This week, Food Banks Canada graded the federal government a “D” for its efforts at addressing skyrocketing food insecurity and poverty among Canadians amidst a weakening economy. The 2025 Poverty Report Card indicates a growing number of employed Canadians are impoverished, and provides data that further suggests Canada may be veering into a recession, or already experiencing one.
Daily Bread CEO Neil Hetherington, in an interview with The Hub, described an “upside down world” where traditional economic indicators no longer predict food bank usage. “It used to be [that] when unemployment was high, food bank usage was high. When it was low, usage was low,” he explained. “For the past five years, unemployment was rather low [until more recently], yet food bank usage [continually hit] record levels, four times what it used to be before the pandemic.”
The stark reality facing Torontonians illustrates a broader national crisis further documented in Food Banks Canada’s newly released report card, which found that 25.5 percent of Canadians are struggling with food insecurity.
“And so what you’re seeing is about 60 percent have a post-secondary education and [over 50 percent] have full-time employment [or someone in their household with a full-time job],” Hetherington said, highlighting how incomes have failed to keep pace with the cost of living. “So you know that social contract of you go to school, you get a job, you work hard, you’ll be fine. That just isn’t true anymore.”
The major uptick in the number of Canadians needing support to put food on the table reflects this alarming trend. Daily Bread Food Bank reports that its organization took 38 years to reach one million client visits per year, but then doubled to two million in just two years, and reached three million the following year. Now, Daily Bread projects that it will surpass four million visits in 2025. “It’s fundamentally broken that more than one in 10 Torontonians now rely on the Daily Bread Food Bank,” Hetherington said. “It just never was that way, ever.”
“[The poverty] data definitely raises red flags,” University of Calgary economist Trevor Tombe said about the latest report. “It’s not a formal recession indicator, but rising food insecurity, especially among working individuals, can signal deeper economic stress and broad affordability issues. Even if it may not confirm a recession, it’s certainly consistent with the pressures we’d expect to see in one.”
Tombe, for The Hub, explored the possibility that Canada might already be in a recession. In his assessment, Tombe highlighted some recent worrying indicators: 66,000 job losses in August; Abacus Data polling showing two in three Canadians worried about affording basic necessities; an overall weakening job market, with the employment rate dropping two full percentage points since 2023; and a shrinking economy where GDP shrank in the second quarter of 2025.
Now the latest report card on skyrocketing food insecurity adds another datum that Canada is in recession territory. Hetherington also explained that the increase in Torontonians seeking food banks comes at the same time that a sizable portion of international students using food banks has declined.
International students have comprised a significant portion of food bank users in the past, but recent government changes have helped reduce the numbers. Hetherington explained that students were previously told by the Trudeau government they needed only $10,000 annually to survive while paying quadruple tuition rates, forcing many to rely on food banks when attempting to live on $800 monthly. Government adjustments to income requirements have since reduced both international student enrollment and their food bank usage.
Food Banks Canada’s report card also highlighted that 43 percent of Canadians are paying more than 30 percent of their income towards housing, and the average Canadian household earning $75,000 or less are spending another 57 percent of their income on other essentials, “[suggesting] that many Canadian households have little, or even no, money left over at the end of the month.” Also, according to the scathing report card, overall rates of poverty and food insecurity have jumped nearly 40 percent in the last two years alone.
Another critical factor driving these trends is the Canadian housing crisis. Hetherington pointed to decades of insufficient rental housing construction and the abandonment of cooperative housing programs that Canada excelled at building during the 1990s. “We got out of the cooperative business like we used to,” he said, noting that while organizations like Prime Minister Mark Carney’s just-announced Build Canada Homes will start to address the shortage, “it’s going to be a generation before they’re going to be able to make a dent.”
Toronto real estate developer Chris Spoke and other industry experts have panned the Build Canada Homes initiative as woefully inadequate in addressing the broader housing crisis, something he believes can be more effectively solved through free market solutions, such as removing red tape for housing development and tax incentives.
Hetherington also believes the Canada Disability Benefit, touted by the Liberal government as a poverty reduction measure, has proven particularly inadequate in helping Canadians on disability.
“…July 1 is when the checks came out, and in the budget, it was $200 max [more] per person. And the legislation is really clear. It says that it’s going to bring people out of poverty,” Hetherington explained. “And by the government’s own admission, only 25,000 Canadians—and there are 1.5 million with disabilities, 600,000 who are eligible for this benefit—only 25,000 will cross that threshold below the poverty line. It’s both inadequate and it’s also really hard to access,” he said, describing the benefit as having moved at “a little faster than glacial speed,” given that it took five years to go from announcement to implementation.
The nature of food bank operations has evolved significantly, with Daily Bread now operating more like a grocery store where clients receive points to select items. Notably, 67 percent of the organization’s offerings now consist of fresh food, sourced through partnerships with farms. “Providing fresh fruits and vegetables is less expensive for us than any sort of canned or ultra-processed food,” Hetherington noted.
Food Banks Canada’s report card identifies several policy recommendations, including commitments to reduce food insecurity by 50 percent by 2030, automatic tax filing to unlock unclaimed benefits, modernized employment insurance, and bolstered disability benefits with improved accessibility.
As Hetherington concluded, “Right now we are legislating people on disability to live in deep poverty. It’s fundamentally wrong, and we have the power to change it, and we just need to make the courageous decisions to do that.”
Looking ahead, Hetherington anticipates further challenges as economic conditions continue to worsen. “We’re anticipating [growing demand] as we start to feel the effects of tariffs, as we start to feel the effects of higher unemployment,” he said.
This commentary draws on a Hub interview. It was edited using AI.
Graeme Gordon is The Hub's Senior Editor and Podcast Producer. He has worked as a journalist contributing to a variety of publications, including CBC,…
