HungerCount 2025

Volunteers at a food bank

In March 2025, Canada’s food bank system recorded nearly 2.17 million visits, the greatest monthly visits recorded. It represents a 5.2% increase over 2024, and nearly100% increase since 2019[1].

In Ontario, a total of 646 organizations contributed data to the survey, including 452 food banks, 82 meal programs, and 112 organizations providing both services. Together, these groups supported 575 community agencies and programs, representing 1,221 service points across Ontario.

Food banks in Ontario registered 763,756 monthly visits in 2025, up 3.7% compared to 2024, and up 124.9% since 2019. Here are key demographic characteristics of Ontario’s food bank users.

The data point to deep affordability gaps that income support programs and wage have failed to close. Many food bank visitors are not unemployed but under resourced, working in low-wage or part-time jobs that cannot keep pace with rent and groceries.

Current data from the 2024 Ontario Nutritious Food Basket (ONFB) survey for Halton shows that to provide a basic healthy diet for the reference family of four (adults aged 31-50, a 14-year-old boy, and an 8-year-old girl), the weekly cost is $290.57. The results revealed that households receiving Ontario Works (OW), Ontario Disability Support Program (ODSP), or earning minimum wage cannot afford both rent and nutritious food while meeting other basic needs.

Based on the 2025 Halton Food Security Survey[1], food bank visits have increased by 22% between 2023 and 2024, demonstrating continued demand for emergency food support in our community.

The Hunger Count 2025 report outlines three key policy priorities to reduce food insecurity[2]:

• First, rebuild and expand Canada’s social safety net by boosting social assistance, disability supports and indexing benefits to inflation so that vulnerable households have lives above the poverty line.

  
  

• Second, resolve the affordability housing crisis by increasing supply of subsidized and rent-regulated housing units, protecting tenants against escalating costs, and reducing the housing-food trade-offs that push families into food banks; and third, support low-wage workers by raising the minimum wage, enforcing labour standards, and creating a living-wage floor so that employment reliably enables food security.

  
  

While the national report also highlights northern food security, the first two priorities are particularly urgent for Ontario, where the growing affordability crisis is driving record demand for food banks.

[1] Food Banks Canada, Hunger Count 2025, https://foodbankscanada.ca/hunger-in-canada/hungercount/

[2] Community Development Halton, Household Food Insecurity in Halton, Community Data Watch, April 2025 https://drive.google.com/file/d/1b34pN8hEeVYtCdat46ZGpMww7DgTznSm/view

[3] Food Banks Canada, Hunger Count 2025, https://foodbankscanada.ca/hunger-in-canada/hungercount/