Sticker shock hit hard when single mom Kristina Kennedy saw the sausages she usually buys were $1.50 more than expected. 

As the sole caregiver to four children, the 40-year-old says price hikes at the grocery store are especially tough to swallow, and nearly impossible to plan for when costs keep fluctuating.

“And this is like the bargain grocery store,” says Kennedy, who relies on social supports because of multiple health issues that limit her ability to work.

Kennedy says her life and finances were upended by the sudden death of her husband just before she learned she was pregnant with twin girls, now seven-years-old. She also has 12 and 16-year-old boys, and Kennedy touts the power of weekly meal prep in stretching her dollar.

She supplements her pantry with occasional visits to the food bank, especially during cash-strapped periods over March break, the summer and Christmas holidays.

“When I initially started going to the food bank, I honestly hated it,” says Kennedy, who bemoans an interrelated web of pressures including high housing costs and a dismal job market.

“I felt like a failure to my children and to myself. Like, how did I end up here? Because I went to school, I grew up in a nice place, in a nice family.”

Kennedy’s experience is becoming increasingly common in Canada, according to a new Food Banks Canada report that finds growing reliance on its network of 5,500 food banks and community organizations. 

The organization’s 2025 HungerCount report says monthly visits neared 2.2 million in March 2025 – five per cent higher than March 2024 and nearly double since March 2019, before the pandemic.

Lead author and research director Richard Matern says many low-income Canadians spend more than half their budget on housing and 30 per cent on food. Households with kids are easily pushed over the edge and it’s far too easy for anyone in a precarious position to slide from moderate to severe financial strain.

“More people have less of a buffer, less of savings that can help carry them through difficult times, whether it's a loss of a job or a health crisis or so forth,” says Matern, whose report was released Monday.

“When something happens, food banks become more of a reality, unfortunately.”

Much of the report’s findings echo last year’s data but more people in each category are struggling, with a total of 2,165,766 visits.

Affordability woes are especially stark when compared to pre-pandemic times, and more people with jobs are seeking help: 19 per cent of food bank visitors reported employment as their main income source compared to 12 per cent in 2019, and 23 per cent were two-parent families compared to 19 per cent in 2019. 

The proportion of children using food banks largely held steady at one third, but the absolute number soared to 711,770 – nearly 340,000 more visits in one month compared to six years ago. Eight per cent of food bank users were seniors, up from seven per cent in 2019.

“Food banks are becoming more and more necessary for survival as opposed to a temporary coping strategy,” says Matern, believing the numbers reflect a fraction of those in need since many people will do anything to avoid asking for help.

“In many cases, they say they've exhausted many other options, if not all of their options. And oftentimes it could be a few weeks, if not months, of trying to make ends meet in other ways,” he says of food bank clients.

Leisa Muthra, 57, says she turned to food banks after several personal and financial crises that included losing her husband, grandmother and cat in the same month in 2023. 

Before that she says she nearly died from a COVID-19 infection that sent her to hospital for about a week and required a transfusion. After that, she lost $10,000 in a Facebook scam.

“Everything was just collapsing on me,” says Muthra.

“My sister was the one that had to really push me to go. Because I have a lot of pride, right? And I take pride in my pride because I worked for it, I worked hard and then went to school, did everything right. And then all of a sudden I'm here, like this.”

Over the decades, Muthra has worked as a stylist, event decorator and hair-and-makeup artist but her main source of income these days is a survival benefit and the Ontario Disability Support Program. She says she was diagnosed with sickle cell disease at age eight and was not expected to live past 50.

“I'm deteriorating slowly so I'll lose the eyesight, I'll lose movement in my legs and my arms but that's going to take a long time because I'm pretty strong and pretty tough,” she says.

Money is definitely tight — after paying $900/month for a subsidized two-bedroom apartment, Muthra says she has just $583 to pay for phone, internet, bus fare and food. 

She lives with her 23-year-old daughter who graduated from college in 2023 and is pursuing a screenwriting career but is currently unemployed. Together, they have about $44,000 in debt, a good chunk from her daughter’s tuition but Muthra says she’s eager to help any way she can: “My daughter is everything to me.”

As a result, Muthra is in the red every month.

“I started working at 10 and I never stopped working. And then when I got sick, this is what happens to me,” she says.

“I feel like the system turned on me, like Canada turned on me. But I love this country, this is my country.”

While annual inflation accelerated to 2.4 per cent last month, food inflation outpaced it at four per cent, according to Statistics Canada. 

In data released last week, StatCan noted the cost of fresh vegetables rose nearly two per cent, while the cost of sugar and confectionary items jumped nine per cent.

In Canada's most populous city, more than one in 10 Torontonians rely on food banks, says a joint report from the Daily Bread Food Bank and North York Harvest Food Bank, also released Monday.

The Who’s Hungry 2025 report warns hunger is “shifting from a short-term emergency to a long-term reality,” even among those with full-time or multiple jobs. 

For the first time since 2020, the majority of visits — nearly 60 per cent — came from returning clients rather than new ones. And 54 per cent of survey respondents visited three or more times a month, up from 43 per cent last year.

In the year leading up to April 2025, there were more than 4.1 million client visits, roughly 636,000 more than the year before. Still, CEO Neil Hetherington says there’s good news in the fact need increased by 18 per cent compared to 38 per cent the previous year. 

“There's a little bit of hope that we're starting to reduce the growth,” says Hetherington, who echoed Food Bank Canada's call for strengthened supports including increased benefits and access to Employment Insurance and the Canada Disability Benefit.

In the Kennedy household, expenses include about $400/week on groceries, $1,979/month in rent, and $244/month for phone and internet service. That all comes out of roughly $4,200/month in social supports, which include the Ontario Disability Support Program and child benefit payments. 

Kennedy says she had to drop out of university years ago but is hoping to go back to study psychology and build a career, and bemoans ODSP rules that affect income support for recipients who earn more than $1,000/month.

“Would you not want to encourage people to work more, to gain that job experience, to gain that work experience, to gain that stability?” she says.

Kennedy would also like to see stricter controls around above-guideline rent increases and more staff at the Landlord and Tenant Board to keep up with cases. She also wants policy makers to involve people with lived experiences who are best positioned to identify gaps in the system.

“I find they talk a big game about everything, but then there's very little action behind what they say. And the most frustrating is they use our struggles as a tag line in their speeches. Or to make people angry and to divide people onto one side or the other,” Kennedy says.

“And then at the end of the day, neither side comes through with real actionable solutions.”

– Cassandra Szklarski, The Canadian Press