2024/25 National School Food Program overview and update

“Make the National School Food Program Permanent”

"Buy Canadian in the School Foods program"

2025 is already shaping up to be as momentous a year as 2024 in advancing school food in Canada. As we come to the end of the 2024/25 school year, we’re excited to share an overview of and update about the National School Food Program and how far we’ve come over this past year.

Big news from the Liberal Party Platform

In their April 2025 pre-election platform, the Liberal party promised to “Make the National School Food Program permanent”. See here, section on Security, Support for Families.

We were pleased to see this important promise, which responds to a key recommendation that the Coalition made in March 2025 to “pass legislation to embed school food in law, as Finland, Japan, Brazil, and many countries have done.”

The Liberal Platform also committed funding for “Buy Canadian in the School Foods program” in their 2025 Costing Plan. See page 2 here. This supports Coalition messaging about the economic benefits of purchasing local food for school programs. For more discussion about the potential of school food programs to support community economic development, especially in light of threatened tariffs, see the February 25, 2025 op-ed in the Winnipeg Free Times, Accelerating Canada’s school food programming. 

Progress implementing the National School Food Program over the 2024/25 school year

Many have been asking about what progress has been made to roll out the National School Food Program funding and other school food investments? 

• In September 2024 Minister Lawrence MacAulay, then Minister of Agriculture and Agri-Food, announced that $20.2 million would be provided for community-level equipment and infrastructure over 2 years through the School Food Infrastructure Fund. Organizations were then invited to apply to distribute the funds. In January, 10 “initial recipients” were announced to administer the SFIF granting process and these organizations have proceeded with requesting applications and administering grant selection to community-level organizations. This is advancing the Coalition’s 2024 pre-budget submission recommendation to “create a separate School Food Infrastructure Fund grants program”.

  
  

• 

  Minister MacAulay announces launch of new School Food Infrastructure Fund in September 2024

• As of March 10, 2025, the Government of Canada had signed agreements with all 13 provinces and territories to distribute federal funding (see our blog post here). All of these have begun to receive federal funding and provide it to school food programs in their province and territory. Provinces and territories have the flexibility to choose where to direct these funds so that they will have the most impact on students within the terms of the agreement. We expect that these agreements will be made available soon; however, we can point to the BC agreement here. 

• Funding has also begun to flow to Indigenous communities through Indigenous Services Canada (ISC) and Crown-Indigenous Relations and Northern Affairs Canada (CIRNAC). This announcement shares that $227 million of the $1 billion to be distributed over five years for school food programs is being provided by ISC to First Nations students on reserve (with $38 million provided during the 2024/25 year). At the end of November 2024, Inuit Tapiriit Kanatami’s Board of Directors approved the allocation of $36 million over three years in funding to the Inuit Nunangat School Food Program, which will help establish an Inuit-specific meal program to be implemented in the 75 schools across the Inuit homeland. 

• The 2024/25 school year was also a significant one for provincial and territorial funding. We’re thrilled to share that the combined investment from provinces, territories and municipalities is projected to be $401 million annually, an increase of more than $115 million compared to the previous year. You can learn more in our blog post here. 

In terms of what results we’ve seen on the ground, we know that program providers across the country have been receiving additional funds and are working to figure out how to expand their programming to reach more students and schools. We know that these funds are greatly appreciated and that more funding is needed in many provinces and territories to be able to provide nourishing meals and snacks to all students. 

We look forward to sharing more about the new government’s plans to “Make the National School Food Program Permanent", the "Buy Canadian in the School Foods program", the provincial and territorial agreements, evaluation data, provincial and territorial reporting, and other measures as those pieces are released. It’s been a really exciting year and we look forward to continuing to push for more investment and stronger programs. 

Background:

• In April 2024 the Government of Canada announced an investment of $1 billion over 5 years for a National School Food Program (see our Blog post about federal Budget 2024 here including the amount of funding projected to be provided each of those 5 years). 

• Budget 2024 also committed dedicated funding for the development of a School Food Infrastructure Fund. 

• In June 2024 the Government released its National School Food Policy (see our Blog post here). The Coalition has been very pleased at how closely the Policy aligns with the Coalition’s 8 Guiding Principles and recommendations, which have been developed based on research and best practices from Canada and around the world.