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17,000 new households began using food banks this year, according to the Ontario Association of Food Banks report.

Andrew Francis Wallace / Toronto Star Order this photo

Jessica Manuel visits the Mississauga Food Bank recently. She told the Star how one food bank helped her get her life back into focus at a bleak time in her teens, pregnant and struggling to finish high school.

At 14, Jessica Manuel found that stealing candy from a convenience store was easier than getting a meal a day at home.

“My sister and I, we’d take frozen bread out of the freezer and toast it with a clothing iron to eat — just because we didn’t want to ask for anything,” she says.

Her family fell apart while she was still young. Her father left, and life with her mother and her mother’s new husband was dysfunctional. As her mom struggled to raise two new babies, Manuel and her sister were so sidelined they weren’t even taught to brush their teeth.

Manuel eventually found herself bouncing between youth homes, struggling to stay off the streets.

At age 16, Manuel found a lifeline: a food bank that she says became her family, helping her find housing, clothes and furniture and supporting her when she got pregnant at 17.

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Manuel’s story is common. According to figures released Monday, the number of Ontario households using food banks for the first time has skyrocketed by 20 per cent.

Last year, roughly 14,200 new households used the service. This year, that rose to more than 17,000.

Over a third of food bank users are children, says the Ontario Association of Food Banks’ 2014 report. Its research found that while the overall number of clients has remained stable over the past year — about 375,000 per month — a growing number of families rely on food banks due to precarious employment and rising living costs.

Almost two million jobs in Ontario are considered insecure. According to recent statistics, provided by Armine Yalnizyan, an economist for the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives, more than half of new employees across Canada over the past year are holding down temporary positions. The share of employees who are temporary workers has increased by 41 per cent since the recession.

It’s becoming more and more common to see people with full-time jobs still not being able to make ends meet, said Amanda Finley King, membership manager for the food bank association.

“People are OK while they have that six- or eight-month contract. But come the termination of the contract, suddenly you very quickly go through any savings you might have made. And, as you’re looking for that next piece of work, you’re having to turn to food banks for assistance.”

Although the number of food bank users is down from an all-time high of 413,000 in 2012, the report says food bank use in Ontario increased by 45 per cent over the past two decades. Over a roughly similar period, the number of the working poor in the province reporting bad health more than doubled.

“We’re starting to find that in addition to poverty or income insecurity, insecure jobs are a major risk for multiple health issues,” said Yogendra Shakya of Access Alliance, which provides multicultural health and community services.

Shakya, who has compiled detailed research on the impact of precarious work, particularly on immigrants, found that “almost everybody had really, really serious physical and mental health issues they were facing and they directly, clearly linked it to their job insecurity.”

“There’s absolutely no doubt that your health affects your day-to-day to life, and that the building block to health is proper nutrition. So the OAFB is really trying to focus on healthy food for Ontario food banks,” said Finley King.

In September, the Ontario government officially launched its tax credit for farmers donating produce to food banks. This year, for the first time ever, over half of the food distributed across the province by members of the food bank association was fresh or frozen.

Basic necessities are becoming increasingly costly for Ontarians. In the past year, prices for fresh meat and vegetables in grocery stores have shot up by more than 9 per cent. Average rents have gone by 15 per cent in the past seven years.

But anti-poverty campaigners say that social assistance for those on low incomes — in particular, those with disabilities — has failed to keep up with the cost of living.

“People on ODSP (Ontario Disability Support Program) are increasingly under pressure because their base benefits are not keeping up with inflation, but also because additional benefits are increasingly being targeted to be removed from the system,” said Jennefer Laidley of the Income Security Advocacy Centre, a legal clinic that helps those on social assistance.

“Government has not done nearly enough to bring people’s incomes back to a place where they can actually exist, pay their bills and live in dignity and health. What I’m saying is the entire system needs a cash infusion.”

Jessica Manuel, now 26, went on to graduate from Niagara College and is a manager at a large commercial flooring company. She gave her daughter up for adoption to a second cousin, who has become the heart of a close-knit, functional family life: Jessica now calls her Mom too.

For Manuel, it was the food bank system that stopped the gap between a childhood marked by neglect and a brighter future.

“It wasn’t just food,” she says. “It was everything I needed in one place.”

Source: http://www.thestar.com/news/gta/2014/12/01/hunger_report_use_of_food_banks_soaring_across_ontario.html?app=noRedirect