Canada needs a way out of the food bank line

Food insecurity reaches beyond the lowest-income households. Canadian research points to a need for adequate incomes and careful assessment of the benefits intended to help families make ends meet.

Canada’s latest national income survey recorded a decline in food insecurity. It also found that approximately 9.8 million people, or 24 per cent of the population, lived in households that experienced it.

Both findings deserve attention. The improvement followed three consecutive annual increases, according to Statistics Canada’s April 29, 2026, release. The proportion experiencing marginal food insecurity fell, while moderate and severe food insecurity were relatively unchanged. The release pairs 2024 income information with responses collected in early 2025 about the previous 12 months. Those collection dates limit what the findings can tell us about conditions today.

For governments, the challenge is to turn that improvement into a sustained reduction in the difficulty households face buying food. This includes understanding hardship beyond the lowest incomes. Emergency assistance remains necessary while people need it, but evidence on income supports points towards a broader response: improve the financial circumstances that determine whether people can afford to eat, then measure what changes.

Two measures of hardship

Food Banks Canada’s HungerCount 2025 recorded almost 2.2 million visits in March 2025, nearly double the March 2019 figure. Its report also found that 19.4 per cent of clients reported employment as their main source of income. These figures describe people reaching emergency food services, including people whose earnings were insufficient to keep them from needing help.

The distinction between visits and people is essential. A person may visit more than once. HungerCount is a snapshot of service use, while the national income survey measures experiences within households. Putting the two numbers beside each other cannot establish how many people receive help or how many remain outside the food bank network.

Food insecurity also begins before someone goes without a meal. PROOF, the University of Toronto research program, describes a range of experiences caused by financial constraints, from worrying about running out of food to reducing intake and going days without eating. That definition concerns the reliability of access to food, as well as the food eaten on a particular day.

A donated hamper can help with an immediate shortfall. It cannot reliably close a recurring gap between income and essential expenses. PROOF’s review of Canadian research finds that food charity can provide temporary relief, while evidence that it moves households out of food insecurity is lacking. That finding helps define the role public policy has to play alongside emergency assistance.

For a household, the grocery budget sits beside rent, utilities and other bills. Reducing a food bill through donated groceries can create breathing room. If the household still cannot meet its basic costs next month, the underlying insecurity remains. Any durable response has to consider the money available after essential expenses, as well as the price of food.

When a middle-class income does not provide security

Food insecurity does not stop at the poverty line. A Statistics Canada study published in December 2025, examining survey responses from 2019, 2022 and 2023, found that it was becoming more prevalent among households with moderate and higher incomes. The probability remained highest among low-income households. The finding broadens the picture of who can experience hardship without suggesting that the risks are equal.

Public benefits already reach some families earning well above the lowest incomes. The Canada Revenue Agency’s current child-benefit examples include a family with one child under six and adjusted family net income of $100,000 receiving approximately $4,485 for July 2026 to June 2027. Eligibility does not establish hardship, but it demonstrates that receiving income support is compatible with a relatively substantial family income.

The wider concern is whether earnings cover the essential costs associated with a stable household. Homeownership and a car do not, by themselves, establish that a family has money left for food. If essential bills can only be met after public transfers, the analysis needs to examine housing costs and debt commitments alongside wages.

Keeping a home and a vehicle needed for work raises different policy questions from maintaining discretionary spending, including vacations. Benefits enter a household budget, but their receipt does not establish how the money is spent. A reduction in discretionary spending is not, by itself, evidence of food insecurity. Public support needs clear objectives so its adequacy and fairness can be assessed against the hardship it is intended to address.

Canada has evidence about income

A 2016 study by Lynn McIntyre and colleagues examined low-income adults aged 55 to 74 living alone or with people unrelated to them. Using Canadian Community Health Survey data from 2007 to 2013, the researchers found that food insecurity prevalence among those aged 65 and older was about half that among the younger group. They linked the difference to eligibility for publicly financed pensions.

The study was observational and concerned a particular population under earlier economic conditions. It provides evidence of protection through dependable income, without establishing that extending a particular payment to everyone would produce the same result.

Research on families offers another example. In a 2019 study, Erika Brown and Valerie Tarasuk compared changes among households with and without children around the introduction of the Canada Child Benefit. In their lowest-income sample, the estimated reduction in severe food insecurity was 4.7 percentage points greater among households with children. The study used survey data from 2015 to 2018.

The result concerned severe food insecurity; it did not establish that the benefit eliminated the problem. Reducing serious deprivation is valuable even when substantial need remains.

