food security

Demand for food aid expected to rise, study suggests

Ruby Pratka, Local Journalism Initiative reporter

editor@qctonline.com

The organization representing the province’s food banks expects demand for food aid to continue to rise in the coming year.

Late last week, Banques

Alimentaires du Québec (BAQ) released a study it commissioned forecasting future need for food aid in the province. The study “confirms the worrying trend observed by BAQ, namely that the number of requests for food aid to which the network responds will increase,” BAQ said in a statement. In 2024, the 34 food banks in the BAQ network responded to 2.9 million requests for assistance. BAQ estimates that this figure will reach 3.22 million per month in 2027, an increase of more than 320,000 requests within three years.

“The network isn’t built to sustain such a quick increase in demand,” BAQ director of philanthropy Véronique Beaulieu-Fowler told the QCT.

The study also explored the factors that influence demand for food aid in Quebec, finding that poverty and dependence on government assistance are major risk factors for food insecurity. Other risk factors include the rental housing crisis, “especially when employ- ment income is not growing at the same speed as the main household expenditure items,” the growth of part-time jobs at the expense of better-paid full-time positions and the financial precarity experienced by many recent immigrants. “The pandemic was the start of it, and then the housing crisis and inflation and the fact wages have not followed,” Beaulieu- Fowler said. “The reason food aid exists is that people don’t have enough money to meet their basic needs; we need to address wages and housing so people can meet their needs.”

In March 2020, as demand for food aid skyrocketed amid pandemic-driven job losses and economic uncertainty, the Coalition Avenir Québec government provided $2 million in emergency assistance, the first in a series of emergency grants. Amid rising food prices, BAQ is calling for government funding for food banks to become permanent and predictable. “We have had some help to purchase food over the last few years, we have had $18 million, then $24 million, then $30 million, but [a one-time grant] is an emergency solution. We are asking for recurring funding so we can invest to help build a more self-sufficient network,” Beaulieu-Fowler said. As part of the 2025-2026 pre-budget consultations, BAQ is request- ing funding of $38 million in 2025-2026, $36 million in 2026-2027 and $34 million in 2027-2028.

“With this study, we are able to anticipate what the coming years will look like for our net- work, which is already facing increased pressure to support people facing food insecurity in Quebec. Although we are fac- ing a sad and worrying trend, this allows us to have predictability about how the situation will evolve over the years and to prepare ourselves accordingly. As long as structural measures and actions that address the roots of poverty and social inequalities are not implemented, we will be faced with this increase. Given the results of this study, we hope to be able to establish a constant and predictable agreement with the Quebec government in order to ensure assistance to the most vulnerable,” said BAQ executive director Martin Munger.

“We don’t have regional data, but everything that’s being observed in the study, the fac- tors are pretty much the same here,” said Elisabeth Fortin, communications co-ordinator at Moisson Québec, a BAQ member and the largest food bank in the Quebec City region. “There are complex supply chain issues that have an im- pact on how much [donated] food we get, and we’re buying a lot more than before. We’re getting a lot more requests for assistance and a lot more people coming back month after month. During the pandemic, we talked a lot about a ‘perfect storm’ – the storm has never stopped.”

To make a financial or in-kind donation, to volunteer with Moisson Québec or to request food aid, visit moissonquebec.com.