Photo via Kamloops Food Bank

The Kamloops Food Bank is reducing the frequency in which it hands out perishable food items to its clients because of an increase in demand.

Executive Director Bernadette Siracky says starting June 1, people who use the food bank will be able to get perishable food twice a month, instead of once a week as before.

“They can come two times a month for perishable products and one time for non-perishable product, so they’re still able to access our service and receive healthy food more than any other food bank but having said that, this is a reflection of increase demand,” Siracky said, on NL Newsday.

Siracky also referenced last year’s release of Food Banks Canada’s first-ever poverty report card, which gave B.C. a rating of D+ across four categories – experience of poverty, poverty measures, material deprivation, and anti-poverty legislative process.

“One of the things they noted was that 44 per cent of Canadians were financially worse off than they were in the prior year. They also noticed that one in four Canadians had inadequate access to food,” Siracky added. “When we look at this report, 22 per cent of people living in our province are food insecure, and our numbers at numbers are showing that.”

“They’re showing an increased need, they’re showing financial difficulties and stresses in a very large way.”

Data from the Kamloops Food Bank shows an average of around 4,000 unique visitors in each of the first three months of the year, a stark increase when compared to the previous two years. There was also an 85 per cent increase in the number of people who used the Kamloops Food Back in 2023 – the largest such increase when compared to the year before.

“We saw the highest number ever at our Kamloops Food Bank in March of 2024, just a month and a half ago,” Siracky added. “We had 8,140 visits in one month, just at our food bank. It’s not sustainable.”

“We can’t continue to go up 20, 25, 30, 40 per cent demand every month so we had to look at it and say, ‘okay, we want to ensure that people get food when they come here’ but honestly the need is extraordinary. I was expecting it to flatten out a little bit by now, but we haven’t seen that yet.”

Photo via Kamloops Food Bank