(GLOBE NEWSWIRE) – Feed Ontario, formerly the Ontario Association of Food Banks, released its 2019 Hunger Report Monday, revealing that 510,438 individuals accessed a food bank last year, visiting more than 3,059,000 times. This report finds that, despite the province’s low unemployment rate, Ontario’s food banks continue to see increasingly high levels of use, and that there is an emerging trend in the number of individuals with employment income that require the support of a food bank to make ends meet.
“Over the last three years, Ontario’s food banks have seen a 27 percent increase in the number of adults with employment income accessing their services,” says Carolyn Stewart, Executive Director of Feed Ontario. “This tells us that, while these individuals are working in a full or part time position, they have not been able to secure sufficient income to afford all of their basic necessities each month, like rent, heat, hydro, or food.”
The 2019 Hunger Report identifies the rise in precarious work, changes to Ontario’s labour laws, and insufficient support provided through worker and social assistance programs as key contributors to this emerging trend. Further, the report highlights changing demographics in Ontario’s workforce citing that adults over 25 years of age now hold nearly half of all minimum wage positions in the province, with one in three having a post-secondary education.
“Ontario’s job market is changing. Not only are we seeing a rise in casual and contract employment, but we are seeing more adults having no choice but to work in temporary or minimum wage positions,” says Stewart. “Oftentimes, these positions do not provide consistent wages or work hours, and seldom provide employer health benefits or paid time off. This is reflected in Ontario’s food bank data, which indicates ‘low wages and/ or insufficient hours’ as one of the most common reasons for needing support.”
In addition to the changing job market, the 2019 Hunger Report argues that changes to worker programs like WSIB and Employment Insurance (EI) have made it increasingly more difficult for injured workers or the recently unemployed to access support. As a result, many Ontarians have no choice but to move onto Ontario Works or the Ontario Disability Support Program, two programs that were not intended for this purpose and that provide financial support that falls significantly below the poverty line, with a respective income of only $8,796 and $14,028 per year.
“When programs for recently unemployed or injured workers are not accessible, it leaves little choice but to turn to social assistance for support,” says Stewart. “The unfortunate reality is, however, that the support provided by these programs falls well below what is needed for a basic standard of living and often results in hard working adults and families falling into poverty.”
Ontario’s food banks are working hard to respond to the increasing and changing demand for their services. In addition to emergency food support, many food banks provide job fairs and resume writing workshops, interview prep, assistance with filing income taxes or applying for support programs, child care, housing help, and accredited training programs.
Provincially, Feed Ontario is calling on the provincial government to make significant improvements to Ontario’s social assistance programs, including increases to social assistance rates, an inclusive definition of ‘disability’ under the Ontario Disability Support Program, and the development of a portable housing benefit.
“Feed Ontario believes that its vision of ending poverty and hunger is shared by all levels of government, and that there has never been a greater need for collective action than there is today,” says Stewart. “Through improvements to Ontario’s social assistance programs and government benefits, investments in affordable housing, and the development of quality employment opportunities for Ontarians, we believe that we can reduce poverty while building a future where no one goes hungry.”

2019 Hunger Report Highlights and Trends
Food Bank Use Data
510,438 adults, children, and seniors accessed food banks across Ontario between April 1st, 2018 – March 31st, 2019, an increase of 8,848 people over the previous year
Ontario’s food banks were visited over 3,059,000 times throughout the year, an increase of 4.2 percent over the previous year.
Ontario’s food banks have seen a 27 percent increase in the proportion of people with employment income accessing their services over the last three years
71 percent of households that access food banks indicate social assistance programs or government benefits as their primary source of income
53 percent of households served by food banks identified as single-person households
87% of food bank visitors were rental or social housing tenants
33% of food bank visitors were children under 18 years of age
Ontario’s Changing Workforce
48 percent of minimum wage workers are 25 years or older, with one in three holding a post-secondary degree
Since 1998, there has been a 31 percent increase in the proportion of workers in temporary positions
In Oakville, a minimum wage worker would need to work 78 hours per week to afford the average rent of a one-bedroom apartment alone.
Changes to Ontario’s Labours Laws have included the elimination of paid sick days, the option to pay reduced wages to part-time, temporary, and casual workers
Only 28 percent of unemployed Ontarians are receiving Employment Insurance, which provides only 55 percent of an individual’s former pay
46 percent of injured workers with permanent impairments end up living in poverty five years after their accident

To download a full copy of the 2019 Hunger Report, or to find out more about food banks in Ontario, please visit: www.feedontario.ca

