PQ proposing $39M school lunch program

Plan aims to provide affordable meals for up to 250,000 elementary students

Jean-François Lisée informally kicked off the provincial election Wednesday by making a sandwich he cobbled together from ham, cheese, iceberg lettuce, tomatoes and mayonnaise between two slices of whole-wheat bread.

Making lunches for your kids can be fun, he said, but eventually it will drive you crazy. And so, as his first promise of the six-week campaign, the Parti Québécois leader said he wants to liberate parents from the tyranny of sliced bread and juice boxes.

The party is proposing a $39-million program for elementary schools across Quebec to provide affordable lunches for up to 250,000 kids.

He made the announcement in the kitchen of his Verdun candidate, Constantin Fortier, crowded around a countertop with the candidate’s two sons, his wife and a half-dozen TV cameras.

“We want to make sure that children from low-income families ... will have quality lunches every day,” Lisée said. “The PQ has it in its values to always make sure to step up the quality of life for people in the low end.

“For us, it’s part of how we view Quebec and inequality in Quebec.”

For Lisée to lead his party from the second opposition at the National Assembly to the seat of power Oct. 1, he said, he’ll look to these types of bread-and-butter issues to engage working-class voters.

Families earning under $35,000 would pay $1 per meal, those taking home more than $65,000 would spend $5 per meal and everyone in between would pay $3.

It would encourage the caterers providing schools to hire high school dropouts and help reintegrate them into work programs or night school.

The number of people who use the city’s network of food banks actually went down between 2014 and 2016, according to Moisson Montréal’s latest annual report. But while monthly users dropped from 146,000 to 137,000 during that period, the number of kids who need donations spiked.

The 2017 Hunger Count suggests about 41,500 children used a Montreal food bank every month that year. That number was significantly lower — 33,800 — in 2016.

But the program, Lisée says, would also benefit families who may not be struggling to provide their children a quality lunch every day. He says he wants parents to have the option of not spending hours planning and assembling lunches every week.

“I’m not a father in a poor family,” Lisée said. “My two kids, growing up, I made lunches for them. I didn’t need the money, but I would have used the time.”

At the outset of the 2014 provincial elections, the PQ was polling in majority territory. But after a disastrous campaign beset by selfinflicted

We want Quebecers to know the PQ. Our first job is the quality of services to citizens.

errors and the inability, by former leader Pauline Marois, to shake questions about a referendum on Quebec sovereignty, the party suffered its worst defeat in decades.

Fast forward four years and two leaders, and Lisée helms a party trailing the Coalition Avenir Québec and Liberals on the eve of the campaign. But if he’s feeling the pressure, Lisée wasn’t showing it Wednesday.

“Pressure? That’s my middle name,” Lisée said. “The PQ always bounces back, the PQ is resilient, the PQ is working for (Quebecers).

“There was austerity before — for patients, elders, children — and we denounced it every day. If we follow the CAQ, there will be austerity in the future. We want Quebecers to know the PQ. Our first job is the quality of services to citizens.”

And on the question of Quebec sovereignty, which dogged Marois at every turn in 2014, Lisée didn’t equivocate.

“There can be no better way to show Quebecers we love Quebec than by wanting it to be independent.”