‘It’s embarrassing’: Manitoba woman forced to use food bank despite working two jobs

Food Banks Canada’s latest report suggests increased levels of poverty and hunger are becoming normalized in Canada. Alex Karpa reports.

It’s been a difficult last few years for Jaclyn Stone and her family.

Due to rising costs, she’s finding it hard to make ends meet. She has been going to a local food bank in her hometown of Landmark, Man., for the last year.

“It’s heartbreaking. It’s hard,” she said. “We try to take things day by day because if we look at the bigger picture of things, it makes us pretty upset.”

Stone bought a home in 2022, but when mortgage rates skyrocketed, her mortgage payments doubled.

She lost her home and is now renting.

“I had some health challenges, and I couldn’t work for a year,” she said. “It was just hard making ends meet.”

She now works part-time as a school bus driver, doing bus runs in the morning and afternoon. She also works twice a week in the evenings at a local grocery store.

“When I returned to work, it was just as difficult now that grocery prices are higher, bill payments are higher, rent is higher,” she said. “It’s just been a continuous struggle to go uphill.”

Stone and her husband have a 16-year-old son named Alex. She says she worries every day and week about covering expenses, putting food on the table, and just keeping a roof over their heads.

She says she can’t afford to feed her family without help from the food bank.

“I hope more people can afford to just live, that’s the hardest part,” she said. “You can’t even afford to go and do anything. It’s hard enough to just live day to day and put food on your table.”

Food costs spiralling

Stone’s story is becoming all too common in Canada.

A new report from Food Bank Canada’s 2025 HungerCount report shows monthly visits to food banks have nearly doubled since 2019, with around 2.2 million visits in March 2025 alone.

Key findings from the report include:

• Nearly 1-in-5 food bank clients (19.4%) are employed, which is up from the 12.2% in 2019
• One third (33%) of food bank clients are children, which represents around 712,000 monthly visits in 2025.
• 23.1% of households who rely on food banks are two-parent families.
• 70% of food bank clients rent.

Regionally, monthly visits in Alberta, Northwest Territories, and Manitoba spiked over 20 per cent, respectively, between 2024 and 2025.

‘They are using our services more and more’

Dave Feniuk is the general manager of Agape Table in Winnipeg, a local organization that feeds the city’s most vulnerable.

In 2024, he says his organization provided 173,000 meals. Already between January and September, he said that number is at 125,000 and estimates it will reach 185,000 by the end of the year.

That compares to just 85,000 meals provided pre-pandemic in 2019.

“We’re seeing people coming out of the woodwork just to make ends meet,” he said. “We are seeing the marginalized, the newcomers, the refugees, the working poor and the seniors.”

He says if nothing changes, the number of people relying on food banks, not just in Manitoba, but right across the country will only continue to rise.

“Food is going up, rent is going up, utilities are going up,” he said. “Minimum wage has not gone up and with the working poor and the seniors, especially the seniors, the old age security didn’t go up enough to counteract the increase.”

Commit to reducing food insecurity in half by 2030: Food Banks Canada

The national organization has put forward some recommendations to make this goal a reality in the next five years, including:

• Tackling the root causes of poverty, including enhancing the Canada Disability Benefit
• Making life more affordable for Canadians, including introducing a Groceries and Essentials Benefit, targeted at Canadians with low incomes
• Addressing food insecurity in the North

Action is needed

Stone says she would like to see all levels of government step up to help those in the same situation she is in.

“It’s sad,” she said. “You have to borrow the simplest of things from friends sometimes. My friend gave me toilet paper, just so I could get through to pay day.”

She says she is sharing her story to help people understand what many families, like hers, are going through daily.

“You find yourself going through the grocery store, grabbing what you need and when you are ready to check out, you pretty much have to do an audit of your cart to see if you can afford everything,” she said. “Sometimes you have to put things back. It’s embarrassing and disheartening.”

“It’s sad because you used to be able to go to the grocery store, spend $200 and leave with five bags, and now you leave with one or two,” she said.