In partnership, Daily Bread Food Bank and North York Harvest Food Bank have released Who’s Hungry 2024 – an annual profile of poverty and food insecurity in the City of Toronto.   In the last year, there were 3.49 million client visits to Toronto food banks – nearly 1 million more visits...

In this 8th episode of the "What the Food?!" webinar series, we hear from Randy Hatfield, Executive Director at the Saint John Human Development Council about affording food in today's economy - the living wage vs minimum wage, the Consumer Price Index, rental rates and the salary requirements to...

The executive summary on the progress of Opportunity for All- Canada's First Poverty Reduction Strategy identifies the availability and affordability of safe and suitable housing, the ever-increasing cost of feeding one's family, the long hours and low wages of work to barely keep your head above...

Interpreting the data: Key takeaways from Welfare in Canada, 2023. For nearly 40 years, the annual Welfare in Canada series and its predecessors have documented the depth of poverty that persists for people receiving social assistance. The 2023 edition builds on this work to provide a...

More and more people are having difficulties in covering day-to-day expenses, saving money, and paying down debts.  The Financial Wellbeing Café Scientifique was an opportunity to bring people together to talk about how to drive action on financial wellbeing in Canada. The event included a...

In 2023, 22.9% of people in the ten provinces lived in a food-insecure household. That amounts to 8.7 million people, including 2.1 million children, living in households that struggled to afford the food they need. With another year of rising food insecurity, the percentage of people affected is...

In Canada and the United States, approximately 1 in 5 children live in poverty, contributing to poor health outcomes. Families with children with chronic illness may experience additional financial stress related to hospitalization. This study aimed to capture experiences of financial needs and...

In their study, entitled, “Experiences of Financial Stress and Supports in Caregivers During Pediatric Hospital Admission,” Nadarajah et al interviewed caregivers of children admitted to a pediatric hospital and conducted qualitative analyses to assess financial needs, health related financial...

The Canada Disability Benefit is an opportunity to guarantee that people with disabilities can live a life with dignity and have an adequate standard of living. For the new Canada Disability Benefit (CDB) to meet its goal of financially supporting and reducing poverty of people with disabilities,...

Working poverty is pervasive, racialized, and until the pandemic, was increasing in Toronto and across Canada. Until the pandemic, this increase was counterintuitive, during 2006 to 2016, as most of this ten-year period had been characterized by one of the most prolonged economic recoveries in...

This is the 2023 report on the progress of Opportunity for All – Canada’s First Poverty Reduction Strategy (PRS). While COVID-19 still threatens communities in Canada and around the world, the public health measures have largely been lifted. Temporary economic measures have also ended. At the...

In Canada, governments provide seniors with a spectrum of income supports and programs intended to maintain a baseline standard of living in retirement. For many years, the social safety net has been praised for producing lower poverty rates for seniors, as measured by the Market Basket Measure...

The Expanding Economic Opportunity Through Volunteer Income Tax Assistance (EEOVITA) cohort has been working to identify and engage targeted, underserved populations most at risk for missing out on the expanded Child Tax Credit (CTC) benefit. This project, which began in January 2022 and concludes...

Food Banks Canada's all-new Poverty Report Cards initiative grades how poverty reduction efforts are going in the provincial, territorial, and federal governments. The report cards will help policymakers and decision-makers at all levels of government gauge their performance in the fight against...

Two articles released in Economic and Social Reports provide insights on the poverty rates and changing demographics of racialized population groups in Canada. The article "Poverty among racialized groups across generations," shows that most racialized groups had higher poverty rates...

This discussion paper begins by explaining what is commonly understood as child care and how child care expenses currently enter the market basket measure (MBM) methodology. It then describes an alternative approach to account for child care expenses by incorporating them as a separate component...

Building the Case provides evidence for the federal government to urgently step up to support single, working-age adults in Canada. This group experiences Canada’s highest and deepest rates of poverty and some of the country’s highest rates of food insecurity.  By analyzing publicly...

There are many effective, award-winning financial literacy programs in Canada. However, many of these programs do not meet the needs of women living on low incomes. Families Canada’s national research study identified 14 social, economic, and institutional barriers that prevent women living on...

Food insecurity—the inadequate access to food due to financial constraints—affects 1 in 6 households in Canada, with serious health implications. Family benefit programs supplementing income have shown potential in mitigating the risk of food insecurity, but there is little understanding of...

This study uses the 2022 Portrait of Canadian Society Survey to examine the impact of rising inflation on the lowest income Canadians. Using multiple pre-pandemic data sources, the study takes a closer look at people living in the bottom family income quintile, examining their family income, debt...

While available research indicates that gender-diverse persons experience intersecting challenges to accessing adequate housing in Canada, there has been limited human rights analysis of this group’s experiences. Available research indicates that trans and gender-diverse persons experience...

Canada’s National Advisory Council on Poverty’s second Annual Report, Understanding Systems, is the first report to provide a glimpse into poverty since COVID-19. Based on community engagements with Canadians and provinces/territories over the last year, the Council has recommended five...

Drawing on survey and interview data, as well as data from Daily Bread and North York Harvest’s member agencies, the 2022 Who’s Hungry report examines trends in food bank use and food insecurity over the past year in relation to three core areas: income and employment, housing, and the cost of...

Charitable food programs have been the primary response to household food insecurity in Canada since the 1980s. Yet, for as long as there has been systematic monitoring, there has been no meaningful decline in the prevalence of household food insecurity. Based on the most recent data from...

In 2022, The Communities Ending Poverty network raised the following question: How can we engage youth as leaders in poverty reduction efforts? At Tamarack Institute events in July 2022, local and national youth leaders shared experiences and advice on how collaboratives could keep improving their...