Every Friday, people line up around the building to have dinner at a small church on College Street in downtown Toronto. Volunteers working in the food program there offer a hot dish along with some rice and possibly fruit and yogurt, if supplies arrive.

In the same context, Pastor Maggie Helwig, who helps manage the food program at St. Stephen in the Fields Church, stated that she regularly provides a meal every Friday for about 130 people. A few years ago, the number of people coming in search of food was fewer than 25.

On Saturday and Sunday mornings, the breakfast line is longer: there are hundreds of mothers, fathers, seniors, students, employed adults, and unemployed individuals.

This astonishing demand for free food is also reflected in food banks and other grocery delivery programs across the country, where a new report released by Food Banks Canada on October 25 found that this year, due to the significant rise in living costs, food bank usage has reached its highest level since the survey began in 1989.

The annual HungerCount report also relies on surveys sent to food security organizations to track their usage in March.

This year's report found that nearly two million people, including a larger number of working individuals than ever before, used food banks in March 2023.

This represents a 32 percent increase compared to the same month last year and over 78 percent compared to March 2019 data, one year before COVID-19 emerged as a global pandemic.

This is not surprising for the staff and volunteers in the food program at College Street Church in Toronto, who have been trying to respond to the demand appropriately.

Helwig also stated that anyone working in any type of food safety program knows that things have shockingly worsened.

Despite the decrease in inflation in Canada, food prices continued to rise in 2023.

A few years ago, unemployment was a more significant factor driving people to seek food assistance, when the economy shut down in the early months of the pandemic.

The report stated that food insecurity is now exacerbated by inflation and rising living costs, with more and more Canadians struggling to afford essentials like housing and food.

The study noted that the demand for food banks began to grow rapidly at the same time that inflation rose to its highest level in 40 years.

Larry Mathieson, who runs the Unison for Generations 50+ program for seniors in the Calgary area, also said that it is not necessarily that there isn't enough food.

The study found that 17 percent of clients seeking free food this year had jobs, but they did not earn enough to cover their expenses.

The report also stated that food banks have never seen such a high level of need among the working population.

Demand is high across all regions of the country. The food bank in the Waterloo area of Ontario stated that its annual funding needs to be doubled to over $1.6 million to meet the demand that has reached crisis levels.

Another food bank in Carbonear, Newfoundland and Labrador, reported that individuals who previously donated food are now knocking on its doors seeking food assistance. An organization in Crapaud, Prince Edward Island, had no choice but to turn people away due to a lack of available food.

Mathieson added that the senior program in Calgary includes 200 individuals seeking food assistance every day during a few days of the week, compared to perhaps 12 to 16 people who came for food during the first few months of the pandemic.