After eight years of Justin Trudeau, more Canadians are visiting foodbanks than ever before. Last month, Food Banks Canada released a report saying that food banks were visited nearly two million times in March alone, an increase of 79 percent from 2019. Now, Statistics Canada and Toronto’s Daily Bread Food Bank are also ringing the alarm bells.
According to the Daily Bread Food Bank’s annual Who’s Hungry Report, one in ten people in Toronto are now relying on food banks, which is twice as many as the year prior. They blamed this on “skyrocketing housing costs” and “food inflation.” In Toronto, there were 2.53 million food bank visits between April 2022 and March 2023. As well as this, there has been a 154 percent increase in first time users compared to last year.
On top of this, Statistics Canada published a study into food insecurity, which showed that the number of families who were food insecure increased by more than 12 percent from 2021 to 2022. Among those at the highest risk of food insecurity were single mothers, Indigenous families and black families, with single mothers being one of the most vulnerable groups.
In 2022, 48 percent of single mothers below the poverty line and even 40 percent of those above the poverty line still struggled with food insecurity.
Justin Trudeau’s government could help reduce the increase in food prices by stopping their campaign to get Senators to block the common sense Conservative carbon tax carveout for farmers. When the government taxes the farmer who grows the food, it increases the cost when Canadians buy the food. When the Senate returns next week, Senators will need to make a choice between supporting Trudeau’s agenda to quadruple the tax on farmers or the common sense Conservative plan to support farmers and ordinary Canadians dealing with food insecurity.
Life has become so expensive in Justin Trudeau’s Canada that Canadians are having to choose between eating, heating and other necessities. Only common sense Conservatives will turn that hurt into hope by axing Trudeau’s carbon tax and bringing home lower prices.