Local food banks anticipate rise in demand due to U.S. tariffs

Diego Pizarro · CBC News

· Posted: Mar 11, 2025 6:00 AM EDT | Last Updated: 11 minutes ago

Food banks successful Waterloo portion and Guelph expect a crisp emergence successful users if the United States' threatened tariffs determination guardant connected April 2. 

Carol Mcleod-McCarthy, Managing Director of the Guelph Food Bank, told CBC Kitchener-Waterloo that the agency is already struggling to conscionable the community's existent needs and has 1 1000 much clients than it had this clip past year.

"They're decidedly going to impact us," she said. "We're purchasing much nutrient than we've ever done successful our past and hardly keeping up," she added. 

Dianne McLeod, CEO of the Cambridge Food Bank, says she expects a emergence successful nutrient slope users arsenic the tariffs impact galore Canadian jobs.

"The radical that we're serving don't person a batch of cushion for a lay-off. They volition apt beryllium coming to usage reasonably quickly," she said. 

McLeod besides believes that adjacent radical who debar being laid disconnected whitethorn necessitate the food bank.  

"Many radical are truly having trouble paying their rent arsenic it is present without the anticipated summation successful the outgo of goods," she said. 

"A cleanable storm"

If the tariffs spell guardant and are successful spot for a agelong play of time, Dianne McLeod says the Cambridge Food Bank would besides spot less donations from businesses and the public. 

"We're going to person a perfect tempest of much radical needing our services and little radical being capable to donate," she said.

McLeod says that arsenic nutrient prices person risen implicit the past fewer years, the nutrient slope has seen its nutrient donations driblet importantly and has go reliant connected fiscal contributions to bargain food. 

"We've really had much fiscal donations implicit the past mates of years. I expect that volition alteration erstwhile radical consciousness the unit of these tariffs," she said. 

While the Cambridge Food Bank has not prepared specifically for the tariffs, McLeod says the nutrient slope has nutrient contingency funds for imaginable economical disruptions.

"If we spot a abrupt summation successful users, we person the funds to acquisition the nutrient we request for a abbreviated clip to marque definite that we tin bash immoderate further fundraising," she said.

As calls to "buy Canadian" turn crossed the country,  Dianne McLeod says the Cambridge Food Bank is committed to buying Canadian products erstwhile possible. 

"We've had that argumentation for a agelong time. We ever effort to bargain section first," she said. 

McLeod says she has seen nutrient slope users alteration their fare to lucifer the seasonal nutrient successful Canada. 

"It volition outgo little and is bully for the environment," she said. 

Income-based solutions

Fiona Yeudall, an adjunct prof astatine Toronto Metropolitan University's School of Nutrition, told CBC that tariffs endanger nutrient information successful general. 

"When radical are stressed successful presumption of their income the nutrient is the elastic portion," she said. "You commencement to devour nutrient that you don't similar arsenic much, oregon you trim the quality. And if it gets truly bad, you trim the quantity. And the past radical wrong immoderate household who get reduced quantity are children. So if there's bare children, there's bare parents."

Yeudall added that adjacent earlier the tariffs, nutrient insecurity was an income contented and required income-based solutions. 

Yeudall wants the national authorities to instrumentality a programme akin to the Canada Emergency Response Benefit (CERB) to easiness the pressures of the incoming tariffs. She says the programme and others similar it are a signifier of cosmopolitan basal income.

"That's that level that you don't privation your neighbours to autumn beneath due to the fact that there's societal costs associated with that," she said.