Crunching the numbers on Aboriginal usage of Canada’s food banks

Due to possible confusion stemming from my last post about new data on Aboriginal people’s use of food banks in Canada, I thought I would try and make partial amends with some number crunching that lays the stats out a bit more helpfully.

I have pulled together three tables. The first two display the same data in different ways: where TABLE A ranks the Aboriginal use of food banks by provinces/territories on a ‘raw’ numerical basis only, TABLE B ranks provinces/territories according to their proportion of food bank clientele who are Aboriginal.

As you can see in TABLE A, the jurisdictions with the greatest number of Aboriginal clientele for food banks are Alberta and Ontario at 30,249 and 28,948 respectively. The Atlantic provinces have the fewest.

TABLE A.
Aboriginal Visitors to Food Banks in Canada
Ranked by Number

Province/TerritoryTOTAL VISITORS
(Aboriginal &
non-Aboriginal)
Aboriginal
Visitors
% of Total
= Aboriginal
CANADA867,948105,02212.10%
Alberta59,31130,24951.00%
Ontario402,05628,9487.20%
Manitoba57,96622,25938.40%
British Columbia94,35918,40019.50%
Saskatchewan22,66211,83052.20%
Quebec154,3642,1611.40%
Territories (YK, NT & NU)2,2722,14794.50%
New Brunswick18,5176853.70%
Nova Scotia22,5736092.70%
Newfoundland & Labrador30,800620.20%
Prince Edward Island3,068581.90%

Here in TABLE B, we see the combined northern territories shoot to the top of the list at over 94%, with the prairie provinces — Saskatchewan (52%), Alberta (51%) and Manitoba (38%) — rounding out the top four.

TABLE B.
Aboriginal Visitors to Food Banks in Canada
Ranked by Percentage

Province/TerritoryTOTAL VISITORS
(Aboriginal &
non-Aboriginal)
Aboriginal
Visitors
% of Total
= Aboriginal
Territories (YK, NT & NU)2,2722,14794.50%
Saskatchewan22,66211,83052.20%
Alberta59,31130,24951.00%
Manitoba57,96622,25938.40%
British Columbia94,35918,40019.50%
CANADA867,948105,02212.10%
Ontario402,05628,9487.20%
New Brunswick18,5176853.70%
Nova Scotia22,5736092.70%
Prince Edward Island3,068581.90%
Quebec154,3642,1611.40%
Newfoundland & Labrador30,800620.20%

With two exceptions (Quebec, Newfoundland and Labrador), TABLE C shows how Aboriginal people’s use of food banks is, more often than not, well out of proportion to their overall population numbers (as of 2006) in each jurisdiction.

TABLE C.
Aboriginal people as proportion of Food Bank Users, Provincial/Territorial population

Province/ TerritoryAboriginal people as %
of Prov'l/Territ'l pop'n
Aboriginal people as %
of all food bank users
Territories (YK, NT & NU)52.83%94.50%
Manitoba15.47%38.40%
Saskatchewan14.88%52.20%
Alberta5.78%51.00%
British Columbia4.81%19.50%
Newfoundland and Labrador4.69%0.20%
CANADA3.75%12.10%
Nova Scotia2.68%2.70%
New Brunswick2.45%3.70%
Ontario2.02%7.20%
Quebec1.46%1.40%
Prince Edward Island1.29%1.90%

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