Statistics Canada has confirmed what most of us knew already: Canada is becoming a hungrier place.
According to a survey conducted by the federal agency in May, almost one in seven (14.6 per cent) Canadians indicated they lived in a household where there was food insecurity in the past month.
In 2017-18, a similar survey showed 10.5 per cent of households in Canada felt food insecure.
There are about 12.5 million households in Canada. This means more than 512,000 more households in Canada are experiencing food insecurity compared to just two years ago. That’s more than the number of households in the city of Ottawa.
StatsCan results were consistent with a survey conducted by the Agri-Food Analytics Lab at Dalhousie University at about the same time. In it, 61.0 per cent of Canadians surveyed felt they had enough of the food they wanted and didn’t consider access to food an issue. That sentiment was at 72.6 per cent last year, so we’ve seen a drop of more than 11 per cent.