Conservative Party Communications
November 12, 2024
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Ottawa, ON – After nine years, the NDP-Liberal Government has created economic misery. Trudeau’s carbon tax has hiked up the cost of food, forcing families to pay $700 more for food this year than they did in 2023. Millions of Canadians now have to rely on food banks to survive.
This was made evident today through the Daily Bread Food Bank’s Who’s Hungry report. The report described Toronto as a “city trapped in poverty,” after Trudeau’s spending and taxes led to rising food prices and rent costs. As a result of this, more than one in ten residents have had to use a food bank, rising by 36 percent from this time last year.
In total, there were 3.49 million visits to Toronto food banks. This is nearly one million more visits than 2023 and a dramatic increase of 273 percent since before the pandemic. Of this number, 155,000 were new users who had never used a food bank before, which is a 222 percent increase from just two years ago.
The CEO of the Daily Bread Food Bank said “it is unfathomable that the number of client visits to food banks is now higher than the City of Toronto’s entire population … our governments cannot continue to stand by as people are pushed further into poverty due to astronomical housing and food prices, years of inflation, stagnating wages and insufficient income supports.”
Life has become so expensive in Toronto that after paying rent and utilities, food bank clients have a median of $7.78 left per person, per day to pay for food. No wonder that Canadians are having to depend on food banks. On top of this, 49 percent of food bank clients have at least one member of their household who is employed.
But this misery is not limited to Toronto alone. Last month, Food Banks Canada released a report showing that a record number of Canadians across the country are having to use food banks. In March 2024, food banks recorded a historic 2,059,636 visits, which is an increase of 90 percent from 2019.
Canadians deserve relief from nine years of costly NDP-Liberal policies. Instead of hiking taxes and building bureaucracy that makes housing more expensive, Common Sense Conservatives will axe the tax, build the homes and fix the budget to bring home lower prices and powerful paycheques for all Canadians.
