Food Banks Canada released a report earlier this fall on the experience of poverty across the country but the researchers say they were unable to assess poverty in the territory because of low numbers of survey participants. Researchers have noted that data collection is an ongoing problem for poverty reduction efforts in the North, but there are other ways the experience of poverty has been evident in the territory.
Major Tony Brushett, executive director of the Salvation Army in Yellowknife, said that in the past two years, he has seen a growing number of families and individuals struggling with food security, who rely on the food bank. At the last count in 2024, about 4,300 families were accessing the Salvation Army food bank.
“(From) 2023 to 2024 we’ve seen a 25 per cent increase in people with food security issues, after they came back from the (wildfires) evacuation and we often relate that to a lot of people had to do without salaries for those three or four weeks and not everybody went back to work after that or some people, living paycheck to paycheck. If you lose three or four weeks pay, you lose the difference of being able to eat or not. So, we’ve seen a huge increase from 2023 to 2024 and we are seeing an increase, in the current year. We just haven’t measured it yet, but it’s probably another 10 to 15 percent over our 2024 numbers,” he said.
There seems to be a shrinking middle class in Yellowknife, said Brushett. That translates to a sharper divide between people experiencing poverty and food insecurity and those who are not or who have yet to experience it.
Brushett said he has witnessed more people from previously less common demographic pools experiencing food insecurity.
“I’ve been doing this for decades but here in Yellowknife if I compare the demographics from when I came here two and a half years ago to now, we’re seeing a lot more families now.”
“I would say 70 per cent of our clientele back then were either single or just couples, not many children, but now it’s not uncommon for us to have large families in here everyday at the food bank itself. And that is something that is fairly new in the last year or so,” he said.
