What we know - and don't - about the national school food program

The federal government's plans to launch a national school food program might have left some people with more questions than an‐ swers about how it will ac‐ tually work.

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau says he hopes the program will deliver meals to 400,000 children per year by the 2024-25 school year.

"We all want kids to have the best start in life, including the most vulnerable," Trudeau said, announcing the program on Monday.

However, not many de‐ tails were released. Officials at the Prime Minister's Office would not comment on the record. More details may be revealed in the federal budget, planned for April 16.

In the meantime, here's what we know - and don't about the $1-billion program.

WATCH | Trudeau an‐ nounces national school food program:

Who is it for?

The federal government says in a statement its target is to provide meals to 400,000 kids every year, "bey‐ ond those served by existing school food programs."

Debbie Field, co-ordinator for the Coalition for Healthy School Food, says about two million children are already participating in school food programs.

The other 400,000 are at the 1,000 schools that are on waiting lists for such pro‐ grams, Field told CBC News.

A national program would also help families in need overcome the stigma of tak‐ ing part in programs that on‐ ly target low-income studen‐ ts, says Rachel EnglerStringer, a community health and epidemiology professor at the University of Saskatchewan.

"There are plenty of kids who are not participating who could be participating," Engler-Stringer told CBC's Saskatoon Morning. "There are plenty of families that won't participate because there's a stigma involved."

Is it a new program?

Not exactly. Don't expect every child in Canada to sud‐ denly get served a hot lunch. The program will support ex‐ isting provincial and territori‐ al programs.

Field says there's a good chance Ottawa will transfer the new money into those ju‐ risdictions, so that "it's not a new bureaucracy, it just flows directly."

"What we're hoping we'll see in the budget is the de‐ tails on how that will happen," Field said.

She wants to see Ottawa share the cost of feeding schoolchildren like it does with the $10 a day child-care funding.

Programs look different in different schools, regions and provinces. It depends on need. Some programs offer a mid-morning snack or a breakfast, lunch or "grab and go" bins. Some are free, oth‐ ers are pay-what-you-can.

Prince Edward Island's Bon Appetit program offers all students from kinder‐ garten to Grade 12 a daily lunch option (like mini pan‐ cakes and yogurt, or a ham and cheese snack box) using a pay-what-you-can model. The meals are $5.75 each for those who can afford the full price.

B.C. provides a website to help schools develop pro‐ grams that fit the needs of their students.

Field says parents will likely see the effects of the federal program school by school - so, if you're in a com‐ munity with a school that has a program already, your kid will be more likely to access that food, and probably bet‐ ter food.

If your school doesn't have a program, "this will al‐ low provinces and territories to have a little bit more mon‐ ey so they can expand," she said.

WATCH | NDP pushes for national school food pro‐ gram:

How good are the ex‐ isting programs?

It varies. Programs exist in most provinces and territo‐ ries - which have jurisdiction over education - but "highly unevenly," according to York University's Food Policy for Canada website.

"Many needs go unad‐ dressed … participation rates are highly variable," it says.

Researchers at the Univer‐ sity of Toronto echoed that sentiment in a 2021 report, saying the thousands of pro‐ grams "vary greatly in de‐ sign."

They are delivered by charities, school boards, gov‐ ernments, churches and cor‐ porations.

Only about 65 per cent of Toronto-area children partici‐ pated in the school food pro‐ grams available there, ac‐ cording to 2023 data com‐ piled by the University of Toronto from local surveys and focus groups with paren‐ ts and caregivers.

Barriers to accessing those programs included a lack of culturally appropriate food, program reductions in‐ cluding less food and less availability. The research also found some schools lacked kitchens and volunteers.

Several provinces and ter‐ ritories have recently in‐ creased their budgets for stu‐ dent food programs.

This includes a recent On‐ tario pledge for an additional $5 million (bringing its 2023 total to $38 million), a Que‐ bec pledge for $34 million over five years, and a B.C. pledge for $214 million over three years, just to name a few.

In late February, Nova Scotia announced it was in‐ vesting $18.8 million for new lunch program for students in the public school system.

"The current school food program landscape is com‐ plex," Katerina Maximova, an associate professor of epi‐ demiology at the Dalla Lana School of Public Health at University of Toronto, said via email.

"There are different man‐ dates, different types of pro‐ grams, multiple and overlap‐ ping sources of funding, and limited program co-ordina‐ tion, monitoring and evalua‐ tion. This makes it difficult to monitor and to ensure con‐ sistency of standards."

How will Canada's pro‐ gram work?

A 2023 stakeholder report on building a national pro‐ gram, compiled by Employ‐ ment and Social Develop‐ ment Canada (ESDC), may provide some hints.

Respondents said they supported a "universal pro‐ gram delivery model" in which every child has access to school food in order to re‐ duce stigma.

"Though programs often target low-income house‐ holds, there is no 'stereotypi‐ cal' hungry child," the report noted.

The participants also sup‐ ported aligning any policy with Canada's Food Guide.

Other reports have mir‐ rored these findings. For in‐ stance, the University of Guelph's Arrell Food Institute wrote last year that, ideally, a national program would pro‐ vide universal access to nutri‐ tious food for students from junior kindergarten through Grade 12.

"What we know from best-practices is that it's all children who need to eat at school, not just children from a low-income household," Field said.

While it could be that, ini‐ tially, the funding is allocated more in low-income neigh‐ bourhoods, it should still be be universal within those schools, Engler-Stringer said.

"We could start there and then build," she said.

Why do we need it? Nearly one in four chil‐ dren in Canada don't get enough food, the govern‐ ment says, and more that one-third of food bank users are children, according to

Food Banks Canada. And there's been a 29 per cent in‐ crease in food insecurity in children in the last year, ac‐ cording to the charity Chil‐ dren First Canada.

Canada is also the only G7 country that doesn't have a national school food pro‐ gram or national standards, according to the Breakfast Club of Canada. Advocates have argued that a national program is needed to fill gaps left by the patchwork of provincial, local and charita‐ ble programs that are under strain due to low resources and high food prices.

And full stomachs help learning. Evidence shows that hunger affects focus and concentration, EnglerStringer says.

"It is one of those tools that we have to help children fully participate in the class‐ room and be able to be the best student that they can be."