Food banks scramble to serve community as demand for help in Quebec keeps growing
Demand for food aid is the worst it's ever been, says Food Banks of Quebec
Tony Afriye commutes an hour and a half across Montreal to visit his old stomping grounds in the Notre-Dame-de-Grâce neighbourhood to enjoy a hot meal about three times a month.
The commute time to the The Depot community food centre in west-central Montreal is worth it, as the meal is free and he's able to take home about $50 worth of groceries from the food bank. Plus, he knows everyone there and values the feeling of community he gets every time he walks in, he says.
Still, he needs to pair The Depot's food aid with another food bank to keep his monthly grocery costs manageable. Afriye began losing his vision two years ago and can no longer work.
"I've never been in this situation in my life," he said over his bowl of barley soup. "I consider myself a middle-class [person]. I have a master's degree. I've had great jobs, good career.... But this is how I found myself."
"I have to accept my new life. So I cannot be too proud to ask for help so I go out there and I get help, you know. That's life," he said.
The Depot's executive director Tasha Lackman says the demand for food aid has tripled in the last two years. Government funding, she says, hasn't kept pace with the growing demand, leaving Lackman to primarily rely on donations and philanthropy.
"Now, our restaurant only operates three days a week instead of four. We have extended our food bank hours, but we put a cap on how many members we serve every month," she said.
"There's a waiting list and people are getting turned away."
And this phenomenon isn't unique to one sector of Montreal. Organizations across the city are doing budgeting acrobatics to deliver services with limited funds.
The DESTA Community Food Program had to suspend its food delivery program because it could no longer afford drivers, explains the organization's program manager Berlin Reed.
He says though there was a lot of targeted funding for emergency food relief during the pandemic, a lot of that money is now being redirected toward other solutions to fight food insecurity, such as community-building partnerships and workshops.
"It is shifted away from just that really emergent like, you know, cash in hand to buy food to give to people for free," he said. "That kind of like, really straight line has been sort of diverted."
Food insecurity a provincewide issue
The director of philanthropy for Food Banks of Quebec, Véronique Beaulieu-Fowler, says they've seen an increase of one million additional demands for food aid per month in the last three years.
"It's the [worst] that we've ever seen before and it's quite striking because our network is quite big," she said.
Food Banks of Quebec supplies food donations to its members, known as moissons, who in turn serve over 1,000 community organizations like The Depot.
"I don't think a lot of people realize how large and organized the amount of food that comes out of our network every year [is] and still, that's insufficient," said Beaulieu-Fowler.
According to Food Banks of Quebec's Hunger Report, 72 per cent of its network reported food shortages this year, with over half needing to purchase food themselves to fill the gap. The report also states that 20 per cent of people who reached out for food aid in 2024 had a job.
Public health researcher Louise Potvin says it all comes down to an income issue. Potvin is a professor at the school of public health at the Université de Montréal and the lead investigator of the Pathways study, which followed 1,000 first-time food bank users in Quebec over the course of two years.
"Those who were able to be in a trajectory that led them out of food bank use had seen a proportional increase in their income during the same period," she said.
Beaulieu-Fowler attributes the growing number of employed people falling into food insecurity to a number of factors, including climbing rent prices and inflation.
"Often, the only compressible budget that [people] have left is food," she said. "They're doing everything they can before coming to food help."
'I feel extremely alone'
For Afriye, rent takes up 75 per cent of his income, he says. Another woman sitting a few rows down from him at The Depot says she's pinching every penny she can and still worries she'll have to move out of her home come July to find a cheaper place.
Standing outside the Jamaica Association of Montreal, Dee has also been struggling with housing costs. She has a case at Quebec's housing tribunal because she can't afford her $35 rent increase.
She grew up in Montreal and has been living at her current place for over a decade.
"I feel extremely alone," she said. "And scared half the time because there's no one to call."
She walks an hour and a half to get to the food bank because paying for the bus would be stretching her finances, she said. There's another food bank closer to her, but an unpleasant interaction with a volunteer last year led her to switch.
"I'm willing to travel three hours for that respect," she said.
CBC News has agreed to refer to Dee only by her first name due to the sensitive nature of some of the information she shared.
A spinal issue, which causes her to have migraines, has prevented her from holding down a job, she said. She discovered it earlier this year after paying out of pocket for X-rays at a private clinic.
"I've been vilifying myself, thinking what's wrong with me? Why can't I keep a job like everybody else? Why can't I do things like everybody else?" she said.
"There's no real support for women out there."
Chantal Rouleau, Quebec's minister responsible for social solidarity and community action, says the government has invested close to $890 million toward community organizations.
"We recognize their work and are doing everything that we can so they can continue to focus on their mission and help their neighbour," Rouleau wrote in a statement.
She says she's working to reduce paperwork for organizations seeking funding. This includes the government's move to increase the funding threshold triggering a financial audit in the spring, saving organizations both time and money.
Rouleau says she's hoping Quebec's Plan to Combat Poverty and Social Exclusion tabled in June will help address the root causes of poverty, specifically through housing policy and social reintegration, among other measures. The plan will also help increase the number of food security projects supported by the Ministry of Employment and Social Solidarity by 30 per cent over the next five years.
CBC Montreal is partnering with Food Banks of Quebec for the "Make the Season Kind" campaign. Twenty-four regional CBC stations across the country will run charity drives throughout the month of December in support of local food banks.
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