‘There is a tidal wave coming our way’: Ontario food banks brace for bleak 2025

As Ontario buckles under millions of food bank users, one authority is fighting to ensure that reserves don’t break before the new year.

Earlier this year, Daily Break Food Bank reported that between 2023 and 2024, one million provincial residents visited food bank facilities in Ontario — a 134 per cent increase from years prior.

This past October, Food Banks Canada also said that two million Canadians now use food banks monthly.

In the face of pressure, Meghan Nicholls, the CEO of Food Banks Mississauga, is using every tool available to ensure that the provincial food bank system does not collapse by 2025.

Nicholls notes that in Mississauga alone, food bank usage has increased 58 per cent, generating an average of 56,000 annual food bank attendees.

Operating parallel to this trend is the sting of the pandemic era, as only a handful of years ago, food banks in Ontario looked wildly different than they do today.

“During the pandemic, it was unbelievable; during 2020 and 2021, we could hardly pick up the money fast enough. People were phoning us and offering donations, all while food bank use was still increasing,” Nicholls told INsauga.com.

However, this pace between public demand and private supply ended abruptly. Nicholls says that challenges related to the cost-of-living crisis made food bank use (provincially and nationally) skyrocket.

“I hear it all the time. A woman came to the front desk once and mentioned that this time last year, she was regularly donating cans of soup with her kids in tow — now she’s here as a client because she needs help,” says Nicholls.

According to Nicholls, 45 per cent of people accessing the Mississauga food bank facility only started doing so within the last calendar year.

This, in turn, has generated more stress for Nicholls, who is already fighting on two fronts, as she also serves as a board chair at Feed Ontario — a resource network across food banks within the province.

Alongside new clients, one systemic issue occurs in lockstep with each new food bank visitor, primarily a lack of understanding of how public aid works in Ontario.

“They are having problems with what we refer to as ‘system navigation’ because if they need a food bank, there is a good chance they could use some other systems as well,” says Nicholls. “It’s something we have always done to an extent, but now, with so many people navigating the system for the first time, it sets a different tone.”

Using information gathered by Feed Ontario as a key metric, Nicholls notes that if the provincial policy does not address the cost of living issues, she anticipates that her Mississauga facility alone will manage the needs of 100,000 people annually by 2027.

In response to this looming reality, Nicholls has been doubling her efforts to allocate donations of non-perishable goods wherever they can be found in southern Ontario.

Nicholls says that in Mississauga, donation metrics went from five million pounds of goods to nine million a year.

However, despite this near-doubling of efforts, it only buys her facility a fraction of the time it needs to keep up.

There is also a major elephant in the room, and that’s an uptick in use amongst international students–people that many experts say should have enough savings to not require food intended for Canada’s most vulnerable residents. While that issue is contentious, Nicholls says she will not hesitate to help anyone in need.

“Our stance is we open our doors for anyone who doesn’t have the financial means to purchase food. There can be a lot of ways that can happen and one is inviting international students to Canada and misleading them about how expensive it is to live here,” says Nicholls.

“If people are here, and they have not been set up for success, it’s not our job to decide who is worthy of a food bank and who isn’t.”

Nicholls noted that while she was pleased with federal mandates for international students to maintain an annual income of $20,000, it’s a mere drop in the bucket of desperately needed policy requirements.

In tandem with the report that two million Canadians now use food banks regularly, Food Banks Canada also released its ‘Poverty Report Card’ earlier this year.

Ontario received an overall D- and was graded on several categories relating to policy structure, which included:

Experience of Poverty (Ontario scored a D-)
Poverty Measures (Ontario scored an F)
Material Deprivation (Ontario scored a D+)
Legislative progress (Ontario scored a D)

“Almost every province across the country has made some investment in food security, whether by supporting food bank networks or large-scale investments,” says Nicholls. “Ontario has not stepped up to the plate and has not done nearly enough to address the crisis in this province.”

This provincial attitude, according to Nicholls, can be traced back to certain standards within regional politics, such as a general belief that those living in poverty put themselves in that situation.

As a result, a new system is created that forces residents to ponder options they never would have considered before beyond just walking into a food bank.

“In 2022, I talked publically about inquiries we were getting at our facility about medically assisted death (MAID). I later watched the prime minister go over that footage of me in a TV interview and he still stated [the federal government] was doing as much as they could,” says Nicholls.

Keeping up with public desperation, other variables are now stalling what would normally be a charitable season for Canadian food banks, as the holidays usually come with an uptick in donation standards.

However, the ongoing Canada Post strike has hurled a new category of concern at Nicholls, as a large number of donating Canadians are often seniors, who do not send their donations any other way except by mail.

Now, Nicholls is faced with doing what she can until the wheels of the system eventually come loose.

When asked about a timeline of a potential national food bank crisis, Nicholls noted that the defining moment is right around the corner.

“2025 will be the indicator if we are in free fall. I’m concerned about the number of people renewing mortgages in 2025, I’m worried about our economy and I’m worried about the U.S. following through on their tariff promises,” says Nicholls.

In the face of these variables and the standards set by the last few years, food banks in Canada have no choice but to plant their feet.

“For organizations like mine, it’s all about how do we remain sustainable, maintain wellness, and continue to serve as best we can with our resources — knowing that there is a tidal wave coming our way.”