This past weekend, I had the pleasure of taking part in an event that has been going on in my riding since 2008. The humanitarian group Kids Against Hunger held their annual One Million Meals Peterborough. Their original goal, back in 2008, was to make a million meals for those experiencing malnutrition. Volunteers each raised $65 to help pay for the food that was packed.

We had ground soy—because it’s higher in protein than meat—rice, a mix of ground vegetables and minerals and dehydrated vegetables. All the food was mixed together in a bag of about 400 grams. When you boil that with water for half an hour, it provides enough nutrition for six people for an entire day. And the genius of the process is that you don’t need to start with potable water. By boiling the water for half an hour, that makes it potable.

Speaker, more than 330 people volunteered their time to pack these bags, and I’m proud to announce that, by the end of the day, we had filled enough bags that we surpassed 900,000 meals made since 2008.

I want to give a big shout-out to the Drain Brothers, who will be warehousing the food until it can be shipped where it’s needed, and to EG Gray transport for shipping the cases of food to the port for us. Saturday’s food is destined for Haiti to help in that humanitarian effort.

I really want to thank all of the volunteers who gave their time to make a difference for people they will never meet.