Neil Hetherington says YES
CEO of Toronto’s Daily Bread Food Bank
let’s start from an unusual place: agreement. We all want a country where everyone has the food they need and we don’t need food banks. But the sad reality is 8.7 million people in Canada are food insecure. The rising cost of living is far outpacing increases in wages and social supports, so more of our neighbours simply can’t afford sufficient food. I argue that food banks are essential interventions now and indeed a requirement for the lasting social policy action that will eventually put food banks out of business.
The old arguments against food banks must be dispelled. It’s said that food banks let government off the hook, yet there has been no case study that shows a jurisdiction where a food bank was shut down and the government stepped in to solve the issue. Also, some people call food banks a “Band-Aid” solution. That may be true, but that label doesn’t negate their necessity.
The first argument for food banks speaks to their effectiveness. When COVID hit, long lines formed outside food charities. They scaled to meet the extraordinary challenge, with an efficacy that any for-profit or government agency can only dream of—typically spending about $1 to distribute a meal.
But efficiency won’t end food insecurity. That can only be fought through systemic change, which charities in Canada have historically spearheaded. Before public education or healthcare, places of worship stepped in to create schools and hospitals for people who couldn’t afford these services. Charities then argued that their empathetic actions needed to become legislated rights, and Parliament agreed. Their personal experience gave them the credentials to call for systemic change.
In many respects this played out with food banks in Canada in the 1990s and 2000s. Food banks, alongside community leaders, argued for the Child Tax Benefit and the Guaranteed Income Supplement. They’d seen first-hand the people chronically requiring food banks and used that knowledge to petition for better supports. When these policies were implemented, national food bank use decreased markedly.
Because most food banks don’t receive government funds, they have an independent status that enables them to make life uncomfortable for people holding office. They can unabashedly and independently share with the public and elected officials what’s happening on the ground. When you distribute just under one million meals per week, as Daily Bread Food Bank does, you earn a seat at the policy table. The scope of our work grants us the opportunity, and obligation, to speak with governments to demand affordable housing, income supports and decent work. Food banks can apply pressure, as we did, to implement the Canada Disability Benefit, which will precipitate a big decline in food bank use once it becomes fully funded.
Food banks not only facilitate emergency food access, they are an essential part of the advocacy work that will help create the future we all desire, one in which no one goes hungry.
Elaine Power says no
Professor of kinesiology and health studies at Queen’s University
It’s a litany now so familiar that we tune it out: Food banks are desperate, unable to meet the demand for food. But despite their best intentions, food banks have inadvertently obscured the underlying problem. They direct our attention to food when the real issue is inadequate income.
Demand is “spiralling out of control,” Food Banks Canada reports. Toronto’s Daily Bread Food Bank is at “a breaking point.” Visits to Calgary’s Food Bank rose 200 per cent from 2019 to 2024. Nationally, over two million Canadians received food charity in March 2024, a million more than five years earlier. Food Banks Canada explains that this “unthinkable” growth can’t be sustained. Food bank usage has soared in tandem with record rates of food insecurity, now affecting over nine million Canadians, including over two million children.
While food bank demand has skyrocketed, the volume of individual donations has dropped, because the affordability crisis is affecting donors too. Corporate donations have also fallen off. Feed Ontario, the provincial food bank association, reports that almost 40 per cent of Ontario food banks have had to reduce the amount of food they give out. Nationally, almost 30 per cent of food banks ran out of food last year.
But food banks were never a solution to food insecurity (inadequate or insecure access to food). For a variety of reasons, the vast majority of food-insecure households don’t even use food banks. The food bank system is, unfortunately, scattershot. Food banks take root where there is a convenient space and a group of volunteers, not necessarily where food insecure households are. Despite their best efforts, food banks have limited capacity and hours. The variety and quantity of foods is limited. Most put strict limits on how often a household can use their services and how much food they can receive. For some Canadians, the idea of using food charity is a sign of hitting bottom, and they’d rather go hungry.
