New Brunswick
New Brunswick's breakfast program already reaches every public school; a province-wide pay-what-you-can lunch program launches in September 2026.
Official program
School Breakfast Program & Pay-What-You-Can School Lunch Program
The School Breakfast Program is delivered through a partnership between Feed NB (a registered non-profit, formerly Food Depot Alimentaire) and the Department of Education and Early Childhood Development (EECD), reaching all schools across the province's seven school districts as of fall 2025. The new lunch program, launching September 2026, is delivered through public schools with outside meal-service providers under Policy 711: Healthier School Food Environment.
How it works
Breakfast is universal — no application required — offering milk, eggs, fruits and vegetables, cereals and grains, sourced locally where possible. The lunch program will price meals at $4/meal for K-8 and $5/meal for high school, with full subsidies for families who cannot pay; families access details through information packages distributed by schools.
Breakfast is funded by roughly $13 million jointly invested by the provincial and federal governments. The lunch program launch is backed by more than $11 million from the federal Canada School Food Program plus a $2 million/year provincial investment, alongside government-funded kitchen infrastructure upgrades.
Benefits for kids
School food programs are associated with improved academic performance, higher attendance, and lower tardiness, with long-term breakfast interventions linked to measurable gains in standardized test performance — benefits proportionally larger for children from lower-income households. Since NB's lunch program hasn't launched yet, province-specific outcome data isn't available; this reflects Canada-wide research.
Local facts
- In 2025, 38.1% of children in New Brunswick lived in food-insecure households — the second-highest child food-insecurity rate of any province. (Source: PROOF, University of Toronto (2025 data))