Human Resources Committee on Feb. 9th, 2026

[The Chair (Robert Morrissey (Egmont, Lib.)), Liberal, Bobby Morrissey]

I call the meeting to order.

I'll open meeting number 24 of the Standing Committee on Human Resources, Skills and Social Development and the Status of Persons with Disabilities.

We're going to hear from witnesses on Bill C-15 for one hour and 45 minutes or so. We will then go in camera for a discussion on the draft report on workers in the seasonal industry and the employment insurance program.

Today's meeting is taking place in a hybrid format, pursuant to the Standing Orders. Members are attending in person in the room and remotely using the Zoom application.

Before we begin, I want to remind those participating in the room, including members, of a few things.

Please ensure that your devices are on silent mode. Please refrain from tapping the boom of the mic, as it can cause issues for the translators. You have the option to participate in the official language of your choice.

I have to suspend for a moment because there's an issue.

[The Chair, Liberal, Bobby Morrissey]

The meeting is back in session. I apologize for that, but we cannot proceed without translation.

On that, I was reminding those appearing virtually to click on the globe icon at the bottom of their Surface and choose the official language they wish to participate in. If there's an interruption in translation services, please get my attention and we'll suspend, as we did just a moment ago, for it to be corrected.

All questions and comments should be addressed through the chair.

Before I introduce the panel for the first hour, I have an item. A budget was circulated to all members that we need to approve to conduct this study, which we've now just about completed.

Do we have approval for the $46,200 budget? I was advised that it had been circulated to all members.

[Laila Goodridge, Conservative, Fort McMurray—Cold Lake, AB]

What budget?

[The Chair, Liberal, Bobby Morrissey]

It's the budget. It's for your lunch.

[Laila Goodridge, Conservative, Fort McMurray—Cold Lake, AB]

And headsets?

[The Chair, Liberal, Bobby Morrissey]

It was circulated to all members last week. It's $46,200. Do we have approval for this budget? It is the last day and I need approval.

[Some hon. members]

Agreed.

[The Chair, Liberal, Bobby Morrissey]

Thank you, members.

With that, we'll move to the first panel. I'd like to welcome our guests.

From the Breakfast Club of Canada, we have Judith Barry, co-founder and director of governmental relations. From the Coalition for Healthy School Food, we have Carolyn Webb, knowledge mobilization coordinator. Appearing on screen, we have Dylan Kirk from the Council of Traditional Chinese Medicine and Acupuncture Schools of Ontario.

Each organization has five minutes for opening remarks. I will begin with Ms. Barry.

Ms. Barry, you have up to five minutes.

[Judith Barry, Co-Founder, Director for Governmental Relations, Breakfast Club of Canada]

Hi, dear members of the HUMA committee. I'm really happy to be here today.

I'll express myself mainly in French, but please know that I can answer any questions in French or English.

Nearly two years after the initial investment in the national school food program was announced, the federal government included legislation in clause 599 of Bill C‑15 to make the program permanent and to contribute $216 million per year to it. The Breakfast Club of Canada and a number of other civil society partners welcomed this bill. More specifically, the club submitted a brief recommending that Bill C‑15 be adopted to secure sustainable, long-term funding and stability for students and their families, regardless of changes in political leadership or fiscal cycles.

To support this recommendation, the Breakfast Club of Canada included in its brief new data from a cost-benefit analysis conducted by economists at AppEco, confirming that for every dollar invested in school breakfast programs, society receives $2 in socio-economic benefits. These returns are driven by three concrete and quantifiable impacts: increased disposable income for families, higher lifetime earnings linked to improved educational attainment and reduced health care costs.

To our first recommendation, we add that it's also important to encourage the federal government to index its investments to inflation and to invest in infrastructure and local procurement.

The second recommendation in the Breakfast Club of Canada calls on the government to recognize the national school food program's multidimensional nature, which requires coordinated actions and mechanisms across government levels and departments, including formal ways to engage with civil society organizations and food industry partners.

