{"id":78873,"date":"2025-12-03T06:17:35","date_gmt":"2025-12-03T11:17:35","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/wawa-news.com\/?p=78873"},"modified":"2025-12-03T06:17:35","modified_gmt":"2025-12-03T11:17:35","slug":"ondp-nine-years-of-rising-food-bank-use-shows-ontario-families-are-in-trouble","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/wawa-news.com\/index.php\/2025\/12\/03\/ondp-nine-years-of-rising-food-bank-use-shows-ontario-families-are-in-trouble\/","title":{"rendered":"ONDP: Nine years of rising food bank use shows Ontario families are in trouble"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>Ontario NDP Shadow Minister for Children, Community and Social Services, Lisa Gretzky (Windsor West); and Shadow Minister for Women\u2019s Social and Economic Opportunity and Shadow Minister for Citizenship and Multiculturalism, Alexa Gilmour (Parkdale\u2014High Park); issued the following statement in response to Feed Ontario\u2019s latest Hunger Report<\/strong><\/a>:<\/p>\n

\u201cMore than one million people in Ontario needed a food bank this year. Let that sink in. That\u2019s families, seniors, kids, and workers who are running out of options in a province that keeps getting harder to live in,\u201d said Gretzky.<\/p>\n

\u201cFor the ninth year in a row, food bank use has gone up, with over 8.7 million visits. Nearly one-third of users are children and almost a quarter are employed but still can\u2019t afford groceries. That should be a wake-up call for the Ford government. People are visiting food banks more often and depending on them for longer because rent is astronomically high, wages haven\u2019t kept up, and social assistance rates are shamefully low. Food banks are doing everything they can, but they cannot be the province\u2019s poverty strategy since there clearly is none.\u201d<\/p>\n

Gilmour said the report shows how severe the crisis has become.<\/p>\n

\u201cThese numbers should be a blaring red alarm for the Ford government. Over ten per cent of our province, one third of them children, using food banks is not an issue, it\u2019s a full-blown crisis,\u201d said Gilmour. \u201cDoug Ford has created an Ontario where people can\u2019t get jobs, can\u2019t afford housing, and have to use food banks to eat. The social supports that the Conservatives have underfunded for nearly a decade are the exact tools we need to lift Ontarians out of poverty.\u201d<\/p>\n

Gilmour added that the government\u2019s refusal to act is indefensible. \u201cIt doesn\u2019t have to be this way. Children going to bed hungry in Ontario should be unthinkable. Every day the Ford government refuses to act and provide life-saving funding to our province\u2019s social services is shameful. We can do better. We must do better.\u201d<\/p>\n

Ontario needs a real plan that delivers stronger income supports, rent stabilization, decent wages, and investments that lift people out of poverty instead of pushing them further into crisis. No one should be forced to choose between keeping a roof over their head and putting food on the table. After eight years of this government, the situation has only grown worse. New Democrats will continue pushing for a government that puts people\u2019s basic needs first.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Ontario NDP Shadow Minister for Children, Community and Social Services, Lisa Gretzky (Windsor West); and Shadow Minister for Women\u2019s Social and Economic Opportunity and Shadow Minister for Citizenship and Multiculturalism, Alexa Gilmour (Parkdale\u2014High Park); issued the following statement in response to Feed Ontario\u2019s latest Hunger Report: \u201cMore than one million people in Ontario needed a …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":36,"featured_media":78875,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[38],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-78873","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-provincial"],"publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-05-01 12:20:23","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/wawa-news.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/78873","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/wawa-news.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/wawa-news.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wawa-news.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/36"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wawa-news.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=78873"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/wawa-news.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/78873\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":78876,"href":"https:\/\/wawa-news.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/78873\/revisions\/78876"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wawa-news.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/78875"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/wawa-news.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=78873"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wawa-news.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=78873"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wawa-news.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=78873"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}