 Here’s what you need to know to get the day started: | | | As cost of living soars, millions of Canadians are turning to food banks | | |  | A volunteer with the Feed Scarborough Food Bank unloads donations at the charity’s warehouse. A new report from Food Banks Canada said demand for food banks across the country has reached its highest level since its studies began nearly 35 years ago. (Evan Mitsui/CBC) | | | Every Friday, people line up around the block to pick up dinner from a tiny church in downtown Toronto. Volunteers working for the food program inside serve a hot casserole, some rice, and maybe fruit and yogurt if supplies come through.
Rev. Canon Maggie Helwig, who helps run the program out of St. Stephen-in-the-Fields church, said it regularly serves 130 people for dinner on Fridays — compared to the two dozen they saw a few years ago.
On Saturday and Sunday mornings, the lineup for breakfast is even longer — with hundreds of parents, seniors, students, working adults and those who are unemployed.
"Every week we are scrambling," Helwig said. "Every week we run out of food and start foraging in the cupboards and in the freezers for something that we can give to people.
That staggering demand is also playing out at food banks and other food programs across the country. A new report from Food Banks Canada released Wednesday found that this year, with the cost of living skyrocketing, food bank usage rose to its highest level since the survey started in 1989.
The annual HungerCount report is based on surveys sent to food security organizations, tracking their usage in the month of March. This year's report found that nearly two million people — including more employed people than ever — used food banks March 2023 alone. That's a 32 per cent increase from the same month last year and more than 78 per cent higher than in March 2019.
It's data that comes as no surprise to staff and volunteers who have been trying to keep up with demand.
"Anyone who works in any kind of food-security programming knows that things have gotten astonishingly worse," Helwig said.
A few years ago, unemployment was a major factor in the number of people seeking support, as the early months of the pandemic brought the economy to a halt. The report said food insecurity is now being driven by inflation and the high cost of living — with more Canadians struggling to afford basics like housing and food.
The study said demand for food banks started exploding around the same time inflation shot up, doing so at its fastest rate in the last 40 years.
"It's not necessarily that there's not enough food," said Larry Mathieson, who runs the Unison for Generations 50+ program for older adults in the Calgary area. "It's that we can't afford the food." | | | | | This Vancouver woman plays 'Mrs. Dressup' for drivers every day | | |  | (Darryl Dyck/The Canadian Press) | | | | | | Anne Bruinn stands dressed as a Barbie doll inside a box in an attempt to entertain motorists driving past her home in Vancouver, on Oct. 19. She likes to call herself the "queen of the cosplay corner,'' and she's been surprising her drive-by audiences with costumes ranging from a Star Wars stormtrooper to Beetlejuice. Read more here. | | | | | | | In brief | | | An Israeli hostage who was released by Hamas said Tuesday she was beaten by militants as she was taken into Gaza on Oct. 7, while the whereabouts of her husband, who was also taken captive, remain unknown. Yocheved Lifshitz, 85, was freed late Monday along with 79-year-old Nurit Cooper, leaving around 220 hostages still in the hands of Hamas. She was the first of four released hostages so far to speak publicly. Seated in a wheelchair, a frail-looking Lifshitz told reporters that her captors hit her with sticks as they took her by motorcycle into Gaza. There, they walked for a couple of kilometres in what Lifshitz described as a "spider web" of damp underground tunnels. "I've been through hell," she said, assisted by her daughter, who translated her remarks from Hebrew to English. Read the full story here.
A B.C. woman says she's effectively been left to starve because the coverage for the formula she needs to live was significantly reduced when the federal government switched insurance providers. Three years ago, Elizabeth Stagg was hospitalized with a blood infection. Then her intestines shut down. She was diagnosed with gastroparesis, a condition that paralyzes the stomach, stopping or seriously slowing food from moving between the stomach and small intestine. She now relies on a feeding tube and formula to eat. Stagg is among the 1.7 million federal workers, retirees and dependents who saw their insurance provider switch from Sun Life to Canada Life on July 1, and with it changes to what services and drugs are covered, how they're approved and what happens when they need to talk to an agent. Under Sun Life, 80 per cent of the cost of the formula and tubing was covered. Since the switch to Canada Life, her coverage has dropped significantly. Unsure if she was going to be compensated, and unable to afford the extra cost, she eventually stopped buying the formula altogether near the end of August. Two weeks later, she ended up in the hospital with another blood infection. Read the full story here.
Air Canada says it has apologized to a British MP who was singled out for additional security screening while travelling to and from Canada with a parliamentary committee last week. Labour MP Mohammad Yasin was questioned on both legs of his trip by Air Canada and Canadian immigration officials, and was told it was "because his name is Mohammad," according to MP Clive Betts, one of the committee members travelling with Yasin. Betts told the U.K. House of Commons on Monday that Yasin was stopped for questioning, unlike other members from the House of Commons committee who were travelling to Canada together. Yasin is one of two people of colour on the committee, and the only one with a Muslim name. "The questioning was undertaken by officials from Air Canada and, we believe, the Canadian government," said Betts. He said Yasin was questioned multiple times, first at Heathrow airport, then at airports in Montreal and Toronto. Read the full story here.
For the past 21 years, Marcy White has been fighting to keep her son Jacob Trossman alive — and that fight recently got a lot harder. Jacob has Pelizaeus-Merzbacher Disease (PMD), an ultra-rare degenerative disease attacking the central nervous system. It affects an estimated one in 200,000 to one in 500,000 kids — mostly boys. There's no cure and no standard course of treatment. At age 12, he became a patient in the Complex Care Program at Toronto's SickKids hospital. But now, at 21, Jacob's aged out of pediatric care. As advances in pediatric care mean minors with complex medical needs are living longer, healthier lives — it also means more of them are aging out of the very system designed to care for them. SickKids says their services can be adequately replaced by specialists in the adult-care system. But White is worried the so-called transition will be akin to her son's care "falling off a cliff." So she's filed a human rights complaint, pleading to allow Jacob to continue receiving care at SickKids. Read the full story here.
Now here's some good news to start your Wednesday: For most people, getting pulled on stage to sing with Shania Twain would be a once-in-a-life-time experience. But that's not the case for Toronto's Daniela Agostino. She was eight when she first shared the stage with the Canadian country star. On Sunday — two weeks shy of her 30th birthday — Agostino did it again. Watch the video here from The National's #TheMoment. | | |  | Will the Airbnb crackdown lower rents? | New short-term rental rules in B.C. and across North America are trying to stop Airbnbs from driving up rents. Will they work?
Listen to today's episode | | | Today in history: October 25 | | | 1923: Dr. Frederick Banting and Dr. J.J.R. Macleod of the University of Toronto are awarded the Nobel Prize in medicine for their discovery of the hormone insulin. They were the first Canadians to win a Nobel.
1971: The UN General Assembly votes 76 to 35, with 17 abstentions, to seat the People’s Republic of China and expel the Republic of China, which is based in Taiwan, ending a 22-year battle over China's UN representation.
1982: The Senate passes the bill to officially rename the July 1st holiday as Canada Day.
1993: Jean Chrétien's Liberals end nine years of Progressive Conservative rule in Ottawa by winning a majority in a federal election. The Tories tumbled from 154 seats to only two. The Bloc Québécois became the Official Opposition with 54 seats, two more than the Reform party. | | | (With files from CBC News, The Canadian Press, The Associated Press and Reuters) | | | | |  | CBC NEWS APP | The most convenient way to get your news
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