Challenging month for Canadian food banks amid holidays, rising demand

In Ontario, visits surged 36 per cent – to 5,888,685 – between April 2022 and March 2023 compared to the previous year, according to a November release from Feed Ontario. Bissell says demand is so high in her network that it’s unable to build up food reserves. “As soon as that food is coming it’s being distributed out to people in need,” she said in an interview. “Every year we seem to be feeding more and more people.” On the other side of the country, Food Banks of Quebec executive director Martin Munger says his organization this year distributed twice the number of aid packages it handed out in 2019. It gave out tens of thousands of food baskets in…