Liberals promise $1B school food program
OTTAWA • The Liberal seduction campaign targeting Millennials and young parents continued Monday, with Justin Trudeau pledging to create a $1-billion, five-year national school lunch program in time for September.
In a pre-budget announcement in Toronto Monday, the prime minister promised that the budget on April 16 would formalize the creation of the program that aims to pay for 400,000 additional children who don’t currently receive a meal at school.
The campaign-style announcement was scarce in details — they are expected to be revealed in the upcoming federal budget — but Trudeau said the money would be transferred to provinces and territories via bilateral agreements.
That means that if all 13 provinces and territories sign on, they will receive an average of $15 million annually through the program.
“Lots of provinces have different approaches, but we also know in every province across the country and territory across the country, there are still needs that are unmet,” he said.
“We look at it as a federal responsibility to step up and try and make sure even more kids have opportunity to have safe, healthy food in their schools.”
Trudeau was flanked by Finance Minister Chrystia Freeland, Families, Children and Social Development Minister Jenna Sudds, Women and Gender Equality and Youth Minister Marci Ien and multiple Toronto-area MPS, parents and children at the Scarborough Boys and Girls Club in Toronto.
Freeland said she hopes the program will start providing funding for food at schools as early as the 20242025 academic year.
She promised the announcement would make a “big difference,” particularly for younger families in yet another pitch by the Liberals in recent weeks to Millennials. That’s the generation born between the 1980s and the early 2000s that was critical to Trudeau’s election victory in 2015 but has since largely abandoned the party.
Monday’s announcement is an extension of a campaign promise made by the Trudeau Liberals during the 2021 federal election to develop a “National School Food Policy” and eventually set up a five-year “national school nutritious meal program.”
The New Democrats have been pushing the government to fulfil that promise ahead of the federal budget.
During the press conference, Trudeau pointed to the private member’s bill C-322 tabled by Liberal MP Serge Cormier, which would develop the national framework leading to a school food program.
The bill would create a framework that would establish the criteria to determine whether a food is “healthy,” set the minimum meals and snacks need to be provided and promote healthy food education.