Thank you so much for this opportunity.
Nourish is a provincial non-profit and registered charity that partners with schools and communities to promote the healthy nourishment of children and youth so they can live, learn and play.
Over the last 10 years, we have been instrumental in extending universal and healthy daily breakfast programs to most public schools in Nova Scotia, but in the current context of dramatic increases in housing costs and food inflation, we know that school lunch is needed to improve attendance, behaviour, students’ ability to focus and learn, and their sense of belonging in their schools. It is past time that the promise of a pan-Canadian school food policy and investment be made good.
I will share just one brief story from our work with a school that serves a community of diverse but predominantly lower-income families. We partner with community organizations around the school to help the school provide food access to improve the quantity and quality of their contributions. This is a school that doesn't have a kitchen or a cafeteria. Most schools in the Halifax region do not.
A local restaurant owner is willing to cook lunch each week for about 150 students for the cost of the ingredients—about $1.50 a portion—but the school administration is not confident that they’ll have enough budget for breakfasts for the school year, so they can’t authorize spending on a low-cost “from scratch” healthy lunch. A federal investment in school food could be transformational, and our kids deserve it.
Nourish is a founding member of the Coalition for Healthy School Food, and I’m glad to turn the rest of my time over to Lindsay Corbin.