GTA food bank gets $2M from U.S.-based church

More Torontonians than ever are relying on food banks — and charitable groups outside the country are taking notice.

This week, the U.S.-based Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, a Mormon church with 17 million members worldwide, donated $2 million to Daily Bread Food Bank. It's the religious group's largest donation yet in Canada, according to a Daily Bread news release.

About one in 10 people in Toronto now rely on a food bank, according to Daily Bread. 

Church elder David LaFrance said LDS members were shocked by that statistic, and parishioners from around North America contributed to the donation, which is part of the church's global humanitarian and emergency relief efforts.

"It's just part of what motivates us. We're motivated by the desire to serve our fellow being," he said at a food sort in Etobicoke Monday, where the donation was announced.

Daily Bread CEO Neil Hetherington said the food bank's annual spending has gone up from $1.5 million before the pandemic to $29 million this year. Monthly visits have shot up in that same time, he said, going from roughly 65,000 to over 350,000 as of May, with about 13,000 new clients each month.  

As more people struggle to afford the cost of living, Hetherington said that's putting more pressure on food banks to fill in gaps. Nearly a quarter of Daily Bread clients now spend all their income on housing, the food bank said in a news release Monday.

Hetherington said the organization is desperate for funding, and he's grateful for the donation. He said it will buy about two million meals for people in need and two new trucks to distribute food around the GTA. 

"The difficult thing is we need about 40 to 50 million meals every single year for the city of Toronto," he said. "So that means we're going to advocate to the different levels of government even harder." 

He said there is progress on government efforts to increase and preserve affordable housing to reduce food bank use, but there's still more work to do. 

All three levels of government that represent Etobicoke—Lakeshore were present at Monday's food sort. Toronto Coun. Amber Morley, MP James Maloney and MPP Christine Hogarth all said they're ready to work together to reduce the need for food banks in the GTA. 

Daily Bread said the LDS Church made smaller donations to the organization in 2022 and 2023. The church says it has about 50,000 members in Ontario. In 2023, the church contributed $1.36 billion toward 4,119 humanitarian projects in 191 countries, according to Monday's release.