A new report on food bank use across Ontario shows there was a surge in demand when COVID-19 took hold of the province.

But according to the Feed Ontario report, the number of people accessing food banks was already on the rise even before the pandemic.

Between March 2018 and March 2020, food bank visits in Ontario increased by nearly 12 per cent. The global health crisis exacerbated existing issues.

The organization included a special analysis of the impact of the pandemic alongside its usual report on annual food bank use, which gathers data from 130 member food banks and 1,100 affiliate agencies.

It says all food banks reported a significant increase in the number of first-time users in the first four months of the pandemic.

20 per cent of food banks surveyed reported seeing a “continued surge” in the number of people accessing their services on an ongoing basis even beyond that period.