- Electricity cost to households — what households actually pay for power.
- Gas prices — what Canadians pay at the pump.
- Housing cost burden — the share of household income going to housing.
- GDP per capita growth — living-standard growth and the denominator problem.
- Currency strength — the Canadian dollar against its G7 peers.
This page sets the Canadian figures alongside the United States, United Kingdom, Germany, France, Italy, and Japan. It also shows why food insecurity, rather than food-bank counts, carries the comparison.
Read this first. The G7 nations do not count food-bank use the same way. Canada reports monthly visits; the UK's Trussell network reports annual parcels (a volume figure its own analysts say cannot be converted to unique users); Germany reports people using the Tafel network; the US and France report food volume (pounds, tonnes) with no national headcount. Converting visits or parcels into "people" requires a frequency assumption that drifts with each charity's operating capacity. So the food-bank column below is directional. The food-insecurity column, drawn from national surveys (StatCan, USDA) and the FAO "moderate + severe" scale, is the only series where all seven nations sit on one axis. Rank on that one.
The harmonized FAO "moderate + severe" scale applies the same eight-question experience framework across countries, so the percentages are genuinely rankable. The dashed line is the unweighted mean of the four European G7 members (France, Italy, UK, Germany). It is kept clean of the two North American outliers, so the benchmark is not inflated by what it is measuring against.
Canada (~19%) sits at roughly 2.5× the European G7 peer average, and is the highest in the G7 on the table's values, above the United States (13.7%). The four European members cluster within about a point of the 7.6% line; Japan is the clear low outlier. Adding Canada and the US to the four European members would lift the mean from 7.6% to about 10.5%. The European cluster is tight, and the two North American nations are the outliers.
Where the insecurity chart is rankable, the food-bank chart is mostly gaps. Four of seven nations cannot be placed on it at all, because they publish food volume rather than a people count. Where data exists it runs the same direction as the insecurity measure, but the units (visits, parcels, people) are not strictly comparable.
The food-bank chart is mostly gaps: four of seven nations cannot be placed on it at all, because they publish food volume rather than a people count. Where data exists, it runs in the same direction as the insecurity measure (Canada highest, Germany lowest, the UK in between). But the units differ, visits against parcels against people, so the bar lengths are not strictly comparable to one another.
The chart below plots HungerCount's March food-bank visits, the one metric Food Banks Canada reports on a consistent basis year to year, against the same figure normalized per 1,000 population. That separates genuine deterioration from the effect of a fast-growing population.
Total visits rose 70% from 2021 to 2025, while visits per 1,000 people rose 56%. The gap between the two lines is the contribution of population growth: real, but modest. Even after stripping it out, per-capita food bank use is up well over half in four years, so the surge is overwhelmingly a deterioration in need, not just more people. The steepest single-year jump in both lines is 2022→2023, coinciding with peak inflation. This visits trend is corroborating evidence for rising hardship; the headline claim of rising food insecurity rests on the StatCan survey (the moderate+severe figure in the table below), which moves the same direction.
| Country | Food-bank reliance (people, % of pop) | FB data yr | Mod + severe food insecurity | FI data yr | FI confidence | vs. Euro G7 avg (7.6%) |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 🇨🇦 Canada | ~5% (visits→people bridge) | 2025 | 19.0% | 2024 | High | +11.4 (2.5×) |
| 🇺🇸 United States | n/a — volume-based | — | 13.7% | 2024 (final) | High | +6.1 (1.8×) |
| 🇫🇷 France | n/a — tonnage-based | — | ~8.5% | 2024 | Med | +0.9 |
| 🇬🇧 United Kingdom | 3.6% of households (survey) | 2023/24 | ~8.0% | 2024 | Med–High | +0.4 |
| 🇮🇹 Italy | n/a | — | ~7.5% | 2024 | Med | −0.1 |
| 🇩🇪 Germany | ~2.4% (Tafel people) | 2022 | ~6.5% | 2024 | Med | −1.1 |
| 🇯🇵 Japan | n/a — small sector | — | ~3.0% | 2024 | Med | −4.6 |
| European G7 average | — | — | ~7.6% | 2024 | — | — |
| N. America + Europe (FAO) | — | — | 8.1% | 2024 | — | — |
On moderate + severe food insecurity, Canada's ~19% is about 2.5× the European G7 average of 7.6%. The distance between Canada and the European cluster is larger than the entire spread among the European members. The United States is next at 13.7%, and the US figure is now its highest in a decade. The cross-country ranking is under review (see Sources & methodology).
