One in eight Toronto children now relies on food banks

One in eight Toronto children now relies on a food bank, nearly double the one in 15 of 2022, Daily Bread Food Bank said in Who’s Hungry 2026, its yearly study of hunger in the city.

Daily Bread, a non-profit that supplies about 220 food banks across Toronto, counted 4.1 million visits this year. That is the second year in a row above four million, and more than four times the number in 2019.

Most visitors come back: returning clients now make up 84% of visits, up from 47% two years ago. And many of them work. Of all clients, 39% are employed and 61% have a post-secondary degree.

Those with permanent jobs earn a median of $20 an hour. That is above Ontario’s minimum wage of $17.95, but $7.20 below the $27.20 Daily Bread gives as Toronto’s living wage, the pay needed to cover basic costs here.

Rent takes most of what clients have. After housing, the median client has $8.33 a person a day. And one in four spends their whole income on rent, up from one in five in 2025.

Global News names the cost of living, and the tariff war with the United States, among the pressures behind demand. Groceries have led the rise in living costs: food prices in Ontario stores rose 27% in the five years to September, against 18% for prices overall, Statistics Canada figures show.

PROOF, a University of Toronto research group, adds that food bank counts understate hunger: far more people live in food-insecure households than use food banks. Across Canada in 2025, that meant 24.0% of people, and 30.8% of children.

Daily Bread chief executive Neil Hetherington said Toronto cannot accept millions of food bank visits as a normal part of city life. The report asks the City for $100 million a year, ongoing, for its Multi-Unit Residential Acquisition program, which preserves affordable housing.

Sources: Daily Bread Food Bank · Global News · Statistics Canada · Oxford Today (Ontario minimum wage) · PROOF, University of Toronto

All 14 Toronto academic hospitals sign one research agreement

Starting a research study across two or more Toronto hospitals used to take more than a year of legal work. To cut that time, all 14 of the city’s university teaching hospitals, the Toronto Academic Health Science Network (TAHSN), have now signed one agreement covering their joint research, the University of Toronto said. Each joint project used to need its own legal contract; now a signed letter is enough, though each hospital keeps its own rules on ethics, privacy and security.

To test the approach, CAMH and University Health Network began a pilot in December 2024, and Sunnybrook and Unity Health Toronto joined a year later. In the pilot, the time to start a study fell from 448 days to 109. One Sunnybrook and Unity Health project began in 34 days, said Sunnybrook’s Michael Kolios.

The stakes go beyond Toronto. Canada’s clinical trial activity fell 11% in 2024, and its world rank for company-run Phase 3 trials, the large final tests before a treatment is approved, fell from fifth to eighth. TAHSN chair Sarah Downey, chief executive of CAMH, said the agreement strengthens Canada’s ability to attract research investment and talent.

Sources: University of Toronto, Temerty Faculty of Medicine · Toronto Academic Health Science Network (TAHSN)

Brookfield plans AI data centre at English power station

Brookfield Asset Management wants to build an AI data centre at a power station in northern England, Reuters reported. Drax, the energy company that owns the station, said it has partnered with Brookfield and Radiant, Brookfield’s AI computing platform.

Brookfield manages more than $1 trillion of assets. Its shares trade on the Toronto Stock Exchange as well as in New York, which its own release gives as its headquarters.

The main draw is the power station. Drax will supply the land and the grid connection, a 4-gigawatt link. In Britain that is scarce: businesses wait a long time to connect, and in October Microsoft was reported to have pulled out of a data centre near London because of grid delays, CNBC reported.

The site would exceed 1 gigawatt. If it is built in full, Brookfield estimates the total investment, chips included, could pass £20 billion (about US$26.8 billion). The first phase, £2.5 billion for up to 100 megawatts, would start in early 2028.

None of it is certain. The first phase still needs planning, regulatory and grid approvals and a tenant, Drax said, and no final investment decision has been made. Britain approved nearly £10 billion of data centres in 2025 but built less than £1 billion, Electric Insights reported.

Sources: SEC EDGAR (Brookfield Asset Management Ltd. 8-K) · Reuters · CNBC · Yahoo Finance UK · Electric Insights

Canada Post will end Etobicoke home delivery on November 16

Home mail delivery in the Greater Toronto Area (GTA) ends first in Etobicoke. From November 16, homes with M9V and M9W postal codes will collect their mail from community mailboxes, CP24 reported.

Canada Post, the Crown corporation that runs the mail, says the city areas that switch early sit next to neighbourhoods already served by community mailboxes. Etobicoke is one step in moving four million homes across Canada from door-to-door delivery to community mailboxes.

Most Canadians have already made the change: 80% get their mail this way, spokesperson Genevieve Joly said. Seniors and people with disabilities who might struggle with the new arrangement can apply for personalized delivery instead.

The rest of the GTA will follow within five years. Ajax, Pickering, Mississauga and Brampton switch between September and November 2027. Parts of North York, Orangeville and most of downtown Toronto come last, in September 2031.

Sources: CP24

Thomson Reuters' third-quarter profit falls to US$339 million

Thomson Reuters’ profit fell in the third quarter, but its business grew. The Toronto company, which serves lawyers, accountants and corporations and runs the Reuters news agency, said revenue rose 10% to US$1.83 billion. Profit fell to US$339 million from US$423 million a year earlier.

The drop comes from last year, not this one. In the third quarter of 2025, the company booked a one-time gain from selling its remaining minority stake in a business called Elite. This year had no such gain, so operating profit fell 22%, the company said, and profit per share fell to 78 US cents from 94.

The company’s adjusted earnings leave out one-time gains and losses such as that sale. On that measure it earned 81 US cents a share, up from 71, mainly because its businesses earned more and it has fewer shares outstanding. Its three biggest businesses, serving lawyers, corporations and tax and accounting professionals, each grew 9% to 11%.

Its print business is now counted separately: on October 1, Thomson Reuters sold 51% of it to KKR, an investment firm, for US$500 million. The two now run it as Westbridge Print.

Sources: Thomson Reuters (results, SEC filing) · BNN Bloomberg

4.1 million: the food bank visits recorded in Toronto in 2026, Daily Bread Food Bank said. It is the second year above four million and a 333% rise since 2019.

Toronto: 2.1% in September 2026, up 0.3 points from 1.8% in September 2025. Toronto is 1.0 points below Canada (3.1%).

Source: Statistics Canada, table 18-10-0004-01

• Weather: Increasing cloudiness early in the morning. Wind becoming south 20 km/h in the morning. High 21°C. Overnight low 15°C.

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• Subway: Line 1 Yonge-University: no service Lawrence West to St Andrew, from 23:59.

• Civic: New council term begins in 11 days (Sunday, November 15)

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Small charts show the last seven readings: trading days for the TSX, the dollar and the bond; weeks for gas.

Thomas Foster, the butcher’s boy mayor, 1925. Thomas Foster, born at Lambton Mills in 1852, started work as a butcher’s boy in Toronto and later bought his own shop. He was an alderman from 1891, an MP from 1917 to 1921 and mayor from 1925 to 1927. In 1935 and 1936 he built a $200,000 memorial temple, inspired by the Taj Mahal, on a hill between Leaskdale and Uxbridge. He died at 93, leaving $500,000 for cancer research, $100,000 for an annual schoolchildren’s picnic at Exhibition Park, and money to feed Toronto’s wild birds.

Sources: Wikipedia: Thomas Foster (Canadian politician))

Lost Time is never found again

Benjamin Franklin, The Way to Wealth (1758). American printer, scientist and statesman (1706-1790), who set up the first postal service in British North America as deputy postmaster.

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