Pembina Pipeline Corporation and Breakfast Club of Canada collaborate on $5 million partnership to feed kids across Canada

Ben Neumer, Senior Advisor with Breakfast Club of Canada from Vancouver, attended a celebratory breakfast event last week along with employees of Pembina Pipeline Corporation at Central School. The breakfast celebrated the $5 million partnership between Pembina and Breakfast Club that supports local school breakfast programs across Canada. This commitment will help sustain existing programs such as at Central School and enable the opening of new ones. The club is on tour with one of its major donors and partners, Pembina Pipeline Corporation.

“The first year the schools become a part of our program we outfit them with equipment such as fridges and stoves. Then we start setting up menus and teach the schools how to stretch their dollars. About one dollar in the Whitecourt community equals one breakfast so a donation of a loonie will feed a child one breakfast in the morning. It takes a village to raise a child. We want to engage and want to believe that no child should go hungry which I hope is every human being.”

For schools to become a member they must serve breakfast from Monday through Friday all school days. There are currently two breakfast programs in the Whitecourt schools.

Jaret Sprott, Senior Vice-president and Chief Operating Officer with Pembina Pipeline Corporation, said “Pembina has been working with the Breakfast Club of Canada since 2016 and, in 2019, we announced a $5 milion, five-year partnership with the Breakfast Club in the operating communities in which Pembina Pipeline operates. Pembina feeds up to 1,500 children daily across 10 communities that span from Sarnia, Ontario to Prince Rupert, BC including the smaller towns in between. We have been operating now for 60 years in a lot of these communities, so it’s our way of giving back. Canada is the only country that doesn’t have a food program for children, and one out of every four children goes to school hungry. Those stats are even worse amongst our Indigenous communities.”

Pembina’s investment in Breakfast Club of Canada is helping to ensure the long-term sustainability of school breakfast programs in Western Canada and fight food insecurity which is a reality for more than 1.5 million children across the country.

To date, Pembina’s total contribution to Breakfast Club of Canada, a recognized leader in student nutrition, amounts to $6.5 million. To learn more, go to pembina.com/communityinvestment.