Meals still missing: N.L. parent questions timeline of government funded school lunch program

A parent who runs a volunteer lunch program at a school in eastern Newfoundland is questioning why it's taking so long for provincial school food programs to get up and running.

Former premier Andrew Furey and former prime minister Justin Trudeau signed a $9.1-million partnership agreement in September 2024 to expand lunch programs in schools across the province. The funding comes from Canada's National School Food Program, announced in April 2024.

However, the money hasn't started flowing to every school just yet, said Petrina Daley, who operates the volunteer lunch program at St. Catherine's Academy in Mount Carmel-Mitchell's Brook-St. Catherine's. 

"It's very frustrating," Daley told CBC News.

Daley said she has been trying to gather information from the province government, but hasn't hardly gotten a response. She also tried contacting Food First N.L. — a non-profit that supports food programs provincewide — because of its involvement in the process. 

Education Minister Bernard Davis told CBC News as of June the program has provided lunch to an additional 6,000 students. Up to 22,000 students are getting access to school lunch through a pay-what-you-can model, he said, and the government plans to add even more schools to this program in September.

"Each school community is slightly different," Davis said. "Some schools may not have a kitchen, some schools may not have restaurants in the community that could [provide the lunches]."

Davis said the reason why some schools have still not been included in the program is because of these barriers. He said the final goal is to be serving lunch to 50,000 students. 

"Obviously we would like it to move as fast as we possibly can, but we want it to be sustainable," Davis said. "That's the key to this."

Food First N.L. is running provincewide consultations and providing recommendations to the government based on their findings under the Next Step for School Meals project. 

Project coordinator Ashley Byrne said the organization doesn't have official say or control in the rollout timeframe of school lunches. 

Byrne said the Food First has taken a comprehensive approach to the program over the last 18 months, and the consultation process is well underway. 

"I think it's really important for us all to recognize just how many moving parts there are," Byrne said. 

The goal, Byrne said, is to get the school lunch programs rolled out by the fall. 

But, Daley said she isn't holding much hope.

She said the province is looking for non-profits to become school lunch providers, and believes it's not very likely that any major groups in her community are going to go through the complicated process of becoming one just to serve lunch in a school. 

"It's so confusing," Daley said. "I'm not very optimistic that there's a school lunch program at our school for September." 

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