Record-breaking year for food bank use in Nova Scotia as affordability crisis grows

Feed Nova Scotia says government assistance rules have made food insecurity grow within the province and it is calling for changes.

This comes as the Food Banks Canada Hunger Count, released Wednesday, highlights a record 2.35 million visits to food banks across the country this year.

That growing demand is being felt in Nova Scotia, where food bank visits have also reached record levels.

In March, there were 46,627 food bank visits. There has been a 7.4 per cent increase in visits since 2025 and 82 per cent since 2019.

“Last year was a record-breaking level, and this year has broken that record,” said Sue Kelleher, director of community partnerships, innovation and advocacy with Feed Nova Scotia.

The rising cost of living is one of the core factors pushing households toward food banks as prices for food, housing and transit rise.

Kelleher said that for many, rent and household bills take precedence over groceries.

“Food is often the first thing to go,” she said.

The report found that more than 23 per cent of Nova Scotia food bank users reported employment as their main source of income, rising from 14 per cent in 2019.

“That’s a real signal of employment is no longer protecting people from financial hardship,” said Kelleher.

In a former United church in Halifax, the Brunswick Street Mission feels this strain in real time.

It has been running food bank programs for over 100 years, recently adopting a grocery store format to allow visitors to pick what they want as opposed to pre-picked food hampers.

Matt Kok, executive director at the mission, said that this year around 35 per cent of visitors using their services were there for the first time and many more are coming in more frequently.

“That tells me that more people are needing food banks longer,” Kok said.

“More people are coming, and new people are coming. But those people who may have come once before, they’re now coming multiple times.”

According to Kok, the organization is seeing a wide range of people needing support, including those who are employed but still unable to afford basics, and families with children.

“Every time we open the doors for a food bank, there’s mothers with their children. There’s dads coming in,” Kok said.

One change that raised alarm bells for him was the increase in mothers with young children using the mission’s breakfast program, which normally serves people sleeping outdoors or in shelters, saying it sometimes can be a “volatile” environment.

Kok added that financial pressures also affect people who cannot work who require government assistance, including those with disabilities.

“The financial support they’re receiving is not helping them to make ends meet,” Kok said. “It just exasperates the problem for them. ”

The Brunswick Street Mission isn’t safe from strain either.

Kok said Thursday that the organization has already used its entire annual food budget.

In addition to the one tonne of food the mission gets each week from Feed Nova Scotia, they are spending about $7,500 every week to keep food on the shelves.

Throughout the past week, Kok said, each day saw over 50 households visit and people sometimes have to be turned away.

Kok said that while visitors have been able to come in every two weeks to pick up groceries, to stretch its stock they are planning to move to every three weeks.

“We thought we could make it happen for two weeks, but we can’t,” he said. “It’s just not possible.”

As places like Brunswick Street Mission adapt to keep up with demand, Feed Nova Scotia says the province cannot rely on food banks to fix food insecurity,

Kelleher said that while food banks provide essential support, they were not built to address the underlying factors playing into food insecurity.

“It’s not a food issue, it’s an affordability issue,” Kelleher said.

According to the Hunger Count, 42 per cent of food bank clients in the province rely on government assistance as their main source of income. Those assistance rates remain below the poverty line, Kelleher said, meaning an income-based solution is required.

In a news release, Feed Nova Scotia calls for changes to provincial and federal policies to address rising living costs.

For the province, Feed Nova Scotia asks the government to increase income support and expand the affordable living tax credit for low-income workers. It also urges the province to restore funding and eligibility levels for the Heating Assistance Rebate Program, which was reduced in 2025.

Food banks are limited in what they can do to solve insecurity, Kelleher said, and this is evident because despite Feed Nova Scotia distributing more food than ever, rates of insecurity continue to rise.

“We know the solutions are income-based,” she said.

For organizations like Brunswick Street Mission, the concern is “that we just can’t keep up with demand, and that people get far farther and farther behind,” Kok said.