Food First NL says they are excited about news that the federal government is putting $1-billion toward a national school food program over the next five years.

The program, announced by Prime Minister Justin Trudeau earlier this week, is expected to provide healthy lunches to an additional 400,000 school-aged children across Canada every year.

Program coordinator and lead for school food Ashley Byrne says the program has been a long time coming, noting that Canada was the only G7 country without such a program in place.

Byrne explains that there is now support at both the federal and provincial levels of government for school food in the province.

As Byrne explains, a quarter of children across the province live in food insecure households.

She says school meals are not yet universally available here, especially in rural and remote communities. She describes a “patchwork” system involving many different programs and styles, so for children living with food insecurity the national program is a big deal.