A few weeks ago, while touting her government’s commitment to fiscal austerity, Canada’s finance minister, Chrystia Freeland, suggested that her fellow citizens might adapt themselves to a more frugal climate by canceling their $13.99/month Disney Plus subscriptions: “I said to the kids, ‘You’re older now. You don’t watch Disney anymore. Let’s cut that Disney+ subscription. So, we cut it. It’s only $13.99 a month that we’re saving, but every little bit helps. . . .  I believe that I need to take exactly the same approach with the federal government’s finances because that’s the money of Canadians.” Transparently out of touch and tone-deaf, the comment elicited a well-deserved backlash and was quickly retracted.

Nonetheless, the paternalistic subtext of Freeland’s remark was emblematic of the complacent attitude increasingly exhibited by governments across Canada while daily life for millions of Canadians becomes bleaker and more precarious. According to familiar metrics such as personal debt and monthly savings, data from recent months suggests that growing numbers are experiencing acute financial stress and economic hardship. Less typically considered — if even registered at all in a wealthy country like Canada — is the number of people who are going hungry as well.

But, as per a new report just released by Feed Ontario (a coalition of food banks and community organizations in Canada’s largest and most populous province), a record number of Ontarians are now being forced to rely on food banks — many of them fully employed. Within a population of roughly fifteen million, nearly six hundred thousand adults and children were compelled to visit a food bank between April 1st, 2021, to March 31st, 2022. According to Feed Ontario, which tracks the data on a rolling basis, that figure represents a 15 percent increase over the past three years.