By Luis Felipe López-Calva
The UN Climate Action Summit 2019, which took place in the days leading up to the 74th UN General Assembly, delivered new pathways and practical actions for governments and private sector to intensify climate action.
Among these, it recognized that the path towards protecting our planet requires a fundamental change in terms of how households, and the society as a whole, produce and consume electricity.
Despite important efforts, we are still not moving slowly in terms of investments in clean energy. According to the International Energy Agency, in 2018 alone global energy-related CO2 emissions rose 1.7 per cent to a historic high, driven by higher energy demand.
While LAC is a region whose contribution to global carbon emission from energy generation has been relatively low (contributing to less than eight per cent of total emissions worldwide), it has contributed significantly to the solution by moving firmly into more renewable sources of energy.
Energy needs to be transformed in order to be useful. Primary sources of energy – those found in nature such as coal, oil, natural gas, nuclear fuels, the sun, wind or rivers – need to be transformed into electricity (a so-called secondary source) to be used by industry, households, services and transportation, among other things.
Additionally, electricity cannot yet be stored at a large scale: it is either used or lost. The process of electricity generation produces a series of effects that inevitably have an impact on people and the environment, albeit some more than others.
That is, social and environmental impacts differ if electricity is generated by burning coal, inundating a valley, or building a wind farm, with effects varying from greenhouse gas emissions, displacement of local populations, and disturbances to local ecosystems (i.e. wind farms threaten flying wildlife).
The goal in energy planning is to balance benefits and costs, aiming ideally to find mechanism that internalize the environmental impact (either through markets or through regulation, both of which require effective governance: clear, stable and credibly enforced rules).
So, how does LAC fare in terms of its energy use? According to a widely used index, the “energy intensity indicator”, LAC is the most efficient region in the world when it comes to energy use.
This index captures the amount of energy needed to generate one dollar of product or service. LAC is also becoming more efficient over time, with the index falling in past years, suggesting that the region is doing relatively more with less energy.
To a large extent due to the presence of large hydroelectric power generators, 52 per cent of LAC’s energy came from renewable sources (by 2013). This is almost three times higher than the global average of 22 per cent and has been increasing steadily over the past two decades
This involves clearly many challenges ahead. Among the most pressing is related precisely to the impact of climate change on renewable energy generation: hydropower may be a highly efficient renewable energy system, but it is becoming less reliable due to changing weather patterns.
This has been exacerbated by the effect of the El Niño and La Niña phenomena, which strongly influence rain levels in the region. In parts of South America, these lead to reduced rains and to droughts that hinder the capacity to generate electricity from hydro sources, resulting in a need to increase the generation of electricity based on fossil fuels to be able to meet growing demands.
In other parts of the region, namely the deepest southern end of the continent, these phenomena produce extreme increases in rain, resulting in an unprecedented increase of water levels that affect families and lead to high vulnerability for the populations.
It is also crucial to understand the distributional impacts of continuing the transition towards renewable sources of energy in LAC. Energy transitions will have unequal distribution of their costs and benefits, particularly for communities that depend on traditional energy infrastructure for their livelihoods.
Rising fuel prices can also trigger protests, as we have seen in various countries in the region including Brazil, Mexico, and most recently Ecuador (although, in this case, the rise in price was not explicitly due to a transition to renewable sources but it was clearly related to “pricing the carbon right”, by the phasing out of fuel subsidies).
Inclusiveness and affordability, as well as a comprehensive understanding of winners, losers, and potential instruments for compensation and mitigation, will be critical components for a sustainable transition.
So, what is the future of energy in LAC? While hydropower will continue to be the largest energy source in the region for a while, exploiting its complementarities with other renewable energy sources will be key to ensure sustainability.
This change is facilitated by the fact that technological advances have allowed for a reduction in cost and improvement in efficiency of using these renewable sources (solar and wind, for example). Countries addressing diversification efforts are working to create the enabling policy and regulatory environments for other renewable sources – such as wind and solar – to flourish.
For example, recent auctions in Argentina, Brazil, Mexico, Chile, and Peru have helped to accelerate the deployment of thousands of megawatts of wind and solar energy in the region. Opportunities for investments are vast.
Promoting the use of clean energy in efficient ways is a critical objective in our fight against climate change. LAC has been at the forefront in the use of renewable sources, being a relatively low carbon emitter.
However, there are challenges ahead, with the regional demand for energy expected to keep growing as countries develop and poverty levels fall. Investments and changes in the policy environment will be needed to continue to transition towards sustainable renewable sources of energy. As Nick Stern stated recently: If we get it right, clean energy – and climate action in general – is the inclusive growth story of the 21st Century.
(Luis Felipe López-Calva is UN Assistant Secretary-General and UNDP Regional Director for Latin America and the Caribbean.)

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