Food Banks Canada's HungerCount recorded close to 2.2 million visits in March 2025, a 5.2% rise on 2024 and about double the 2019 level. Roughly 712,000 of those visits were children. This is the only national food-bank study (running since 1989, ~5,500 organizations), but it counts visits, not unique people, which is why it cannot be ranked directly against other countries.
The widely-quoted marginal-inclusive figure (25.5% of Canadians in food-insecure households for 2024, 24.0% for 2025, Canadian Income Survey) includes the "marginal" category and is not comparable to other countries' FAO figures. The internationally comparable number is moderate + severe at ~19%. Using the 25.5% figure in a cross-country chart would overstate Canada's position by roughly double. That is the single most common error in this comparison.
Food-bank counts can't rank the G7: four of seven nations don't publish a bridgeable people-count, and the units (visits, parcels, people, tonnes) aren't interchangeable. The US series, ironically the best national survey, has no food-bank headcount at all. USDA announced in September 2025 that it is discontinuing its food-security report after the 2024 edition, removing one of the few high-quality national series. National food-security surveys plus the FAO scale are the durable basis for benchmarking; treat food-bank figures as supporting colour.
About 19% of Canadians lived in a food-insecure household in 2024, roughly 2.5× the European G7 average of 7.6%, and March food bank visits rose 70% from 2021 to 2025.
- Compared with
- The G7, on moderate plus severe food insecurity as a share of population, most recent reading per country.
- Where Canada sits
- On the table's values Canada has the highest food-insecurity rate in the G7, at 19.0% for 2024 against 13.7% in the United States. The page itself has placed the cross-country ranking under review.
- Which way it is moving
- Mixed. Food insecurity eased to 18.4% for 2025, the first fall in four years, after three consecutive record years. Food bank visits per 1,000 population rose 56% from 2021 to 2025.
- What the verdict follows
- Position in the peer set. The 2025 easing is small beside the gap to European peers, and the per-capita visits trend the page falls back on is still rising.
- Data basis
- Statistics Canada, Canadian Income Survey (2024, and 2025 released 29 April 2026), USDA ERS ERR-358, FAO/Gallup-range estimates for Europe and Japan (2024), and Food Banks Canada HungerCount 2025. Page last reviewed September 2026, data current to March 2025, the latest HungerCount published by Food Banks Canada.
Primary sources
- Food Banks Canada — HungerCount 2025.
- Statistics Canada — Canadian Income Survey (food insecurity 2024); PROOF (University of Toronto) household food insecurity reporting.
- USDA Economic Research Service — Household Food Security in the United States in 2024 (ERR-358, December 2025). Final edition of the series.
- UK DWP — Family Resources Survey (food security), FYE 2024; Trussell — End of Year Stats 2024/25.
- Tafel Deutschland — network usage figures.
- FAO — The State of Food Security and Nutrition in the World (SOFI) 2025; FAO/Gallup high-income food-insecurity estimates.
What each country measures
- Canada — food insecurity: Statistics Canada, Canadian Income Survey. Moderate + severe = 12.4% + 6.7% ≈ 19% for 2024, and 11.9% + 6.5% = 18.4% for 2025 (released 29 April 2026). The marginal-inclusive headline (25.5% for 2024, 24.0% for 2025) is excluded from cross-country comparison by design.
- Canada — food banks: Food Banks Canada, HungerCount 2025 — ~2.17M visits in March 2025; visits, not unique individuals.