According to the World Food Programme's Centre of Excellence against Hunger in Brazil, it's very important to set up coordination mechanisms that involve all sectors and that include mechanisms to evaluate and to involve organizations and the food industry. The goal is to intentionally generate productivity and ensure that there's a lasting impact on the resilience of food systems.

For all of these reasons, we recommend that Bill C‑15 be adopted.

We hope to be able to answer all your questions.

[The Chair, Liberal, Bobby Morrissey]

Thank you, Ms. Barry.

Ms. Webb, go ahead for five minutes or less, please.

[Carolyn Webb, Knowledge Mobilization Coordinator, Coalition for Healthy School Food]

Thank you, Mr. Chair and the committee, for inviting me to speak today.

The Coalition for Healthy School Food is a network made up of more than 380 non-profit member organizations and over 150 endorsing organizations from all provinces and territories.

We've been advocating for a cost-shared national school food program for over a decade. We were very pleased when Canada joined the rest of the G7 by introducing the national school food policy and signing bilateral agreements with all provinces and territories.

We celebrate the tabling of the national school food program act, as we've been communicating that we'd like Canada to follow this best practice seen in other countries.

A recent World Food Programme report stated that all the evidence shows that school meal programs are one of the smartest long-term investments any government can make.

This bill is important to Canadians. The national school food program is about levelling the playing field and allowing children and youth across the country to eat well, be ready to learn and have equal opportunities to succeed. These programs help parents, especially women, reduce their stress and the time they spend preparing school meals. If breakfast and lunch are served, they also help families with two kids save $2,600 to $3,800 in annual food expenses.

Like many countries, Canada has been living through a food affordability crisis, and the national school food program has emerged as an important tool to help families with cost of living pressures. Our vision is that this program will support all families and children over time, which the legislation has committed to. We hope this is a first step in addressing this issue together. As you think about how to continue helping families with affordability pressures, we hope all parties and all members will appreciate that building out the national school food program is a ready-made tool that will have a real impact.

I'll continue to look at school food program benefits.

Intentionally designed programs can create a market for regionally grown food, grow local food economies and support communities. You and your colleagues can allocate funding to the “buy Canadian in the school” food program concept proposed in the April 2025 Liberal platform costing plan. The 2025 EAT-Lancet Commission also speaks about the strong potential of sustainable school meal policies to promote climate resilience, as well as more sustainable and equitable food systems.

These benefits can all be realized through the excellent national school food policy that supports the act. Specifically, the policy's principles are that programs be the following: accessible, without stigma or barriers; health-promoting, wherein food is nutritious and consistent with Canada's food guide, and where children and youth develop healthful behaviours, attitudes, knowledge and skills; inclusive, providing culturally appropriate food and engaging students in the broader community; flexible, wherein food is locally sourced where possible and reflective of local and regional circumstances; environmentally sustainable and adequately resourced; and accountable, with consistent and transparent monitoring and evaluation to make sure programs achieve policy objectives.

Given the importance and potential of the national school food program, we're very pleased that this program is included in this bill. This will allow organizations across the country to benefit from stable funding and, in turn, implement programs in a gradual and planned manner.

I would like to share our three recommendations.

The first is that you and your colleagues quickly pass the National School Food Program Act.

For our second recommendation, we want to see the full potential of the policy's vision and principles realized. We'd like to see strong mechanisms put in place for the Government of Canada to continually and incrementally work towards, monitor and report on the comprehensive implementation of the policy's vision, with each of the principles and objectives done in collaboration with the provinces, territories and indigenous governing bodies.

Third, the government should promote the national school food policy in all public communications of the act to ensure that the policy's details are recognized and understood.

We urge you to pass the national school food program act into legislation and then continue to build the program, including increasing your investment and working to ensure greater provincial and territorial involvement so that there's true equity of access. It's critical that these programs be adequately funded so that all children and youth can be nourished at school, as food affordability remains a top issue for families.

We look forward to continuing this conversation with you and working to achieve the full potential of this program.

Thank you.

[The Chair, Liberal, Bobby Morrissey]

Thank you, Ms. Webb.

