Ottawa, province announce funding to help bring meals to New Brunswick students

The federal government is spending $11.2 million to provide healthy food for schools across the country.

Employment and Social Development Canada and the government of New Brunswick were at École Mgr-François-Bourgeois in Shediac, N.B., Friday to announce more than $11 million dollars in federal funding to expand access to healthy food in schools.

The funding will allow New Brunswick to expand its breakfast program to all 295 schools in the province, said a Friday news release.

Jenna Sudds, minister of families, children and social development, said the federal government would spend $11.2 million over three years to feed kids in New Brunswick via Canada’s National Food Program.

“So far, Newfoundland, Manitoba, Ontario, P.E.I., and now New Brunswick have joined us on this mission,” Sudds said. “A mission to make sure that kids have access to healthy, fresh food at school.”

Sudds said the program fed 241,000 Canadian children last year including 57,000 children in 160 New Brunswick schools, despite of the opposition’s insistence that the program was just “bureaucracy.”

Sudds said their goal is to reach another 400,000 students.

“The money is on the table,” Sudds said. “We’ve made the commitment this budget.”

New Brunswick Premier Susan Holt said one in four children go to school hungry in the province.

“The school food program does so much more than just satisfy kid’s food needs,” Holt said. “It really empowers their minds.”

Holt said the program would help teachers, families and students, but the “cherry on top” is helping local producers.

Finance Minister Dominic Leblanc was in Shediac for the announcement. Leblanc is also the MP for Beauséjour, N.B.

Leblanc addressed the media’s questions about tariffs and interprovincial trade by joining other speakers in celebrating the opportunity for the school program to benefit Canadian producers and educate children about local food.

Serge Cormier, MP for Acadie-Bathurst, acted as master of ceremonies for the announcement. Cormier sponsored the private member’s bill for a national framework for a school food program. He called the $1 billion program an investment in the future.

The Minister of Education for New Brunswick, Claire Johnson, called the investment in New Brunswick a “game changer.”

Johnson, who is a dietitian by trade said, “students can focus on learning and teachers can focus on teaching,” when their belly’s are full.

Ginette Petitpas Taylor is the MP for Moncton-Riverview and the president of the provincial treasury board. She made an additional announcement that $20 million would be allocated for the Canada Food Infrastructure Fund, including $1 million for Food Alimentaire in N.B.

New Brunswick’s Minister of Agriculture, Aquaculture and Fisheries Pat Finnigan invited the students in attendance to name the types of foods from New Brunswick that they would like to eat at school. One suggestion for lobster drew a laugh from those in attendance, but another student got serious when they asked what the opposition thought about the food program.

Cormier said the Conservatives opposed the bill.

“This type of program that we presented today, should go beyond politics. We’re not doing this for politics, we’re doing it for children and their families.”

Cormier called the program’s arrival in New Brunswick the high point of his political career.

“I’m going to remember this for the rest of my life,” he said.

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