Policy Review — National Food Program
What are Food Programs?
The Student Nutrition Program offers school-age children and youth nutritious food through breakfast, lunch, and snack programs.
The goal of the program is to support learning and healthy development. Nutritious food helps kids learn and focus. Research has shown that students have trouble learning when they are hungry at school.
Source — https://www.ontario.ca/page/student-nutrition-program
Annual Costs of Food Programs / Ontario
The Ontario government is investing an additional $5 million this year in the Student Nutrition Program and the First Nations Student Nutrition Program which provides more than 600,000 school-aged children and youth with healthy meals and snacks throughout the school year to ensure they are well-nourished and ready to learn.
This investment brings the total provincial funding for this year to $38 million and will help ensure the program can continue to deliver almost 90 million nutritious meals and snacks to students.
“Proper nutrition is an important foundation for academic success, and students should have access to healthy and nutritious food to support their growing minds and bodies,” said Michael Parsa, Minister of Children, Community and Social Services. “We are grateful for the generosity of our partners, local community members and volunteers who contribute their time and money to help the next generation succeed. I commend their work and encourage Ontarians to get involved to support the success of Ontario students.”
To build on the government’s investment in the two student nutrition programs, the province is partnering with the Arrell Family Foundation, the Breakfast Club of Canada, the Schad Foundation, the Grocery Foundation and Student Nutrition Ontario to launch the Healthy Students Brighter Ontario campaign, the first province-wide fundraising partnership of its kind.
To kick off the campaign, the partner organizations have raised $1.67 million from The Arrell Family Foundation, The Schad Foundation, Peter Gilgan Foundation, Maple Leaf Foods and the Maple Leaf Centre for Action on Food Security, The Honourable Margaret McCain, and The Sprott Foundation. The partner organizations will continue to work with local groups and businesses to encourage community involvement and fundraise to reach a combined goal of $10 million, which includes the government’s investment.
How can food programs be strengthened at the local levels?
· Grocery store chains Metro Inc. or Loblaw Companies Limited or Sobeys or others can provide donations as part of supporting these programs. https://www.loblaw.ca/en/community-investment/
· Grants to farmers to support farm to farm to the cafeteria — https://sustainontario.com/2024/02/05/2024-farm-to-school-canada-grants-now-open/
· Addressing the high costs of food through the elimination of carbon tax and streamlining of regulations that support the food supply chain. Blog — Are Grocery Store profits excessive — https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/grocery-store-profits-vs-cost-food-paul-young-ze2mc/
· All levels of government and local businesses working with local charities — https://www.food4kids.ca/
New Federal Funding / National Food Program:
The federal Liberal government is finally making good on a years-old election campaign pledge, committing Monday to allocate $1 billion over five years to fund a new national school food program.
The funding, to be included in the upcoming April 16 budget, will launch with the aim of expanding existing school food programs, providing meals to an additional 400,000 Canadian kids a year.
Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, and Deputy Prime Minister and Finance Minister Chrystia Freeland, made the announcement in Scarborough, Ont., backed by members of cabinet and caucus as part of their latest pre-budget press tour.
What are the challenges with the National Food Program?
A group called MOMS ACROSS AMERICA commissioned tests on 43 lunch samples from 18 cities throughout the United States. The study unearthed a few troubling facts about the presence of chemicals in common lunch foods, including the discovery that over 93 per cent of the meals contained detectable levels of the weed killer glyphosate, while many of the meals also contained toxins, heavy metals and even veterinary drugs and hormones.
That is why I started a non-profit organization several years ago with the mission of lobbying governments to provide nutritious organic food to all Canadian children at school and educating young Canadians about the lifelong benefits that come with eating healthy, all-natural foods.
Even though education is a provincial responsibility, the provinces and the federal government should hash out a funding formula to pay for a national food program that provided organic meals, in much the same way that the federal government is helping the provinces cover childcare costs through a national childcare system.
If childcare is important, surely childhood nutrition is just as important.
Study after study has shown that improved nutrition can influence student learning potential and educational outcomes. Learning and diet are inseparably linked.
