OTTAWA - Inadequate employment insurance benefits are forcing more and more people to turn to food banks for help, Liberal Leader Michael Ignatieff said Sunday.

Canada's unemployment rate actually fell in September, dropping to 8.4 per cent. That's a decline of 0.3 percentage points from August, and the first such drop since last fall when the recession took hold.

The dip is a reason to rejoice, Ignatieff said Sunday, but he's also worried about the toll the recession is taking on unemployed people who have not been able to find new jobs.

"What I think everybody worries about is how sustained this fall in unemployment will be. We encourage it, but the facts are that some of the unemployment is very persistent," Ignatieff told reporters outside a food drive at an Ottawa farmer's market, a day after touring a food bank in his Toronto riding.

"In Toronto, at the food bank I was at yesterday, a lot of people are using the food bank because they've run out of their EI," he said, pointing to a 17 per cent increase in food bank use in that city last year. "That's a serious issue."

The length of time a person can collect employment insurance benefits depends on the unemployment rate in the region. The maximum time for high-unemployment areas is 50 weeks. The Tories increased the maximum time by five weeks in the January budget.

The Liberals have argued for a single national standard. They've also criticized the government for being too slow to spend $12-billion in money set aside to bring the economy back to life.

Ignatieff said he hopes reliance of food banks diminishes as employment picks up, but he's not too optimistic.

"We've got a long way to go. The recovery is very bumpy, and I hope next year we'll have fewer people using the food bank, that's for sure."

Ignatieff and his wife Zsuzsanna Zsohar followed up their trip to the Ottawa market with a stint at a large soup kitchen in the downtown core. After a couple of weeks of intense political pressure stemming from poor polling results and the resignation of his Quebec lieutenant, Ignatieff seemed relaxed and content to be in neutral territory, ladelling out bowls of soup and plates of stroganoff for the hungry and homeless.

"I know he's here in a very sincere way," said Paul Soucie, executive director of the Shepherds of Good Hope, which feeds about 1,700 people a day. "People seem happy. It's a good day."

A recent Salvation Army report said the demand for its food banks across Canada has increased during the recession, while donations had dropped.