Hello, everyone! What a pleasure to see you all today. What a treat for me, always, to be back in a classroom surrounded by teachers and students.

(Laughter)

I miss it every day, but I also know that the way we are celebrating our teachers, celebrating and providing our students the most important start in day is a huge part of how we build Canada’s success from coast-to-coast-to-coast, and that’s what I’m doing. 

I especially want to thank Andrew for your welcome here today, your leadership.

All the leadership and teachers at the school here, also all the students who I got to see diligently showing, developing their leadership capacities as they’re sharing school food programs with their fellow students and understanding how important it is to bring a positive difference into the world with everything you do every day. 

Speaking of positive differences in the world, great to be here with such strong members of our team, Kamal, Jenna, Michael, Jill, Heidi from the province and from the Canadian Teacher Federation. There are so many reasons to be optimistic about how Canadians are doing in stepping up and pulling together in challenging times, and we’re actually seeing the results come together. Inflation has come way down from its global peaks over the past years. It’s now back down in the target range that the Bank of Canada has set. We’re therefore seeing interest rates come down, which is making a huge difference. We’re seeing record amounts of foreign investment coming into Canada to create jobs and opportunity and boost our economy in very tangible ways. So, there’s lots of things that are really good news for the Canadian economy. But at the same time, Canadians are squeezed. Canadians are struggling to make ends meet, even as our economy is strong. And that’s why as a government, we have stepped up with concrete ways to support families, as we bring down inflation, as we see interest rates come down, we’ve been able to deliver in a whole bunch of really concrete ways for people. 

What we’ve done on child care, saving thousands of dollars a month to families right across the country at a time where costs were going up. Delivering dental care to over a million Canadians, on our way to 9 million Canadians, that takes off massive pressures on family budgets when they don’t have to pay out of pocket for dental care anymore because they didn’t have insurance. Moving forward on pharmacare, free insulin for people who need it, free prescription contraceptives because everyone should be able to choose when and how to start a family. 

These are things that we’ve invested in to take pressures off Canadian families, but we know there’s more to do. Canadians need even more of a break, and that’s what we decided to do for two months starting in mid-December, as we’re taking the GST, HST off of a whole bunch of really important items that tend to add up so quickly. And I know families are peering over their budgets, looking at what they can afford, making the choices in the grocery stores that are very, very current in their minds.

Well, this is about making sure that people can afford to give their kids and give their families the best possible options. We’re taking the GST, HST off of groceries, all groceries, for two months, starting in mid-December. We’re taking the GST, HST off of restaurant visits, and that’s takeout and fast food as well. We’re taking it off kids’ clothes and footwear, we’re taking it off toys and Christmas trees for the holidays. We’re taking it off things that tend to add up very, very quickly for families to give people that tax break, that break that they really, really need. 

On top of that, we’re delivering a Working Canadians benefit as of April that’ll be $250 to everyone who worked last year but made less than $150,000. These are investments that are there to help people at a time where we are squeezed and as our economy is starting to really turn around in a positive way, to make sure that everyone can feel it, to make sure that people know that we are focused on them. But even as we do that, we’re stepping up today to deliver more school food right across the country with a huge agreement with Ontario that is going to set the bar for the rest of the country. It’s really exciting, because we made a commitment a number of months ago in our last budget that we were going to deliver school foods to 400,000 more kids right across the country in working with provinces and territories directly. 

That is exactly what we are doing today; we promised that 400,000 kids across the country would access school foods more easily and more regularly, $1 billion over five years that we were ready to invest, and more and more provinces are working with us to deliver for young people. Today, we are celebrating the fact that here, in Ontario, 160,000 kids will have more access to school foods. 

Right here in Ontario, we’ve now reached a deal that’s going to deliver healthy meals to 160,000 Ontario kids more over the coming year. This is a huge difference. We’re talking about close to 10 million meals just for the rest of this school year, and obviously, much more for the coming years as well.

(Applause) There we go.

 We know the impact—we can see it here at Aylesbury Public School—the impact that school foods have on kids and on the entire community. First of all, as a teacher, I remember well, when kids don’t have full bellies, when they can’t hear the teacher because of the grumbling in their tummy, when they’re worried and low energy, and not able to focus in class because they’re hungry, we all suffer, not just them, but the future they’re building and the future contributions to Canada that we know they want to be able to make. That’s why investing in school foods is about being there for everyone, and it’s not just for the most vulnerable kids, although there’s always more support for them. It’s for all kids, because more and more families, even if they have the means, are rushed in the morning, more people are trying to scramble to make sure their kids get enough good, healthy, nutritious food. This is there for everyone. It’s to make sure that every kid has the opportunity. No stigmas, just support. That’s a really important part of the program. 

The other really important part of the program that I’ve seen first-hand that schools are launching across the country is the fact that there’s so much opportunity for student leadership. As students take handle of the program, they’re the ones actually preparing lunches for their peers, they’re the ones delivering the snacks, they’re the ones being involved in understanding that making a difference in your community is one of the most satisfying things in the world. Knowing that you’re there to help out, knowing there that you’re contributing to the world for the better is an incredibly important thing to learn, that they modelled all the time by amazing teachers, but they get to actually deliver support to their peers in a way that is transformative.

We recognize that Canadians are facing challenges right now, and that’s why we’ve been stepping up, stepping up with an increasing Canada Child Benefit that puts hundreds of dollars a month in the pockets of families that need that support. Even the price on pollution we’re putting forward, delivering cheques of $1,100 a year for a family of four in Ontario. That is more than they pay with the price on pollution. That Canada Carbon Rebate is an affordability measure helping out hard-working families at the same time as we’re innovating and fighting climate change. There’s so many different things that we are delivering for Canadians, and we are not backing down on being there to support people with the tax break over the holidays, with the Working Canadians rebate cheque, and with all the programs we’ve put there to help Canadians benefit from the fact that our economy is bouncing back stronger than ever.