Ottawa city council has passed a poverty reduction strategy that will support local initiatives working to address food insecurity and poverty and require more funding in the 2025 budget to support impoverished communities.
The Community Services Committee heard 21 delegations last week in support of the Poverty Reduction Strategy 2025-2029, which was presented to Council on Oct. 30 and demanded additional support in fighting food insecurity and poverty.
At the committee meeting last week, councillors were joined by community members and leaders who advocated for additional funding to address food insecurity and an investment in providing income tax support for people living in poverty.
Speaking to council in support of the strategy, Somerset Coun. Ariel Troster said hearing the delegations at committee was “the most devastating day” as councillors and staff heard about the rise in food insecurity in Ottawa and the increasing number of children going hungry.
The Poverty Reduction Strategy recommends short-term actions within the existing budget, including holding a community-led food security forum and assessing the Ottawa labour market, as well as short-term plans that require additional investment, like backbone support and one-time funding to provide tax clinic support to individuals and families in need.
A one-time funding requirement of $150,000 to implement the Poverty Reduction Strategy was also presented to Council as part of the 2025 Budget process and will be used for coordination of tax clinics.
Delegations at the committee meeting advocated for $5 million allocated to addressing food security, and the Ottawa Coalition of Community Health and Social Services requested $3 million to invest in staffing to help with income tax. There were also calls for review of the Ontario Disability Support Program (ODSP) amid personal anecdotes and stories to illustrate some of the gaps in the current systems.
Representatives for local food banks and initiatives shared the dire circumstances they are facing as food insecurity continues to rise in Ottawa. What was once a temporary help for Ottawans in need has become a necessity for survival, many said.
The first delegation was from Barbara Carroll, executive director of the Debra Dynes Family House and Food Bank, which she said addressed at least 53,000 requests for assistance in 2023.
“I need it to be said loud and clear: there is a food crisis right now in the city of Ottawa in proportions that we have never understood,” Carroll told the committee. “And the pressure on frontline agencies to manage and help the most vulnerable people in Ottawa is becoming increasingly hard to do.”
The calls for additional support come as the Ottawa Food Bank, a centralized supplier to dozens of food banks and community agencies across the city, says it will be forced to cut its food transfers by up to half in January.
With food bank usage 90 per cent higher than 2019 levels, the Ottawa Food Bank has said it had no choice but to make cuts.
Hearing the delegations was “devastating”, Troster told Ottawa Compass after the committee adjourned.
“It’s understood that this is yet another issue downloaded onto cities, in this case extreme hunger, where property tax is an inadequate method to address these kinds of issues,” said Troster. “We’re talking about poverty, homelessness, and hunger here.
“We just don’t have a lot of financial tools to be able to solve these problems, and we will not see a significant reduction in poverty if we don’t see more support from the provincial and federal governments.”
Yolanda Jones, community house coordinator at the Pinecrest-Queensway Community House, told committee during a passionate delegation that “small organizations like ours are drowning.”
In order to accommodate a 71 per cent increase in food bank visits in the last two years, the Community House has had to cut the other programs it used to offer, including community gardens, collective kitchens, an ESL program and literary and recreational programs for children.
“These were vibrant programs that we cant offer any more,” she told committee. “We’ve had to cut all of that back because the food bank is what we do now.”
She urged committee to establish the $5-million emergency fund in the 2025 budget to help in the “frontline” efforts.
“Asking organizations like us to handle the hunger crisis is like asking a lifeboat to save a sinking ship.”
Council carried the report on Wednesday and the $8 million that was requested will be considered in the City Budget process later this year.
According to the report by city staff, between 2022 and 2023, the percentage of households experiencing food insecurity in Ottawa increased by 8.9 percentage points from 14.8 per cent to 23.7.
Additionally, as temporary pandemic benefits came to an end and inflation increased, the poverty rate increased in Ottawa-Gatineau increased to 9.1 per cent in 2022 (from 6.5 per cent in 2021), according to the Government of Canada’s official poverty line, the Market Basket Measure, the report cited.
The strategy outlines four pillars to be addressed: food security, employment, financial security and economic development. Delegates argued that considerations be made in the Plan for seniors and students experiencing hunger.
“It has been a long day but I haven’t been bored for a second because this is such an important issue,” Troster told the committee after the delegation, which ended about five hours after the meeting began.
Delegations were heard from individuals and representatives for: Debra Dynes Family House and Food Bank; Ottawa Community Food Partnership; Ottawa Coalition of Community Houses; Caldwell Family Centre; Pinecrest Terrace Community House; United Way East Ontario; South East Ottawa Community Health Centre; Britannia Woods Community House; Gloucester Emergency Food Cupboard; Parkdale Food Centre; Bruce House; Just Food; and, Action Sandy Hill.
These latest efforts to address poverty come two weeks after council unanimously approved a motion signalling Ottawa’s support for a province-wide push for more aid from the federal and provincial governments to address homelessness and addictions issues.
The motion, moved at the last council meeting by Rideau-Vanier Coun. Stephanie Plante and seconded by Troster, confirms Ottawa’s support of the Ontario’s big city mayors’ caucus draft motion, called the Solve the Crisis campaign, asks for more support from upper orders of government to respond to drug-related deaths and homeless encampments in their communities.
