New BrunswickA pay-what-you-can lunch program won’t be in place in all New Brunswick schools this fall, despite a Liberal campaign promise last year.Minister says government needs more time, and pay-what-you-need program will be in place next yearJacques Poitras · CBC News · Posted: Aug 25, 2025 5:00 AM EDT | Last Updated: 2 hours agoPremier Susan Holt promised both a universal free breakfast program and a pay-what-you-can lunch program at a pre-election campaign announcement in September 2024. (Africa Studio/Shutterstock)A pay-what-you-can lunch program won’t be in place in all New Brunswick schools this fall, despite a Liberal campaign promise last year.The Holt government says it is still studying what other provinces are doing with similar programs and won’t be ready to deliver it in the coming school year.”We’re still examining how we’re going to be rolling this out … so we need more time for that,” Education Minister Claire Johnson said Friday.”So we’re going to be rolling that one out next year. The beginning of next [school] year.” Holt promised both a universal free breakfast program and a pay-what-you-can lunch program at a pre-election campaign announcement in September 2024.She said both would be in place this fall.Education Minister Claire Johnson says the government still needs more time for the rollout of the lunch promise. (Radio-Canada)The breakfast program will be in many cases supplementing existing volunteer and donation-driven programs.But Holt said recently her government is “looking really closely” at lunch programs in other provinces, including Prince Edward Island, where a program has been under review for more than a year. “We’re making sure that we’re not rushing into it in order to not create havoc for community volunteers,” Holt said. “We want to get it right, and the funding will be there once all of the pieces are in place.”Holt said last year the free breakfast program would cost $9 million and the pay-what-you-can lunch program would cost $18 million.That costing was based in part on a detailed financial analysis of the P.E.I. program that the Liberals filed with Elections New Brunswick as part of a commitment costing requirement.Holt said at the time that if she were elected and struck an agreement for funding under a federal school food program, the provincial cost would be less.WATCH | ‘We’re not rushing into it’: No school lunch program in fall:Liberal lunch program won’t be in place when schools reopen in SeptemberSusan Holt promised a universal pay-what-you-can lunch program for this fall. It’s not happening.That happened in February, when Ottawa announced $11 million for New Brunswick over three years to support the breakfast program.Finance Minister René Legacy said in his budget speech in March that the province had committed $19 million for the lunch program.”If it’s been budgeted, where does it go?” asked Progressive Conservative education critic Ian Lee.Lee said if the money was cut, it’s part of a pattern along with reductions to child-welfare spending and layoffs of school library workers.”Of all the areas where you could address fiscally, I don’t know why we’re taking away from the youth,” he said. A spokesperson for the Education Department said some of the $19 million budgeted this year would be used to prepare for the program launch next year, including buying equipment, and the rest would be spent elsewhere in the department.At last year’s announcement, Holt said one in four students were going to school hungry.Ian Lee, the Progressive Conservative education critic, says if the funding for the lunch program was cut, it’s part of a pattern, along with reductions to child-welfare spending and the layoffs of school library workers. (Jacques Poitras/CBC)She described the two-meal program as both an affordability measure and a way to help students do better in the classroom.”New Brunswick families are feeling the pinch of the rising cost of living and students need support so that they can learn,” she said.”Our universal school food program helps do both. Imagine kids coming to school without the stress of where their next meal is going to come from.” At the time of the announcement, Jill Van Horne, the network director of the group Food For All New Brunswick, which supports food programs across the province, called the Liberal plan “ambitious.””School food, on its surface, sounds simple but there’s a lot that goes into that. It requires food sourcing, it requires people power, it requires time, and it’s not just a simple thing to implement.”No one from Food For All New Brunswick responded to an interview request last week.Holt also promised last year to balance the budget and said the breakfast and lunch program would be affordable even though the Progressive Conservative government in power at the time was projecting a small deficit.Four previous PC budgets had underestimated revenues and had ended up with large surpluses, Holt said, predicting the same thing would happen in 2024-25.”We don’t trust their figures,” she said at the time.The Liberals ended the 2024-25 fiscal year with a $399 million deficit and are now projecting a $668.7 million deficit this year.ABOUT THE AUTHORJacques Poitras has been CBC’s provincial affairs reporter in New Brunswick since 2000. He grew up in Moncton and covered Parliament in Ottawa for the New Brunswick Telegraph-Journal. He has reported on every New Brunswick election since 1995 and won awards from the Radio Television Digital News Association, the National Newspaper Awards and Amnesty International. He is also the author of five non-fiction books about New Brunswick politics and history. With files from Charles-Étienne Drouin, Radio-Canada
No school lunch program this year, despite Holt election promise
