According to the Salvation Army, one in four parents say they have reduced the amount of food they eat in the past year to ensure their child has enough to eat.
The numbers appear in the nonprofit organization’s annual report on poverty in Canada, released Thursday. The report said parents were experiencing “a disproportionate number of challenges” when it came to living expenses, especially food costs.
“The reality is that many Canadians struggle to meet their daily basic needs for themselves and, more importantly, for their children and families,” said Salvation Army spokesperson John Murray. I continue to hold onto it,” he said.
“And that signals to us as an organization that there is a serious crisis in this country.”
Of the parents surveyed, 24% said they had reduced their food intake in the past year to ensure their children were fed. Of these parents, 90% said they cut back on their grocery bills to cover other financial obligations, 86% said they started buying less nutritious foods because they were cheaper, and 84% said they skipped meals altogether. reported.
While half of all those surveyed said they had experienced “eating-related problems,” a higher proportion of parents (58%) reported the same.
Food Banks of Canada recently reported that in March of this year alone, there were more than 2 million visits to food banks in Canada. This is a 6% increase over the previous year and a 90% increase from 2019.
The Salvation Army reported Thursday that the number of people using its food banks for the first time has increased over the past year.
Of those who have accessed the organization’s food bank in the past year, 58% did so for the first time, compared to 43% the previous year.
However, the Salvation Army report also shows that overall concerns about food affordability and inflation have eased since last year.
36% of respondents cited inflation as the biggest challenge in 2024, down from 47% in 2023. Food affordability was cited as the number one challenge for 33% of those surveyed, down from 39% in 2023.
Canada’s inflation rate peaked at 8.1% in June 2022, before falling to 1.6% in September.
Health care tops the list of concerns
More Canadians appear to be concerned about health care and homelessness in 2024, with 59 per cent and 44 per cent respectively citing these as their top concerns.
Murray said food insecurity and health care are “deeply connected.”
“I don’t think it’s surprising to us given the emotional stress, mental health stress, physical stress that individuals experience in that kind of life, in that environment. And it’s just a vicious cycle. It keeps going around,” he said.
“These are impossible choices that people have to make every day. Therefore, they impact people’s health.”
The Conservative Party issued a statement Thursday criticizing Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s Liberal government for the food insecurity highlighted in the report.
“It wasn’t like this before Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, and it won’t be like this after Mr. Trudeau is gone,” the statement said.
A spokeswoman for the Minister for Families, Children and Social Development, Jenna Suds, said the Conservative Party was using the report to “divide and exploit people’s real concerns” for political gain. He said it would cut programs meant to help.
“The reality is that these cuts will not restore affordability or make Canadians better off,” Suds spokeswoman Genevieve Lemaire said in an email.
NDP agriculture critic Alistair McGregor accused both the Liberal and Conservative governments of failing to address food security.
“Corporate greed and longstanding corporate liberal and conservative deference to grocery store CEOs is what led us to this outcome,” McGregor said in a social media post. .