Households that use food banks remain food insecure. That’s because food banks can only provide temporary relief. Food insecurity is a symptom of the much broader household problem of inadequate income. Food-insecure households are less likely to be able to afford their necessary prescriptions. They’re more likely to fall behind in utility payments and rent, and to live in crowded, substandard housing.
The very existence of food banks has unintentionally sown the seeds of a chronic and increasingly desperate crisis. Instead of lobbying politicians to create effective income solutions to food insecurity, we’ve been busy with food drives, imagining that we just need to pitch more tins into the donation bin.
It’s hard to imagine that there are almost nine million food-insecure Canadians. The argument that we can’t close food banks because these people will go hungry ignores the fact that most food-insecure Canadians are already hungry. They’ll remain that way until we confront the real problem—poverty.
neil hetherington responds to elaine power
The Daily Bread Food Bank serves the people of Toronto. Sadly, we provide just under one million meals per week to the community. It is a staggering reality that one in 10 Torontonians now receives much-needed food from our organization and the network we support. The numbers for Alberta food banks are similar. These statistics are disheartening and maddening.
What has been uplifting is seeing volunteers, donors, advocates and staff at Daily Bread rise to the occasion. Collectively we have ensured uninterrupted weekly service of good food to 300,000 people through a shopping model that provides dignified, barrier-free access. Last year Daily Bread distributed over 43 million pounds of food to our network of member food banks, over half of which was fresh produce and protein. These nutrition-dense options can help build balanced meals, but they’re often inaccessible to people facing food insecurity.
Nationally it is a sad reality that Canada has now one food bank for every three grocery stores. The proliferation of food banks and the sophistication with which they operate has grown significantly over the decades. They are a tremendous resource to their 2.8 million clients each year. According to Statistics Canada, that client list is bigger than the number of severely food-insecure Canadians.
Some critics argue that food banks inadvertently obscure the underlying problem of food insecurity by redirecting attention to food itself rather than to the root cause: inadequate income. That critique is outdated, as food banks have taken their frontline experience to the frontlines of advocacy.
Food banks—our research and persistent lobbying within coalitions—are helping drive policy changes.
Far from distracting the public and policymakers from the root causes of food insecurity, food banks are in a unique position to document these causes and advocate for solutions that end poverty and hunger. This is exactly what we do. Throughout our networks, food banks are increasing our sophistication in research to complement what we learn from conversations with the people we serve. As a result, food banks have solid data on why Canadians need to avail themselves of food charity, who these Canadians are, and the policy interventions required to reduce lineups. Ironically, this is data that academic critics of food banks often cite. But I’m more interested when I see it cited by elected officials when they are committing to making legislative and regulatory changes to social policies. These are uplifting moments amid the despair of knowing that approximately 10 million Canadians are food insecure.
Without data, you’re just another person with an opinion. With data, you can drive change.
Over the last year, for example, Daily Bread has seen three policies come into force that have two common elements. First, and most important, each will have a positive effect on reducing food insecurity in Canada. The second is that the experiences of food banks—their research and their persistent lobbying within coalitions—helped drive these changes.
Daily Bread wrote the City of Toronto’s declaration of food insecurity as an emergency. This then resulted in a universal student nutrition program, when the city’s Vision and Strategy for a Universal School Food Program was unanimously passed.
Food banks joined disability communities to argue persuasively that someone receiving disability benefits in Canada shouldn’t be legislated to live in deep poverty. One-third of food bank clients have a disability and are expected to live on $1,400 per month; a full $1,000 below the poverty line. On July 1, 2025, the new Canada Disability Benefit began to distribute $200 per month to Canadians living with a disability.
Finally, in June 2024, changes to Canada’s immigration strategy and regulations resulted in lower growth in food bank usage in Toronto.
None of these policy interventions would have been possible without our on-the-ground experience, serving people who are food insecure. We collect data, the media amplifies it, the community is mobilized, and policies begin to change—albeit too slowly.
Canada’s food banks can walk and chew gum at the same time, as we always have. The policy wins this year were possible because of our authentic service in the community, and our amplifying what we see each day.