I can add a bit more color:
1. Cost of organic foods is high due to cost of production — https://www.ontarioorganic.ca/why-is-organic-food-more-expensive/
2. Food programs require local coordination of funding to support the local school programs. Delivery and food product costs play a key role with any food program. Delivery and food costs are influence by cost of fuel (carbon tax), product costs, labor, etc. https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/toronto/student-nutrition-programs-growing-demand-1.7140018
3. Food inflation has come down over the past few years but still is impacting food programs — Blog — Cost of Living and Inflation — Canada — February 2024 — https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/cost-living-inflation-paul-young-rnxrc/
4. Justin Trudeau Chrystia Freeland and Jagmeet Singh have pushed other programs for votes. These programs have been troublesome in terms of implementation. a) Daycare — https://ca.news.yahoo.com/less-half-daycare-spaces-promised-080000434.html b) Pharmacare — https://calgaryherald.com/news/politics/feds-willing-work-with-alberta-tailored-pharmacare-justin-trudeau c) Dental Care — https://www.ctvnews.ca/politics/dentists-hygienists-still-in-the-dark-on-details-of-federal-dental-care-plan-1.6750277
5. Justin Trudeau has $35B deficit that is contributing to inflationary pressures. Trudeau constantly throws money out through various programs to deflect off his failure to address inflationary areas like low productivity, lack of business investment, excessive taxation & regulations, skills gap, inefficient /ineffective government, and low innovation spending. GDP. I have never seen one gap analysis on how you will close your fiscal gap! https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/productivity-challenges-canada-paul-young-015dc/ or https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/transforming-public-sector-canada-january-2023-paul-young-5lyxc/
6. Justin Trudeau promises in 2015 that he would have better provincial and territorial relations. https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/canada-election-2015-learned-this-week-aug22-1.3200542. Trudeau and his team Steven Guilbeault and Jonathan Wilkinson continue to dictate policies like the carbon tax with little or no collaboration by the provinces. https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/economists-defend-liberals-carbon-price-political-rhetoric-paul-young-rflpc/
7. Food nutrition programs are important but require collaboration to ensure they are managed effectively. Justin Trudeau has a poor record of implementing any policy as he ignores reports from PBO or Auditor-General. Just look at indigenous housing — https://www.ctvnews.ca/politics/completely-discouraged-auditor-slams-first-nations-housing-policing-failures-1.6813290 Hon. Mark Holland, PC, MP Patty Hajdu
8. Liberals have committed to national food program back in 2019. https://policyoptions.irpp.org/magazines/january-2024/school-food-program/. Jagmeet Singh continues to push for these programs as part of supporting Justin Trudeau . Trudeau is trailing in the polls and is now using food nutrition programs for votes. https://www.hilltimes.com/story/2024/04/01/trudeaus-unpopularity-is-hurting-moree-than-just-his-party/416485/
9. Farmers have raised concerns about carbon tax rebates. https://www.cbc.ca/player/play/1.7160652. Farmers passed costs along to consumers including food nutrition program.
10. Food prices continue to challenge food nutrition programs and consumers. https://www.thebeefsite.com/news/canadian-food-prices-projected-to-rise-in-2024. Justin Trudeau and his team refuse to pivot on their climate change policies especially as they push for unproven technology in areas like heat pumps or H2 or other areas of climate change. https://www.utilitydive.com/news/green-hydrogen-production-scale-economies-clean-energy/709262/
Pierre Poilievre continues to lead in the polls. Pierre and his team like Dan Albas or Melissa Lantsman or others need to focus on areas that will impact the food costs including elimination of the carbon tax, capital write-down as part adoption sustainable farming practices (regenerative farming, vertical farming, etc.) — The Future Of Farming — AI Innovations That Are Transforming Agriculture — https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/future-farming-ai-innovations-transforming-paul-young-0bc1c/ and overall productivity — https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/productivity-challenges-canada-paul-young-015dc/ or supporting of small-to-medium size enterprises.
https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/climate-change-adoption-small-medium-size-esg-paul-young-vlqfc/
I am all for nutritional food programs. My biggest concern is how best to implement food programs. Justin Trudeau record on implementation has been ineffective at times. Trudeau uses the fiscal cycle for votes and in many cases present programs that are either too expensive or lack proper collaboration with all stakeholders. https://medium.com/@paulyoung_81567/the-justin-trudeau-era-november-2015-to-the-present-5f07d2d9d853
Paul Young CPA CGA is a former Senior IBM Customer Success Manager that has deployed over 300 data and AI solutions across geographies for the past 8 years. Paul is also FPA SME on how best to integrate macro and micro indicators as part of the data journey for the operational, management, and regulatory reporting cycles.
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