Mississauga has fastest growing food bank usage in all of Ontario: report

Volunteers pack food at a food bank in Mississauga. (Food Banks Mississauga photo)

Food insecurity in Mississauga has reached an unprecedented and unwanted milestone.

According to Food Banks Mississauga’s latest annual Impact report, the city just west of Toronto is seeing the fastest growing food bank usage in all of Ontario.

In Mississauga, 1 in 13 residents or eight per cent of the city’s population used a food bank between June 2023 and May 2024.

Almost a third of those clients, roughly 16,000, are children – a 42 per cent increase from the previous fiscal year.

In total, Food Banks Mississauga, the city’s leading food security organization, and its 60-plus member agencies saw 421,251 visits in that time frame – an 80 per cent year-over-year jump.

Those visits translate to 56,267 food bank users, which is more than double the number of people who accessed a food bank or related service the year before. Provincially, the number of food bank users went up by 25 per cent during that time frame.

Across its network, Food Banks Mississauga, which is formerly known as the Mississauga Food Bank, distributed more than nine million pounds of food from June 2023 to May 2024, more than double what it handed out the previous year.

“Food banks were meant to be a temporary emergency support, not a replacement for government social assistance programs,” Meghan Nicholls, CEO of Food Banks Mississauga, said in a news release.

“But almost 40 years later, we must show that we are in a food insecurity crisis because government programs are underfunded and haven’t kept up with the rising cost of living. People shouldn’t have to choose between paying rent, feeding themselves, or feeding their families.”

Nicholls went on to say that the capacity of Mississauga’s food banks network is “maxing out.”

“It’s only thanks to our community’s support and generosity that we can continue providing food to our neighbours today while advocating for policy change for tomorrow,” she said.