A food insecurity emergency declaration is active in Toronto, Mississauga and Kingston, Ont.

Meghan Nicholls, the CEO of Food Banks Mississauga, suggested additional states of emergencies could be declared in Ottawa and the Region of Waterloo in the upcoming days. Locals are engaging in discussions with municipal leadership on this matter.

“I think this goes to show the level of desperation, for a lack of a better word, that food banks are in at this point,” said Nicholls. “We’re working with our cities to try and pull every lever we have available to us to make the public aware of how dire the circumstances are at food banks. It certainly doesn't help that the (federal) government right now is paralyzed.”

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Nicholls hopes with a strong number of declarations, “city leadership can partner with local anti-poverty and anti-hunger agencies to jointly go to our premiers and our Prime Minister, whoever that ends up being, to say it's unacceptable for two million Canadian people a month to be using food banks.”

The Toronto pronouncement issued by Mayor Olivia Chow and City Council stated that one in 10 Torontonians rely on food banks.

Neil Hetherington, the CEO of Daily Bread Food Bank, suggested that if there were “one in 10 Torontonians without hydro or one in 10 Torontonians with flood damage, I think we would be sending in the army and every government resource.” Instead, Hetherington said, “we are in a state of flux both federally and provincially.”

Hetherington is delighted so many residents of Toronto are calling the Daily Bread Food Bank to express concern and ask how they can be a part of the solution.

Measures that the City of Toronto is taking in response to the food insecurity emergency includes integrating the declaration into Toronto’s Poverty Reduction Strategy, Food Charter and School Food Program. When parliamentarians do return, this motion calls on the federal government to bolster income support programs and invest in building and maintaining affordable housing.

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Hetherington said visits to the Daily Bread Food Bank reached “just shy of four million,” 500,000 more than the 3.4 million visits in 2023.

“Here’s some context: It took 38 years for the Daily Bread Food Bank to have one million client visits in a year. Then it only took two years to get to two million, one more year to get to three million and (now) one more year to get to four million.”

The problem came very close to being exacerbated had the 25-per-cent tariffs across the board — except the 10 per cent carve out for energy — announced by U.S. President Donald Trump come into effect. Instead, a one-month reprieve has been granted as Prime Minister Justin Trudeau announced measures to appease Trump's concerns. 

If this last-minute agreement did not come into effect, demand for food banks would have very likely spiked even further.

“My concern is the chaos of tariffs,” said Nicholls. “Canadian folks are going to feel this at the grocery store. And people are already coming to the food bank because they already can't afford what cost 20 per cent more than it did four years ago. They can't afford additional increases.”

Nicholls added that tariffs would make it more difficult to purchase enough food supplies for their clientele.

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Peter Copeland, deputy director of policy for the MacDonald-Laurier Institute, spoke to the Register on Feb. 3 during the interim period between Trump announcing an agreement to pause tariffs on Mexico and the pause for Canada. Copeland said this situation “may just be leverage so that Trump can demonstrate some victories on border security, immigration and defence, and for us to kind of clean up our act a bit so that we’re a strong neighbour, not a perceived weak one."

While the Trump administration has maintained the tariffs are retaliation to a drug war instead of starting a trade war, Copeland said it is clear tariffs are poised to be a key tool in enacting Trump’s economic agenda. These will only damage Canada's economy.