Food banks across Canada recorded 2,355,075 visits in March 2026, Food Banks Canada reported on Oct. 21 in its annual HungerCount survey. Visits were up 8.7 per cent from March 2025 and 116.8 per cent from March 2019. Children made up 32.5 per cent of clients, and 18 per cent of clients reported a job as their main source of income, against 12.2 per cent in 2019, the organization's news release says.
It is worth unpacking the 6 per cent rise in employed clients. A food bank has traditionally been accessed by those who have fallen out of the labour market. The growing share of working clients suggests some worrying signals. One of those signals is that wages are not keeping up with what households pay for rent, food and transport. "A job is not enough to ensure that you are not in need of a food bank anymore," Kirstin Beardsley, the organization's chief executive, told The Canadian Press.
HungerCount measures food bank visits, and each person in a household is counted every time the household receives food during the month, so one person can appear more than once, the survey form says. The method allows us to measure how much demand food banks are absorbing, which is a little different from a headcount of how many people are hungry. HungerCount is still the longest consistent series we have, running since 1989, and on its own terms the direction is not in doubt.
Seventy-two per cent of clients live in market-rent housing, according to the release. Food Banks Canada says food prices have risen about 30 per cent since 2021, with housing up 28 per cent and transportation nearly 24 per cent. Amidst those rising costs, households have been looking to cut flexible parts of the budget to keep the rest afloat. And for millions of Canadians, that has grimly become food. Rent and the car payment are fixed each month, so groceries are where the squeeze shows up.
Ottawa's main response is the Canada Groceries and Essentials Benefit, which builds on the GST credit. Finance Canada says it adds $11.7 billion over six years, including a one-time top-up paid on June 5 and a 25 per cent increase from July. Both arrived after the March survey month. Champagne told the House on Oct. 20 that the government has provided "relief on groceries and essential items," Hansard records.
The benefit had not yet paid out when the survey was taken, so we will have to wait for the next report to see if it made a dent. Meanwhile, the Liberal government has governed through most of the period in which visits more than doubled, and a cheque that tops up income does nothing to the supply of housing that Food Banks Canada itself names as a driver.
Food Banks Canada's own requests deserve a reader's attention too. It asks Ottawa to modernize Employment Insurance, double the Canada Workers Benefit and direct up to $500 million of the Food-Link Fund to food bank infrastructure. The release landed 15 days before the Nov. 5 budget, which could be a pressure tactic following the budget consultation period.
Next March's count, released in fall 2027, will be the first to include months of the larger benefit. If visits fall, or the number of employed client visits drops back toward its 2019 level, the transfer will have done something measurable. If both keep rising, we will have stronger evidence that the government's policies are at best insufficient or at worst, contributing to the problem.
