Feed Ontario applauds the Government of Ontario for their leadership on student nutrition, becoming the third province to negotiate a national school food program agreement with the Government of Canada.
Through this historic investment, Ontario will receive $108.5 million over 3 years from the federal government to support the Ontario Student Nutrition Program and First Nations Student Nutrition Program, supporting an additional 160,000 students with over 9.8 million meals. This funding will add to existing community and provincial funding, ensuring that more programs will be able to run at full capacity.
This investment comes at a crucial time for Ontario: last year, more than 1 million Ontarians accessed a food bank, with nearly a third of them being children. In addition, many school food programs have been under significant strain due to increased demand and the rising cost of food. This funding will stabilize programs and ensure more children will have access to healthy meals throughout the school year, while saving families time and money.
Many food banks are proud supporters of student nutrition programs, with over 60 per cent of Feed Ontario member food banks providing either food or funds to their local school meal programs. Feed Ontario is an endorser of the Ontario Chapter of the Coalition for Healthy School Food.
Feed Ontario looks forward to seeing continued leadership from the Government of Ontario towards growing school food in this province towards the goal of a truly universal student nutrition program.