Feed hungry kids!

The federal government wants to fund school food programs throughout the country. In what world can anyone oppose this? In ours, alas. Here's why that opposition is totally nuts.

‘Sorry Billy, looks like you’ll have to go hungry today. I’m told providing you with this meal would violate a sub-section of the BNA Act.’ Source: Unsplash. Photographer: Anna Pelzer.

On Monday, the Trudeau government announced a plan to work with the provinces on funding a national school food program to feed hungry kids. The plan was short on details, which ought to be included in the upcoming budget, but it shakes out to $1 billion over five years for participating provinces and territories, targeting roughly 400,000 students.

Two important bits stand out so far that I want to flag at the top for folks who are worried that this is a national coup against premiers by way of bagels, bananas, and oats

1. The plan is to work with the provinces on bilateral deals

2. The money will go towards a mix of filling gaps and supplementing existing sub-national programs

I highlight these points because plenty of people took the announcement as a chance to clutch pearls about jurisdiction (which is, to be fair, Canada’s national pastime. Like baseball, but far stupider).

Let’s talk turkey. The feds are perfectly allowed to give money to provinces to run programs or supplement programs, and if the provinces wish to take it, they can and will and do. They’d be pretty stupid not to say yes to free money, but they could decline. There may be strings attached to ensure standards throughout the country and to meet federal aims. Okay, so it’s not entirely free money. It comes with conditions (though Quebec may get a special deal, but that’s another post).

This sort of thing happens all the time. The feds spend money into its priority areas, the provinces bargain over the details, take the cash, and then pretend they’ve done all the good and hard work. Everybody wins! We call it cooperative federalism, sort of. Or semi-competitive federalism. I don’t want to get into all that right now. I’m too pissy. You can take a political science class if you want. They’re good. I’ve taken dozens of them.

Before I press on, you’ll have to forgive me saucing up this post, because I think we should feed hungry kids(!) and I think anything that gets in the way of that is ripe for, let’s be charitable here, criticism. But let’s try to be level-headed here and look at potential problems with the plan so far.

There are a few critiques we can level at the government for its plan. It was slow coming. The Liberal Party ran on this in 2021. It’s now 2024. The program funding won’t be feeding kids until, at the earliest, next year. Moreover, $1 billion sounds like a lot, but by the time you spread it out over half a decade and thirteen sub-national units (if all sign up), the money thins out. We can absolutely have those conversations and we should.

Paul Wells

picked over some of these issues and more, and you can read about that here and you should.

But I want to set aside all of this for a moment and just point out that the federal government can legally and ought to morally be involved in feeding hungry kids. Indeed, there are plenty of specific reasons why they should. First, the functional ones. The feds have a lot of money and they have a duty to support social programming throughout the country and to help ensure basic standards from one province or territory to the next. Only the feds can do this bit.

Next, school food programs are good policy. When kids are fed nutritious meals there are all kinds of positive outcomes: jobs created, healthier people, better in-class performance, better work placement and performance in the future, and subsequent economic returns — as in, the program more than pays for itself.

Also, people want this. Teachers want this. Schools want this. Parents who can’t feed their kids want this. And presumably provinces won’t be upset at receiving millions upon millions of dollars from the feds. The kids who won’t go hungry might not mind, either.

The ‘return on investment’ arguments for a school food program are important, but they are beside the essential point that we, as a society, ought to feed hungry kids! It is a moral imperative that a society ought to protect and care for its most vulnerable, and I simply cannot fathom how a rich state such as Canada — the only country in the G7 without a national food program — doesn’t do this already. Honest to god, it steams my broccoli like you can’t even imagine.

I grew up poor and I won’t write a Steinbeck novel about it here. I managed, with luck and help and, yes, hard work, to get out of that trap. A lot of people don’t, often through no fault of their own, because structural poverty is structural. Anyway, a lot of kids like me would have killed for a program like this. I was lucky that my high school school had one for breakfasts — the Breakfast Club, which is a little on the nose, sure — and everyone used it if they wanted to. It was normal and didn’t carry stigma. It helped a lot of people get a good start to their school day and to their lives. Everyone deserves this and it’s good for all of us. Trust me. It’s true.

So, to recap:

• the program is perfectly constitutional and a normal part of cooperative (or semi-cooperative) federalism

• the program will supplement existing sub-national programs and fill in gaps where they need to be filled in

• it was slow coming, we are still waiting on details, and more money would have been better, but this money is good and will do good things

• the program will more than pay for itself in health, education, and economic outputs

• people want this

• who cares about any of the other points because this program WILL FEED HUNGRY KIDS

It’s good to feed hungry kids and we should do it however we must. Bravo to the feds for finally getting this moving. Now let’s hold them to doing it and doing it right — and let’s not let the premiers off the hook while we’re at it.