Canada, November 14, 2025:
Baby formula prices across Canada have surged to crisis levels, forcing desperate parents to seek help from online communities and strangers as they struggle to feed their children. With prices up nearly 84 per cent since 2017—including a sharp 30 per cent rise in the last two years—families say what was once a routine purchase has now become an unbearable financial burden.
In Thunder Bay, Ontario, Cassandra Shedden, a mother of three, says she regularly searches her home for items she can sell just to buy formula for her six-month-old daughter, Charlotte. The infant depends entirely on formula due to difficulty gaining weight, a need that often pushes weekly costs to $90 to $120, even for the lowest-priced brand.
Parents across the country are sharing similar stories online. Local exchange groups have evolved into emergency support networks as caregivers post urgent pleas for formula. Volunteers like Thunder Bay’s Lisa Ierullo say they are increasingly receiving messages from mothers who have run out of formula and must wait hours for government benefits to arrive. In several cases, Ierullo has sent emergency e-transfers to help families get through the night. Once rare, such requests now appear daily.
Experts warn that this growing reliance on informal networks reveals a deepening national crisis.
Lesley Frank, Canada Research Chair in Food, Health and Social Justice at Acadia University, says parents are now engaging in “foraging for formula” — resorting to buying opened cans from strangers because they cannot afford new ones. She notes that many retailers have begun locking formula behind glass, as it is among the most frequently stolen food products in Canada.
According to Frank, these signs point to systemic failures in food security and economic support. She and other researchers are calling for urgent government action, including increasing the Canada Child Benefit, improving food entitlements for young children and breastfeeding mothers, and reducing reliance on the U.S. market, where a small number of companies dominate formula production. Long-term solutions, they say, may include boosting domestic manufacturing or nationalizing parts of the supply chain to stabilize prices.
As costs continue to soar, parents say they feel abandoned by a system that has not kept pace with the rising cost of raising children. Their heartfelt online messages and late-night appeals illustrate the growing urgency — and the shared plea for meaningful action to ensure every child in Canada has access to safe, reliable, and affordable nutrition.