The Miramichi Community Food Bank feeds about 445 families a month, up from around 246 a month in 2022, said co-ordinator Karen Leverton.The Globe and Mail
In the 17 years she spent as a hairstylist and barber, Karen Leverton got used to being “everybody’s psychologist.”
Still, as the co-ordinator of the Miramichi Community Food Bank, Ms. Leverton is constantly taken aback by the stories she hears from people struggling in the New Brunswick city.
“People walk in and cry from embarrassment,” she said. “We are a proud little city, but I’ve noticed that people are slowly losing their pride, out of desperation.”
These struggles are reflected in the latest Poverty Report Cards issued by Food Banks Canada, which assigns letter grades to each province on food security and affordability in general. New Brunswick received an F – the worst among the provinces.
The report, published Monday, found that 37 per cent of those surveyed in the province are spending 30 per cent or more of their income on housing. And respondents are spending an average of 63.9 per cent of their income on essentials, which include expenses outside of housing such as utilities, transportation and groceries.
“I’m not surprised at all,” Ms. Leverton said of the failing grade. “The income just doesn’t match what people are paying out.”
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In an e-mail, New Brunswick’s Minister of Social Development, Cindy Miles, said the provincial government has focused on practical measures to help ease the strain of rising costs, including reducing electricity bills and implementing a 3-per-cent cap on annual rent increases.
The report gave Canada as a whole a D+. The highest grade, given to Quebec, was a C.
“It’s not necessarily a report card you’d want to bring home to mom,” Kirstin Beardsley, chief executive officer of Food Banks Canada, said in an interview.
The share of people experiencing food insecurity in Canada dropped slightly in 2024 to 24 per cent, from 25.7 per cent in 2023, according to the most recent data available from Statistics Canada’s Canadian Income Survey. However, the numbers still reflect a crisis, Ms. Beardsley said.
“It’s a very precarious silver lining if we don’t see legislative action at the provincial, territorial and federal levels,” she said.
Though the FBC report provides a breakdown of overlapping policy recommendations for each province, Ms. Beardsley said their “overarching recommendation” is to increase social assistance payments.
“There is no province that offers adequate social assistance, so folks are living well, well, well below the established poverty line,” Ms. Beardsley said.
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At the federal level, the report’s primary call is for a modernization of the employment insurance system.
“EI was built for a work force that doesn’t exist any more,” Ms. Beardsley said. “And as we see unemployment tick up, we need to make sure that that safety net is strong.”
Canada’s unemployment rate has gradually risen from 5 per cent at the end of 2022 to a modern peak of 7.1 per cent last fall.
Ms. Beardsley commended the government for establishing the Canada Groceries and Essentials Benefit (CGEB), which was announced in January as a replacement for the GST/HST credit. Under the new program, recipients will receive a one-time top-up this summer, and then a 25-per-cent increase in their quarterly payments for five years.
“I think that, along with automatic tax filing, expanded dental care and strengthening the Canada Child Benefit have all sort of moved in the right direction,” Ms. Beardsley said. “But there isn’t one silver bullet. There isn’t one single thing that’s going to address the scale of the issue that’s ahead of us.”
But Valerie Tarasuk, a professor emerita at the University of Toronto, said the amounts people will receive through the CGEB will be nowhere near enough to make a dent in the crisis. Prof. Tarasuk is also the lead investigator at PROOF, an interdisciplinary research program examining effective policy interventions to reduce household food insecurity in Canada.
“I think we’re a long way from calling this good news,” she said.
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Maytree, a non-profit group that works to offer systemic solutions to poverty, published a report in February on the CGEB. It said that “early analysis of the new benefit suggests the maximum value is too low to meaningfully reduce food insecurity for a sustained period.”
The organization’s calculation found that the government proposes to provide single adults (who make up more than 80 per cent of recipients) with a maximum increase of about $136 a year – or less than $12 every month.
“Does anybody seriously think that that’s going to change the experience of somebody who’s low-income?” Prof. Tarasuk said.
“It serves nobody for us all to continue to be deluded that somehow this problem is under control, and this government understands it and they’re managing it. No, they’re not.”
In an e-mail, John Fragos, press secretary for federal Finance Minister François-Philippe Champagne, said the benefit is “intended to act as a bridge, providing targeted support to help Canadians manage cost of living pressures today while the broader economic plan takes hold.”
Mr. Fragos directed questions about the Food Banks Canada report to the Minister of Jobs and Families.
In an e-mail, Jennifer Kozelj, a spokesperson for the minister, said their office is reviewing the report’s recommendations, and it is “always looking at ways to strengthen Canada’s social security net and address the pressures Canadians are feeling.”
She said the office is working on strengthening the EI system and has “introduced targeted improvements … so that workers most impacted by tariffs receive help faster.”
Prof. Tarasuk stressed that food-bank usage only reflects the tip of the iceberg when it comes to food insecurity and the broader affordability crisis.
Both PROOF and Food Banks Canada have called on the federal government to set targets to reduce food insecurity.
“I don’t think we’re going to see a meaningful policy change until we get a federal target,” Prof. Tarasuk said.
In Miramichi, Ms. Leverton’s food bank has gone from serving roughly 246 families a month in 2022 to feeding 445 families now.
“I can’t imagine where I’m going to be in 2028,” she said. “I don’t know how we’re going to be able to do what we do, if it continues to rise.”