Mr. Kirk has the floor for five minutes or less.

[Dylan Kirk, President, Council of Traditional Chinese Medicine and Acupuncture Schools of Ontario]

Mr. Chair, vice-chairs and members of the committee, [Technical difficulty—Editor] speak on behalf of our profession and our students.

My name is Dylan Kirk. I'm here today as the president of the Council of Traditional Chinese Medicine and Acupuncture Schools of Ontario, representing the institutions that train the majority of this workforce in our [Technical difficulty—Editor] and the academic dean at the Ontario College of TCM, which has been operating since 1998.

We take immense pride in running excellent, high-standard education programs [Technical difficulty—Editor] 7,700 registered acupuncturists, TCM practitioners or doctors of TCM who offer affordable health care [Technical difficulty—Editor], relieving pressure on our public health system.

[The Chair, Liberal, Bobby Morrissey]

Excuse me for a moment, Mr. Kirk. We're losing sound with you.

I will have to suspend for a moment while we're getting it checked out.

[The Chair, Liberal, Bobby Morrissey]

We are back in session.

Mr. Kirk, I will ask you to pick up the part of your speech where we went into suspension.

Is that clear to you?

[Laila Goodridge, Conservative, Fort McMurray—Cold Lake, AB]

I have a point of order, Mr. Chair.

I would ask if we could consider having him start from the beginning, because parts of it weren't included and therefore weren't translated.

[The Chair, Liberal, Bobby Morrissey]

That's fine with me.

Mr. Kirk, if you want to start from the top, it's fine.

[Dylan Kirk]

Thank you.

Good afternoon and thank you for this opportunity [Technical difficulty—Editor]. My name is Dylan Kirk. I am [Technical difficulty—Editor].

[The Chair, Liberal, Bobby Morrissey]

Excuse me, Mr. Kirk, there's still an issue. At this time, we're going to proceed with the meeting, but I'm going to ask you to stay online. The technical people will be in touch with you to see what we can correct.

With that, we have to suspend your comments, Mr. Kirk.

We will go with the first six-minute round of questioning, beginning with Ms. Goodridge, please.

[Laila Goodridge, Conservative, Fort McMurray—Cold Lake, AB]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

I want to thank our witnesses for being here today to discuss this important topic.

Both of you highlighted the fact that we are in a cost of living crisis. I am a mom to young kids, and I talk to parents all the time who are struggling. They're struggling to be able to provide the food that they were able to provide just last year. Programs that both of you have been delivering for many years have been so positive.

When I first started looking into this, I reached out to school principals to see what kind of administrative burden this was putting on them. Many of them shared that there was an enormous administrative burden.

Could you tell us what kind of administrative burden this assistance has added to your program? Perhaps we could start with Ms. Barry and then go to Ms. Webb.

[Judith Barry]

On our side, at the Breakfast Club of Canada, we are not involved with the deployment of the federal investment within all provinces and territories. As far as we understand, there is reporting and data that is needed for the federal government, provinces and territories, relating to the outcomes that they have committed to deliver. Of course, if some strong mechanism to coordinate and monitor the results were in place, it would help all sectors to align and streamline the reporting.

[Laila Goodridge, Conservative, Fort McMurray—Cold Lake, AB]

In reading through the reports that you've released, you've been able to quantify the costs in Quebec, but you can't actually quantify the costs in other provinces and territories, because there is no streamlined system of data collection.

The school administrators I've talked to already have a lot on their plate. The federal government has given them this. They know it is important to make sure that kids are fed and that kids do better in school when they are fed. They don't have the means to be able to implement the program as well as possible, because they don't have the experience as an organization like both of you have in actually making sure kids get fed.

How many kids do you feed a year through your Breakfast Club, Ms. Barry?

[Judith Barry]

The Breakfast Club of Canada, in collaboration with many school districts and regional organizations, is currently reaching over 800,000 students.

We do on a daily basis.

[Laila Goodridge, Conservative, Fort McMurray—Cold Lake, AB]

How much money is that?

[Judith Barry]

That's a yearly budget of over $50 million.