Toronto Mayor Olivia Chow on Monday declared a “food security emergency,” with more than one in 10 residents relying on food banks.
One in four of those who frequent food banks are children under the age of 18. Toronto joins Kingston, ON, which earlier in January announced the same emergency, and Mississauga, ON, which declared a food insecurity emergency in November.
Chow put forward the city council motion, and it was seconded by Coun. Rachel Chernos Lin.
The motion affects the Poverty Reduction Strategy, Food Charter, and School Food Program — of which the latter requires Premier Doug Ford’s provincial government to increase funding.
Other programs that stand to receive funding in the wake of the “emergency” declaration include Employment Insurance, Old Age Security, Ontario Works, Ontario Disability Support Program and the Canada Disability Benefit.
These programs will be indexed to inflation.
Monday’s declaration further includes spending on “deeply affordable housing” and promoting “decent work” with more secure jobs, higher wages and more benefits, according to a newswire.
More than half, 57% of people who frequent food banks in Toronto cite cost of living as their main reason, a 2024 Who’s Hungry report states.
Last year, 3.49 million Torontonians visited food banks between April 1, 2023, and March 31, 2024 — a staggering 273% spike since the year before the pandemic, and up 1 million from the year before.
Daily Bread Food Bank CEO Neil Hetherington said his organization has “long championed” the measures that the emergency declaration enabled.
"By aligning this food insecurity declaration with key pillars around stronger social supports, affordable housing and decent work, the city has taken a crucial step towards advancing the right to food for all."
The Conservative Party of Canada in response to the news of Chow’s emergency declaration released a statement blaming the “NDP-Liberal government’s carbon tax and inflationary spending,” which “drove up the cost of everything.”
“After nine years of the NDP-Liberal carbon tax, millions of Canadians are going hungry,” states the press release.
“This year, families will have to spend $800 more on food than they did last year, pushing more people to food banks as they can't afford their groceries.”
The Conservatives note “the soaring price of food is not just limited to our largest cities.”
“Across Ontario, food banks handled 7.7 million visits from over one million residents in 2023 to 2024. And in Canada as a whole, there were 2,059,636 visits to a food bank in March 2024 alone — the highest number in Canadian history,” reads the statement.
The Opposition party said “the last thing Canadians need is even more expensive grocery bills,” and yet the federal government is proceeding with the next carbon tax hike, to go into effect April 1.
The imminent tax hike is “part of their plan to quadruple the carbon tax to 61 cents per litre by 2030,” they wrote.
