Grocery benefits arrive today. But will they ease the affordability crisis pushing employed people into Dartmouth’s food banks?
Nearly three in 10 Dartmouth food-bank clients are now employed — more than double since 2019 — while local programs are seeing continued demand from post-secondary students.
As thousands of Nova Scotians receive a federal benefit intended to help with the cost of groceries and other essentials, organizations working on food insecurity in Dartmouth say the problem goes much deeper than the price at the checkout.
The Canada Groceries and Essentials Benefit is scheduled to be paid today, the second regular quarterly payment since the program replaced the GST/HST credit in July. Over 349,000 Nova Scotians received a one-time top up during the transition to the new benefit in June, according to the federal government.
The new benefit increased quarterly payments by 25 per cent for low- and modest-income Canadians.
It comes as grocery prices remain substantially higher than they were five years ago. While grocery inflation has slowed, Statistics Canada reported prices for food purchased from stores were still 29 per cent higher than in August 2021.
In Dartmouth, Feed Nova Scotia said those pressures are increasingly showing up among people who have jobs.
In 2019, 12 per cent of people accessing food banks in Dartmouth reported employment. Today, that figure is about 28 per cent, according to data provided to the Post by Feed Nova Scotia.
“More and more people who are working are showing up and being like, ‘I can’t afford food,’” Sue Kelleher, director of community partnerships at Feed Nova Scotia, told the Post.
“That kind of signals the gap between income and affordability and what it takes to have a living wage in this province.”
Nova Scotia’s minimum wage increased to $17 an hour on Oct. 1, the second increase this year.
But food insecurity remains widespread.
Statistics Canada’s most recent Canadian Income Survey found 26.2 per cent of Nova Scotians experienced some level of food insecurity in 2024, meaning they had inadequate or insecure access to food because of financial constraints.
In Dartmouth, the figures come as the Pleasant Street area undergoes a significant change in how residents can access groceries.
For years, the Pleasant-Woodside area was described as a food desert after the neighborhood Sobeys closed in 2009. A deed restriction on the former Sobeys property prevented another grocery store from operating there, leaving residents without a neighbourhood supermarket for more than a decade.
That changed in February 2025, when a No Frills opened at 375 Pleasant St., giving the neighbourhood a full-service grocery store for the first time in 16 years.
But Feed Nova Scotia said having a grocery store nearby does not necessarily mean a household is food secure.
“It’s not a food issue,” Kelleher said. “There’s a lot of food. It’s about affordability.
“Even if there is food in the community, if people can’t afford it, then they have no access to that food.”
Food-bank numbers in Dartmouth illustrate a more complicated picture.
Feed Nova Scotia recorded 3,715 unique food-bank clients in Dartmouth between April and June this year, down slightly from 3,813 during the same period in 2025.
Over a longer period, however, the number of people using the food-bank network in Dartmouth has grown by about 38 per cent since 2019.
And across Nova Scotia, the scale of food insecurity extends well beyond those who use food banks. More than 275,000 Nova Scotians are experiencing food insecurity, according to Feed Nova Scotia.
Students are among those facing particular pressure.
14.4% of Feed Nova Scotia’s clients identified as current post-secondary students, between April and June this year.
That pressure is prompting campuses to look for ways to help students afford food.
At NSCC’s Ivany Campus in Dartmouth, an affordable grocery program called the FAIR Market is offering groceries and prepared meals at reduced prices.
The student-led market buys products on sale from several grocery stores before reselling them on campus at low prices. It focuses on pantry staples and other products students have identified as priorities.
The market also eliminates another barrier: transportation.
“Some of our community members don’t have vehicles,” Luella Legge, an instructor at NSCC’s School of Business and Creative Industries, told the Post.
Rather than requiring students to travel to several stores to chase weekly sales, volunteers do that shopping and bring the discounted products to campus.
The program was launched in 2026, after food security repeatedly emerged as a concern among students.
Its organizers have since learned that price isn’t the only barrier.
Some students balance full-time classes with work and commuting. Others rent rooms without reliable kitchen access or the equipment needed to prepare meals from scratch.
That became clear when the market began offering chef-prepared meals from Upward Kitchen for $6.
Demand was strong enough that NSCC expanded the frozen meals to its Akerley and Institute of Technology campuses.
At Ivany, the FAIR Market operates alongside a free student pantry, a weekly breakfast program and emergency support that can include grocery cards.
The market itself is open to everyone, including students, faculty and staff. Shoppers do not have to demonstrate financial need.
“We don’t want there to be any stigma on who can afford something,” Legge said.
Feed Nova Scotia recently provided the FAIR Market with $20,000 as part of its Food Sovereignty Grant program.
For Feed Nova Scotia, programs like the FAIR Market represent one piece of a broader response that could include affordable markets, community pantries, gardens, co-operatives and emergency food programs.
But Kelleher said those initiatives cannot substitute for policies that address incomes and affordability.
Food banks, she said, remain “a needed Band-Aid today,” but they will not change the conditions causing people to need them.