- United States: USDA ERS, Household Food Security in the United States in 2024 (released 30 Dec 2025) — 13.7% of households food insecure, 5.4% very low food security. Final edition of the series. No national food-bank people-count exists (Feeding America reports food volume).
- United Kingdom: DWP Family Resources Survey (3.6% of households used a food bank over 12 months, FYE 2024) is the survey measure; Trussell's 2.9M parcels (2024/25) is a volume figure the network states cannot be converted to unique users.
- Germany: Tafel Deutschland — ~2 million people using the network (2022, most recent comparable figure). FAO range used for the insecurity column.
- France, Italy, Japan: FAO/Gallup-range "moderate + severe" estimates (2024). France and Italy report food-bank activity by tonnage; Japan's food-bank sector is small and not nationally tabulated.
Methodology notes
The visits→people bridge (Canada food-bank figure)
The ~5% annual reliance figure converts HungerCount visit counts to unique people using the ratio implied by provincial dual-reporting (British Columbia reports both visits and ~113,606 unique individuals served in March 2025). This ratio is unstable: when a food bank cuts a client's visit frequency to manage capacity, visits fall while unique people do not. The bridge drifts for operational reasons unrelated to need. Treat ~5% as an order-of-magnitude estimate, not a precise value.
The 2021–2025 visits time series
March-visit totals are the figures Food Banks Canada reports on a consistent basis: 1,272,580 (2021); 1,465,721 (2022); 1,935,911 (2023); 2,059,636 (2024); 2,165,766 (2025). Per-capita uses Statistics Canada July 1 population estimates (38.25M in 2021 to 41.65M in 2025), giving +70% total growth and +56% per-capita over the period. Population growth accounts for only about a fifth of the rise. The series starts in 2021 because no HungerCount was conducted in 2020 (COVID), and although the report plots a 2010–2025 visits curve (Figure 6), it does not publish the underlying pre-2019 values, which are not estimated from a chart here. Note also that "visits" is the consistent recent metric; earlier HungerCount reporting emphasized unique people, a different unit, so splicing a longer series would mix definitions.
Why the food-insecurity chart is rankable but the food-bank chart is not
Under review (17 September 2026). This page presents the food-insecurity column as harmonized and rankable. That claim does not fully hold and is being reworked. Three problems: Canada's figure is a share of persons while the USDA headline (13.7%) is a share of households (the comparable US person-level figure for 2024 is 14.4%); both countries use the 18-item Household Food Security Survey Module rather than FAO's eight-item Food Insecurity Experience Scale, and they apply different classification thresholds, so PROOF (University of Toronto) finds that reclassifying US data on Canada's threshold brings the two countries to roughly the same level; and FAO does not appear to publish country-level FIES figures for the G7, only regional aggregates. Until this is resolved, treat the cross-country ranking as indicative only and rely on the Canadian trajectory below, which is measured consistently against itself. The original claim follows. The FAO "moderate + severe" framework applies the same eight-question experience scale across countries, so the percentages are genuinely comparable. The food-bank metrics are not: a Canadian "visit," a UK "parcel," a German "person," and a US/French "tonne" are four different units measuring four different things, gathered by charities with different service models and coverage. The European G7 average (7.6%) is an unweighted mean of France, Italy, the UK, and Germany, excluding Canada and the US so the benchmark is not inflated by the outliers being measured against it.
What is not on this page
Depth and persistence of food insecurity, the relationship between food-bank use and actual food insecurity (most food-insecure people never visit a food bank), provincial and demographic breakdowns (Canadian and US data both show large disparities by Indigenous status, race, and household type), the role of inflation and social-transfer design, and 2025 survey readings for the other G7 countries. Canada's 2025 CIS figures (published 29 April 2026) are shown beside the 2024 figures. FAO's SOFI 2026 (published 20 July 2026) came out after this page was built and is not used here. The US series is discontinued.
Companion workbook
The editable series and underlying calculations live in Elevating_Food-Bank-Use_Data.xlsx. Only series the workbook actually contains are described here.
