Mike Wright sorts through packaged food as he packs bags at the Renfrew & District Food Bank on Jan. 29. The food bank serves close to 600 people a month, a significant increase from between 180 and 250 before the COVID-19 pandemic.Keito Newman/The Globe and Mail
For a long time, the food bank in Renfrew County, Ont., was only open during the day. But back in 2021, after staff began hearing from clients who were having trouble making it in, they extended their hours to 7 p.m.
“We’re seeing a huge number of working families, where mom and dad both have just about minimum wage jobs and they just can’t make things work,” said Mike Wright, who has volunteered with his wife at the food bank for more than 15 years, and has run it for the last five.
In the years leading up to the COVID-19 pandemic, the food bank served between 180 and 250 people a month. Once the pandemic hit, that list jumped to 400. Today, Mr. Wright – who is also a local high-school teacher – said it’s close to 600, a jarring level of need for a community of 8,500.
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It’s an increase being seen nationwide. The most recent numbers available from Food Banks Canada show a record-high 2.17-million food bank visits across the country recorded in March of last year. In addition, more than a quarter of Canadian households are experiencing some level of food insecurity.
Experts warn that food bank use is a sign of broader precarity and that an avalanche of Canadians are at risk of losing their homes.
“When food bank visits go up, homelessness follows,” Feed Ontario, a non-profit advocacy group that represents 1,200 food banks and community programs, said in its annual Hunger report released in December, which notes that more than one million people used a food bank in the province between April, 2024, and March, 2025.
Across Canada, big cities and small towns alike are already grappling with surging rates of homelessness, amid converging national crises of housing affordability, mental health and addiction, according to a recent report by the Association of Municipalities of Ontario, a non-profit, which represents 444 communities in the province.
The AMO report identified 85,000 people as having been homeless in the province last year, 12,800 of whom were in rural and northern areas, which are ill-equipped to handle the surge, as The Globe and Mail recently reported. That’s an increase of 31 per cent for rural areas, and 37 per cent for northern communities since 2024 (compared with an increase of 7.8 per cent for homelessness across the province as a whole).
Mr. Wright said he often hears from food bank clients about how difficult it is to get by on social assistance.Keito Newman/The Globe and Mail
Rising food insecurity statistics echo the same affordability problems, experts say – and should be viewed as a predictor of potential future homelessness.
A recent study out of the University of Calgary’s School of Public Policy highlighted the apparent link, by analyzing food bank usage data for people in the city’s shelter system in the five years before they became homeless.
“What you see is that use of the food bank increases steadily over those five years until, finally, people fall into homelessness,” said Ron Kneebone, one of the study’s authors.
“And so what that suggests is that people are increasingly desperate over that five-year period, and that desperation is measured by the frequency of use of the food bank. So, they try to save more and more money to pay rent, and finally, they can’t do it anymore, and they lose their home.”
“It’s not just correlation here. We’re observing how people are actually behaving.”
And food banks are only the tip of the iceberg when it comes to food insecurity, stresses Nick Saul, the executive director of Right to Food, based in Toronto. At its core, he said, this is an income crisis.
“When people have limited income, food is often the first thing they cut from their budgets. And when you can’t afford food, we know that there is deep trouble meeting other basic needs, like rent or prescription drugs or a phone plan or heating or whatever,” he said. “If you’re showing up either in a statistic around food insecurity or in a food bank line, you’re going to be very, very precarious in other facets of your life.”
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In recognition of the growing affordability crisis, the federal government announced a boost to the GST credit on Jan. 26 that promises to deliver hundreds of dollars more a year to low- and moderate-income individuals and families. The increase to the credit – which Ottawa is now calling the Canada Groceries and Essentials Benefit – will affect around 12 million people for five years beginning in July, the government said.
In Renfrew County, Mr. Wright said he routinely hears from people about the impossible math of living on social assistance.
He recalled one client he spoke with in mid-January about trying to get by on the $733 a month he receives from Ontario Works.
“He goes, ‘Mike, I have $40 after I pay all my expenses, for food,’” Mr. Wright said. “And I’m just like, how do you survive as a single person? It’s not possible.”
Mr. Wright’s wife, who is also a local high-school teacher, does the intake at the food bank. Their hearts collectively sink when former students come in.
“To see former students come in … this was never their end goal,” he said.
“No one in high school says, ‘I’m going to go to the food bank when I’m older.’ That’s not who they want to become.”
With a report from the Canadian Press