Politicians playing games with national school food program

Farmers’ voices have been strangely silent about the $1-billion national school food program announced earlier this month. Maybe that’s because it’s one of the poorest handled political footballs seen in ages, and farmers are keeping their distance.

The national school food program has the potential to be a godsend. Hopefully, it will turn out that way. Families are lined up at food banks like never before. The cost of food has skyrocketed. Food insecurity is still on everyone’s minds, owing to global unrest and the COVID hangover.

The national school food program can help kids everywhere. The federal assistance is badly needed to augment breakfast and lunch programs are already in place in several provinces. Canada needs to step up to the plate – it’s the only G7 country without a national school food plan.

That makes it stand out among highly developed countries, for all the wrong reasons.

For the past four years, Canada has kicked around a national school food program like it was a football. It’s embarrassing and both the Liberals and Conservatives should be ashamed for the way they’ve grandstanded over this issue.

First, it’s taken the Liberals four years to finally create a program. It was dangled in front of voters on the 2021 campaign trail, but stalled ever since, as such promises often are.

The Conservatives are no better. When a private member tried to kick start a national school food program in 2023, the Conservatives voted against it.

No one could believe it. How could any politician vote against a food program for kids?

Of course, the answer was, and still is, blind partisanship. At the time, the Conservatives claimed a national school food program would generate too much bureaucracy. Most lately, they’ve tried tying it to the carbon tax, saying let’s help with food costs by doing away with the tax instead of funding a food program for students.

How arrogant. It’s well known that proper nutrition is key for classroom learning. Stand before hungry school kids and tell them you don’t support helping them

because it might cost you political points. That’s simply disgusting.

But back to the Liberals. While the food program funding itself is laudable, the timing is not. To say this looks like an attempt by the Liberals to bolster their sagging popularity is an understatement.

Provinces and territories will put the money to good use, mostly to bolster existing programs, and they’re grateful to have it. But when the program was announced, almost everyone called it “long awaited.” What were the Liberals waiting for? The next election? Ick.

So maybe farmers are sitting in the bush, waiting to see which way the wind blows. If so, it’s a missed opportunity. Despite the landmines, the agri-food sector could be using the announcement to explain food destined for school programs is typically sourced locally, that it’s grown using modern, safe techniques, and explaining what those techniques are.

That kind of discussion leads to a better understanding of farming, that farmers are under the same pressure as everyone else to make ends meet, and that they’re not getting rich from the rising cost of food.

It’s not too late for agriculture to chime in.