Food charity has always been done with humanity. I expect food charity will always be with us. But our hope at Daily Bread is that the experiences of individuals going through difficult times become briefer and recur less. The chronic use of food banks across Canada can be reduced through systemic changes. Until that day, food banks will continue to feed the need now while relentlessly advocating for social policy change.
Elaine Power responds to Neil Hetherington
Food banks were first established here in the 1980s. Why? Because Canadians, living in one of the wealthiest countries in history, simply couldn’t imagine that their neighbours might be hungry. The early food bank founders expected their organizations to close once the economy recovered. Governments would surely recommit to their obligation to support Canadians’ well-being. But 44 years after the first food bank opened in Edmonton, the idea that food banks should close has become almost unimaginable.
Neil Hetherington’s willingness to speak publicly for his vision of a hunger-free Canada, without food banks, is refreshing. As he is the head of Canada’s largest food bank, his arguments for affordable housing, income supports and decent work should carry moral and persuasive authority with elected officials.
But the reality is governments aren’t paying enough attention to this public-health issue, which has profound short- and long-term effects. While Hetherington points to the new Canada Disability Benefit as a testament to food banks’ advocacy, the impact of this small supplement is uncertain. Moreover, it upholds and reinforces the artificial divide between “deserving” and “undeserving” poor. The CDB’s very existence could inadvertently make it more difficult to implement other supports, such as basic income. Similarly the new National School Food Program may mean that fewer students go hungry. But their food-insecure parents and caregivers will still be unable to afford the food they and their children need at home.
Under the terms of the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, Canada committed to ensuring that every citizen has an adequate standard of living, enabling Canadians to purchase food along with other necessities of life. If this were the case, then the demand for food banks would fall off. Food banks could scale down and most could close.
This will happen only when Canadians are mobilized to demand government action to significantly reduce poverty and income insecurity. These are the root causes of food insecurity. Our country’s track record offers little evidence that reasoned arguments will move governments to act decisively. Getting governments to act is a matter of political power, and poor people are among the least powerful. While food bank advocacy for meaningful policy change is important, it is insufficient on its own.
What stands in the way of mobilizing more of us to demand government seriously address food insecurity?
For about the same period that food banks have existed—with a short intermission during the pandemic—we’ve been told that government itself is a problem; we shouldn’t expect it to fix things. Instead we’ve been schooled to turn to “the market” as the better problem solver, and to charity when markets fail. Over the past four decades, food banks stepped up to try to fill the gaps as governments neglected our social safety net.
A stereotype is that people in poverty should be grateful to charitable benefactors, not expect rights or justice.
Of course, we Canadians did our part, bringing non-perishable items to food drives at school, church, work. Instead of being uncomfortable with food banks—and the public policy failures they represent—we celebrate them as proof of our collective and individual kindness. Corporate food bank donors earn “good citizen” badges. Meanwhile, some of the same donors contribute to food insecurity with poorly paid jobs while actively lobbying for lower taxes, which decrease government’s ability to strengthen the social safety net.
Meanwhile, cruel Victorian myths and stereotypes persist about the causes of poverty. Instead of seeing structural and epigenetic causes, some people continue to hold the poor individually responsible for their plight—and for escaping it. The CDB suggests we might give some leeway to those with state-certified disabilities, so they have a tiny bit more income. But the stereotypes imply that those living in poverty should be grateful to charitable benefactors, and not expect rights or justice.
Some say we just “can’t afford” to reduce poverty. This ignores the fact that poverty already costs us—in the healthcare, education and justice systems. A 2019 Feed Ontario report conservatively estimated the annual cost of poverty in Ontario at up to $33-billion. It presents poverty reduction as an “investment” that lowers costs and boosts revenues for businesses and governments.
I’m old enough to remember when we didn’t have food banks. We expected that government programs would keep us afloat when tough times hit. But food banks have become part of the social wallpaper. For my students they’re normal. They can scarcely imagine an alternative. I want to live in a Canada where kindness and compassion is structural, not charitable. I want our policies to be just. We can afford this dream. We don’t need food banks to realize it—we need the political will.
____________________________________________
