Thank you, Mr. Chair, and good morning.
Harvest Manitoba is Manitoba's food bank supporting the food security programs of 380 agency partners in 46 communities across our province. These programs are serving more than 100,000 people every month.
The need for food banks in Canada and Manitoba has never been greater. Food bank use has increased by 150% since prepandemic levels. Across Canada today, nearly two million people are using a food bank to support their daily food needs. In fact, Stats Canada had a report just yesterday showing that one in five Canadians is food-insecure.
I do want to acknowledge the Government of Canada's support during the pandemic for the emergency food security fund, as well as the local food infrastructure fund, LFIF, which enabled Harvest Manitoba and other organizations to make investments and sustain their operations at a very difficult time. I would encourage those continued investments in food security organizations.
Whenever I speak with food bank clients about what is driving the need, the story is always the same: inflation, inflation, inflation. Rising prices for everything we buy, from food to housing to fuel, are pushing people to the edge and beyond. Sadly, we all know that in times of high inflation, it's those who have the least who hurt the most. That includes people like Taylor.
Taylor is a 26-year-old woman from Winnipeg who uses Harvest's food banks, and has for many years, due to her disabilities, which leave her unable to work. Taylor's source of income is employment and income assistance for persons with disabilities, a program that offers her an income of $1,177 a month, which is $945 below the market basket measure for poverty. Inflation and high grocery prices have caused Taylor to abstain from purchasing healthy food. A lack of that nutritious diet has negatively impacted her mental health, her heart issues and other challenges.
In Manitoba today, one in six people lives with a disability, and people with disabilities are disproportionately represented at our food banks. Forty per cent of food bank clients live with a disability that prevents them from working, causes underemployment, or creates additional expenses for health needs and nutrition.
Parliament took a major step forward when all members voted for the passage of Bill C-22, the Canada Disability Benefit Act. For too many Canadians today, having a disability is a sentence to a lifetime of poverty. Harvest Manitoba urges Parliament and the government to move swiftly to fund and implement the new Canada disability benefit with amounts that will raise people's incomes above the market basket measure for poverty, that will not be subject to clawbacks and that will be accessible to all Canadians who need it.
Over the past year, a growing number of food bank clients in Manitoba are new to Canada, particularly Ukrainians displaced by the illegal and unprovoked war brought by Vladimir Putin on the Ukrainian people. For so many who are new to our country, their new life in Canada unfortunately begins with a journey to a local food bank. At times over this past year, over half of all new food bank clients in the city of Winnipeg have been displaced Ukrainians.
New Canadians continue to lack meaningful pathways to gainful employment and education, and there is a lack of accessible and affordable housing. Harvest Manitoba urges Parliament to consider additional support for settlement organizations, training organizations and food banks, which continue to allow Canada to successfully settle people from around the world.
In Manitoba, 16 first nation communities remain isolated from the south, with a lack of all-weather road access. Sixty per cent of these households face regular food insecurity. The rates of diabetes are five times higher than the national average. Harvest Manitoba was pleased to be the first food bank in Canada to participate in the nutrition north Canada program.
Today, in partnership with nutrition north Canada and the Island Lake Tribal Council, Harvest Manitoba has established regular community-led food bank operations in remote first nations of over 10,000 people in those Island Lake communities 600 kilometres north of Winnipeg. In our first year of operation, we have shipped nearly 70,000 kilograms of nutritious food to those Island Lake nations, the equivalent of more than 200,000 meals.
Without the nutrition north Canada subsidy in its current and revised form, Harvest Manitoba would not have been able to sustain the high cost of transporting food by air and ice roads to these communities, nor continue our current expansion plans to deliver food in partnership with first nations to other remote northern communities.
We know that food banks and delivering food alone are not a long-term answer to northern food security. Food sovereignty is. Economic development is, as well as opportunity, but these communities need food today.
Canada can and must do better to address the crisis of food security in this country. Along with all Canadians and Manitobans, we look forward to working with this new federal budget that offers hope for a healthy future for all where no one goes hungry.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman.