While many students were enjoying a sunny start to the long weekend in Ottawa, 14-year-old Liam MacInnis decided to spend his Saturday helping others. He headed to a local grocery store with his mother to volunteer his time collecting donations for the Ottawa Food Bank. “People struggle, so it’s important to have food banks out there,” he said. Like food banks across the country, the Ottawa Food Bank held a food drive this weekend, hoping to stock its shelves and raise awareness about the growing need for food assistance. At a Metro store in the Ottawa suburb of Orleans, MacInnis and other volunteers collected non-perishable food items as the organization grappled with unprecedented demand. “Unfortunately for us, our growth right now is unprecedented. We haven’t seen this level of need in the city,” said Natalie Spooner, Chief Executive Officer of the Ottawa Food Bank. “In the last year alone,” she said, “we’ve seen 588,000 visits. That’s something we’ve never seen before. And so, when we’re responding to that need, it is very challenging to be able to keep those donations high, to be able to meet that need.” Food Banks Canada says in 2025 (the last year for which data is available), food banks across the country saw nearly 2.2 million visits each month. That is double the monthly usage recorded six years ago. A troubling trend for the organization, because it took decades for food banks to reach a million monthly visits, but little more than half a decade to double it. But numbers only tell a part of the story. The people behind them also paint a fuller picture. In 2025, Food Banks Canada said 40 per cent of their visitors were people on social assistance or disability supports. Thirty-three per cent were children, while 19 per cent of food bank clients were people who had jobs but still couldn’t make ends meet. “The reality of the economy for some people is that affordability is a crisis,” said Michael Von Massow, Food Economist with the University of Guelph. “And it’s not just food prices that have gone up. We know gasoline prices are up, and there aren’t very many gasoline banks or transit banks. So where people go is to food banks to try and bridge the gap.” Spooner added that food insecurity doesn’t come out of nowhere. Oftentimes, it is the result of many other challenges a person is facing in their life. “If you’re struggling to afford food, it’s because you have to make very tough choices already,” she said. “You choose medication, or choose to pay your rent, or choose to turn the lights on, or pay those bills. Unfortunately, food is the last thing that they would have to afford.” The federal government has introduced measures in an effort to address the affordability challenge. Those include a middle-class income tax cut, the Canada Groceries and Essentials Benefits, and the temporary suspension of the federal fuel excise tax. But Food Banks Canada wants more. The organization’s call to action includes reforms to Employment Insurance (EI), increases to the Canada Workers Benefit and disability benefits, and more investments into affordable housing. Priorities echoed by many in the fight against hunger in Canada, including Neil Heatherington, the Chief Executive Officer of Toronto’s Daily Bread Food Bank. “We are hopeful that Canadians see the need, respond to the need, donate to their local food bank,” he said. “And at the same time, (that) all the elected officials this Thanksgiving reflect on what a Canada can be without food insecurity.” Frontline workers also know things don’t look promising in the near future, with unemployment rising, and the price of diesel affecting the price of food and every aspect of the supply chain. “Right now, we’re starting to get out of the Canadian harvest season and we’re getting into the time that we import,” said Von Massow. “So as freight prices go up and the distances that things are being shipped increases, we’re sort of confident that we’re going to see price increases over the course of this winter.” A reality that will put more pressure on Canadians already struggling to get food onto their tables, and pressure on organizations like the Ottawa Food Bank, as it tries to stock its shelves to meet the demand of the next few months. For now, food banks are counting on Canadians to remember their neighbours this Thanksgiving weekend, much like a 14-year-old boy who decided to do what he could to fight hunger in his community.
