to those on social assistance
  • Make single adults with a low income a priority in future poverty reduction measures
  • Develop new mental health measures, focusing on populations with low incomes
  • Ensure all federal benefits are indexed to inflation
• Get serious about affordable housing
  • Examine the potential of a national rent assistance program
  • Develop tools to address the costs of housing
  • Build more supportive housing for people with mental and physical health disabilities
  • Create tax policies to spur the development of purpose-built market rental housing
  • Introduce an action plan to support students who are struggling with housing and food insecurity
• Support for workers with low incomes
  • Develop a new program within EI for people aged 46 to 65
  • Broaden the EI qualifying definition of “employment” to include self-employed and precarious work
  • Reduce the number of qualifying hours of employment needed to qualify for EI
  • Expand the Working-While-on-Claim provisions within EI to allow people to retain their benefits while working temporary or part-time jobs
  • Extend the maximum duration of EI benefits from 45 to 52 weeks
  • Work with provinces and territories to reduce claw-back and improve harmony between social assistance and EI
  • Increase the Canada Workers Benefit

(With files from David Opinko/ LethbridgeNewsNOW)

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