Plus de deux millions : le HungerCount 2024 et les limites de l’effort héroïque

One year after HungerCount 2023 recorded nearly two million visits, the 2024 edition confirmed that the threshold had been crossed. Canadian food banks registered 2,059,636 visits in March 2024 — six per cent more than a year earlier and roughly 90 per cent more than in March 2019. Children again made up close to a third of clients, and 18 per cent of clients were employed.

Read alongside its predecessor, the report tells a story not of a sudden emergency but of sustained, compounding pressure.

The limits of heroism

For several years, food banks and their volunteers met rising demand through what can only be described as heroic effort: longer hours, improvised storage, weekends given up without complaint. That effort deserves profound gratitude. It also has limits. No organisation can indefinitely sustain a doubling of demand on the goodwill of the same exhausted people.

When the need becomes structural, the response must become structural too.

What structure looks like

• Shared infrastructure. Warehousing, transport and procurement pooled across agencies reduce costs and waste.
• Better data. Understanding who is served, when and why allows agencies to plan rather than react.
• Professional support for volunteer teams, from scheduling systems to training and wellbeing resources.
• Connections beyond food, linking clients to employment services, benefits navigation, digital-skills training and other community resources.
• Collaboration with newcomers’ services and schools, given how many clients are families and recent arrivals.

A community responsibility

Food banks are a visible sign of need, but they are not, and were never meant to be, the whole answer. They are one part of a web of community support that includes employers, schools, faith communities, settlement agencies and neighbours.

Strengthening that web — connecting organisations so that each can do what it does best — is the kind of work I believe the nonprofit sector must now prioritise. Heroism has brought us this far. Partnership must take us the rest of the way.