‘National’ program for school meals a Liberal illusion
Here’s the first thing you need to know about the new “National School Food Program” you might have heard about: There is no national school food program. There is even less a national school food program than there is a national daycare program, even less than there is a “national pharmacare deal.”
The “national pharmacare deal” is at least a piece of legislation. The school food program is a press release, with details to come in the budget. And like national pharmacare (in which neither Quebec nor Alberta is interested), national school food isn’t really national at all.
“Education being Quebec’s exclusive jurisdiction, it goes without saying that we demand to receive this money without any conditions,” Minister for Canadian Relations Jean-françois Roberge averred roughly 30 seconds after the federal government’s announcement this week.
Well, hey, it’s 2024. Symmetrical federalism went out with neon windbreakers. Perhaps we should just accept that “national program” now means “national program except Quebec.” And that when Alberta also says it’s not interested in “national pharmacare,” that’s just Albertans being churlish.
I would rather not. I think the whole “national strategy” discourse warps Canadians’ minds about how this country, and federations in general, were designed to work — which can only make it more difficult to solve our biggest problems.
Point out a basic fact like “school lunches are not federal jurisdiction,” online or off, and you will immediately be set upon by people who understand very well how federalism works but think it’s downright ghoulish for you to bring it up in the matter of hungry children. (It’s all they can do not to literally channel Helen Lovejoy’s immortal, agonized cry from The Simpsons: “Oh won’t someone please think of the children!”)
You can assemble an impressive roster of such people quite quickly by sticking your neck out slightly on social media: journalists, criminal defence lawyers, a candidate for the Alberta NDP, even a former premier: “Let’s skip the long debate about jurisdiction,” Kathleen Wynne advised, without explaining how exactly we would go about that. Would Ottawa just mail every school principal in the land a cheque with a vow of silence attached? (It might be the most efficient way.)
And then you get the wizened political observers, who also understand very well how federalism works, but who say things like this is “good retail politics,” and that it’s “a political winner whether you like it or not.”
I agree, of course. The problem is this “national strategy” shtick. It’s nothing but political branding, like the Liberals’ “minister of middle-class prosperity,” and dispassionate observers, including the media, should not be indulging it. All we’re really talking about is Ottawa wiring the provinces money.
That’s fine! That’s a big part of the federal government’s job. If Justin Trudeau’s federal government has money to send the provinces for child care, pharmacare and school meals, then it has a solid progressive message to sell potential voters. Feeding hungry children is indeed good retail politics, and a good idea in every other way besides.
But as I say, it reinforces an Ottawa-centric view of the country that does not align with how Canada really works. It cements this bizarre view among many Canadians that a “national” program must somehow be better than a provincial program or a municipal program, or perhaps even a program not run by government at all. Why, for God’s sake? What on earth does Ottawa know about feeding hungry schoolchildren that 12 provinces and territories, dozens of school boards and thousands of teachers and principals do not? Ottawa isn’t even very good at mowing its own backyard, never mind Edmonton’s or Victoria’s or Quebec City’s.
Feeding children, ultimately, is a relatively simple matter: We either have the money to buy them breakfast and lunch, or we don’t. But I fear we can’t solve this country’s far more complex problems while half the population doesn’t even understand who’s in charge of what, and doesn’t particularly care to learn.