No worries. Thank you.
La Tablée des Chefs is mobilizing the culinary community. During the pandemic, chefs prepared 4.4 million meals throughout Canada. Some 15,000 tonnes of food was sent to prepare meals across the country and distributed throughout 18 months of the pandemic.
I want to outline a couple of things that are crucial to our food recovery program.
Right now, we have the ambition. We think three million meals is just the tip of the iceberg. We think we can probably get five, six or seven times that quantity of food if we continue to mobilize the hospitality sector.
There's a misconception on the part of some of the inspection agencies across the country. There needs to be some more flexibility on that aspect in looking at the work we've been doing in Quebec in mobilizing the hospitality sector and allowing for prepared food that's been handled by chefs to be recovered and distributed to frontline agencies that are struggling to source food.
The other aspect is that a couple of weeks ago, Prime Minister Starmer launched a national program to triple the amount of surplus food that is collected through the fight against food waste in the U.K. It's bringing all community organizations together
You've heard Lori Nikkel. We work hand in hand with Second Harvest, many of the food banks in this country, the Salvation Army and many other partners. You have the ecosystem present on the social side of things. Now we have to get this ambition. It needs to start, not by looking at just the business sector, the corporate sector or the public sector for these big, national projects that Prime Minister Carney has launched, but by looking at food security as one of those projects. You have that infrastructure in place with us to work together, hand in hand, to reach that ambition. In Canada, triple the amount of food that is recovered and distributed to frontline agencies across this country. We can do five or six times that just by ourselves in mobilizing Destination Canada and sustainable tourism, getting all hotels and convention spaces on board and continuing to work hand in hand with community frontline organizations.
On food education, I think it is crucial that the national school food program bring in food literacy. I know it's built into the program, but when you negotiate with the provinces, it is important to be clear that it's not just food distribution. Food literacy is a big part of getting someone to learn how to cook and contribute—