These studies support an income-based response, while leaving difficult choices about payment levels and eligibility. Governments would also have to account for costs and the way additional support interacts with other benefits. Transparent costing and evaluation would help establish which changes deliver enough assistance to make a lasting difference.

New programs face different tests

Canada has already changed one income support. The Canada Revenue Agency says the Canada Groceries and Essentials Benefit replaced the GST/HST credit in July 2026, with a 25 per cent increase in benefit amounts for five years. It provides tax-free quarterly payments to people with low and modest incomes, and filing a tax return triggers consideration for eligibility.

The national survey interviews preceded those payments, so the April release cannot establish their effect. Future evaluation should examine whether recipients experience less food insecurity, how results differ by income and family circumstances, and whether people entitled to assistance actually receive it. The value of a benefit on paper and the amount reaching a household are separate questions.

School meals have a different immediate purpose. The federal government says its National School Food Program, launched with $1 billion over five years, is providing meals to up to 400,000 additional children annually. Its implementation involves provincial, territorial and Indigenous partners. These figures describe government-reported funding and reach. They do not independently establish a reduction in household food insecurity.

A meal at school provides food during the school day and can relieve part of a family’s grocery expense. Evaluating that contribution requires attention to who receives meals and how consistently. Household food security asks a wider question about reliable access throughout the year. Treating the measures separately allows school meals to be assessed fairly without assigning them responsibility for an entire household budget.

Measure security beyond the service counter

Responsibility extends across governments. Federal income transfers sit alongside provincial and territorial decisions about social assistance, minimum wages and other supports. PROOF’s policy research identifies these as ways governments can influence household food security. A credible approach would assess their combined effect on the resources available to people most exposed to deprivation.

National averages also need qualification. Statistics Canada reported food insecurity among 44.4 per cent of people in one-parent families in its latest release. The survey excludes people living on reserves and other Indigenous settlements in the provinces, limiting what it can establish about conditions across First Nations communities.

Governments should therefore report changes in the severity of food insecurity alongside program spending and delivery. Food bank figures remain useful, but a shorter line alone would be ambiguous: fewer visits could reflect reduced need or difficulties obtaining assistance. Household evidence is necessary to distinguish those possibilities.

The next meaningful improvement would be fewer households reporting that they had to compromise their food because money ran short, with the reduction extending to moderate and severe insecurity. Emergency providers would still need the resources to respond. Their work would take place alongside a demonstrable decline in the hardship bringing people through the door.

SDG context

This issue connects directly to SDG 1: No poverty, particularly target 1.3 on social protection, and SDG 2: Zero hunger, whose target 2.1 calls for access to sufficient, nutritious food throughout the year by 2030. For Canada, progress requires evidence of improved access within households. Spending and meals distributed help explain the response, but do not establish that result.

Sources referenced

1. Statistics Canada. “Canadian Income Survey, 2024.” The Daily, April 29, 2026.

2. Food Banks Canada. HungerCount 2025: Food Banks as a Lifeline — Canada’s New Normal. 2025.

3. PROOF, University of Toronto. “New data on household food insecurity in 2025.” April 29, 2026.

4. PROOF, University of Toronto. “What can be done to reduce food insecurity in Canada?” Research synthesis, accessed Oct. 17, 2026.

5. McIntyre, Lynn; Daniel J. Dutton; Cynthia Kwok; and J.C. Herbert Emery. “Reduction of Food Insecurity among Low-Income Canadian Seniors as a Likely Impact of a Guaranteed Annual Income.” Canadian Public Policy 42(3), 2016, pp. 274–286.

6. Brown, Erika M., and Valerie Tarasuk. “Money speaks: Reductions in severe food insecurity follow the Canada Child Benefit.” Preventive Medicine 129, December 2019, article 105876.

7. Canada Revenue Agency. “Canada Groceries and Essentials Benefit.” Program information, accessed Oct. 17, 2026.

8. Employment and Social Development Canada. “Backgrounder: Federal vision for a National School Food Program.” June 2026.

9. United Nations. Transforming our world: the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development. 2015. Targets 1.3 and 2.1.

10. Statistics Canada. “Changes in households’ vulnerability to food insecurity in Canada before and after the COVID-19 pandemic.” Health Reports, December 2025.

11. Canada Revenue Agency. “How much you can get — Canada child benefit.” July 2026 to June 2027 payment examples, accessed Oct. 17, 2026.