(Montreal) Hunger continues to gain ground in Quebec, to the point where even employed people sometimes need a little help not to go to bed hungry, show new data unveiled at La Canadian Press by Food Banks of Quebec.
The 2021 Hunger Report thus indicates that, all services combined, the network of food banks in Quebec helped 21.6% more people in 2021 than in 2019. There has been a significant increase of 37% in the distribution of food baskets. provisions.
The number of employed people using food banks has jumped 40%.
It is very worrying to note that even people who have a job and who are active cannot overcome food insecurity, said the general manager of Food Banks of Quebec, Martin Munger.
He recalls that, in the first months of the pandemic, an increase of 30 to 50% in requests for food aid had been measured.
“What we learned from the latest survey is that this increase is continuing,” he said. When we did that survey in March [2021], we noticed that there were 21.6% more people who went to food banks, that is to say that more than 600,000 Quebecers turn to food banks in Quebec every month. ”
Slightly less than a third of the participants in the Bilan-Faim 2021 study – which consolidates socioeconomic data from almost all of the 1,200 organizations that are members of the Quebec Food Bank network – explained that they had resorted to food aid because they could not cover certain basic expenses or because their remuneration did not allow them to eat properly.
43% of food aid seekers are people who live alone, 40% are households with children and just under 10% are elderly.
“What we see is that many people do not have enough money to feed themselves properly or to feed their families properly,” said Mr. Munger. They have to make choices. ”
And since food is a “compressible” expense when compared to housing, for example, it will often be food that suffers when the end of the month is tight, he added.
If the pandemic may explain part of the increase in food bank use, the increase in the cost of living has also had something to do with it. Mr. Munger also recalls that Prime Minister François Legault had asked, at the start of the health crisis, the population not to hesitate to ask for help.
“We do not have precise data at this level, but we can think that this has contributed to lowering the taboos since there are people who already had needs, who overcame their embarrassment and who had use of food banks, ”he said.
Finally, the organization reports a significant decrease in the number of foodstuffs currently available and calls for help.
Food Banks of Quebec supports and represents some 1,200 community organizations that serve more than 600,000 people each month.