Child Nutrition Briefing Note

Targeting the Economic Crises

Policy Briefing Note: Child Nutrition Program

Proposal

MPs should invest in nutritious school meals with $110 million for First Nations and rural schools, plus up to $337.5 matching dollars to provinces and cities that meet minimum funding commitments. The program would:

• improve the health of a generation of children that Parliament’s Standing Committee on Health worried would live shorter, sicker lives than their parents;
• create markets for fruit and vegetable famers and jobs for school-meal program administrators;
• help ensure double-digit inflation for fruits, vegetables, and grains doesn't worsen children’s diets; and
• help make good on Parliament’s 20-year-old unfulfilled vow to rid Canada of child poverty.


Implementation

Using program models already applied in 7,000 Canadian communities, the feds could immediately adapt and establish nutrition standards, food safety systems, program evaluation tools, financial accountability mechanisms, and environmental criteria for food eligibility.

Because, e.g., feeding 400 students five meals weekly may be a twenty-fold bigger job than feeding a family all week, many of Canada’s 13,500 schools, or local health/education authorities would create jobs for p/t or f/t program administrator (and local farmers).

Meals could be fed to children almost immediately in spring 2009 at pilot schools by expanding existing programs. National roll-out could begin September 2009, subject to matching provincial/city funds.


Cost of Proposal

The feds should invest in healthy meals for school children by:
• fully funding on-reserve Fist Nations meals for 120,000 students ($35 million annually);
• providing enhanced funding for rural and small town students of 15% of program costs to compensate for lower fiscal capacity of rural & small local governments ($75 million); and
• providing federal dollar-for-dollar matching funds for financial investments by

• text provincial/territorial governments that first increase funding to 15% of total province-wide program costs (up to $225 million); and
• text cities that first provide 7.5% of program funding costs for city-wide implementation (up to $112.5 million).

Expected Impact – Short-term

Nutritious school meals will help create jobs and improve the health and academic prospects of Canadian children and, through sensible environmental eligibility rules for foods, ensure foods procured are locally and/or environmentally produced and transported.

The program will also create part-time and full-time jobs for program administrators at many of Canada’s 13,500 schools, or by local school district or health authorities. School meals can bolster both rural and urban economies from harvest through final exams, complementing city- and summer-centric infrastructure projects.

Two-thirds of school-aged children consume fewer than five servings of fruits and vegetables daily, let alone their recommended 4-8 servings. Canada’s Chief Public Health Officer says, depending on age and gender, one-quarter to two-thirds of children arrive at school without a nutritious breakfast. A Harvard University review of 102 studies concluded the US breakfast program “is highly effective in…providing children with a stronger basis to learn in school….and helping with…discipline and inter-personal behaviors.”

The Conservative Party’s election vow to “provide practical help to Canadian families to assist them with higher costs of living” could start here by helping parents cope with a 29% price hike for fresh vegetables, and 19% for fresh fruit.


Expected Impact – Long-term

Investments in nutritious school meals are, essentially, health prevention insurance premiums paid up-front as a bulwark against the short and long-term ill-health effects of poor diet economic privation.

Studies show that improving diets in childhood has lasting effects on food preferences that persist into adulthood. This offers great potential for ratcheting down long-term risks of certain forms of cancer, cardiovascular disease, diabetes and osteoporosis.

Health Canada estimates that diet-related disease costs the economy approximately $7 billion in lost productivity and excess health care costs, but even that enormous figure is likely a considerable underestimate. All levels of government in Canada have a stake in using prevention to keep health care costs down, especially as baby-boomers age; public finance for health care depends on young people being productive tax-payers and healthy light users of the health care system when boomers are aging.

Alarming rates of type-II diabetes (formerly known as “adult onset” diabetes) in children, fatty liver disease, obesity, and other worrisome trends that signal high rates of disability and premature death in the furture and governments respond now. The economic downturn could exacerbate these problems.

The life-long benefits of improve school performance and decreased discipline-related problems detailed in the Harvard review could be an inestimable long-term boon for the Canadian economy.


Background

Parliament didn’t even try to fulfill its 1989 pledge to rid Canada of child poverty, or change the fate of a generation of children its health committee worried in 2007 would lead shorter sicker lives than their parents.

Inflation for baked goods and cereal (up 12% since December 2007) and fresh vegetables (up 27%) will make things even worse, especially for children of poor and unemployed parents. Turning a blind eye to key staple food prices is the hallmark of out-of-touch politicians.

Two-thirds of children consume fewer than five servings of fruits and vegetables daily, let alone their recommended 4-8 servings. Canada’s Chief Public Health Officer, Dr. David Butler Jones, said that, depending on age and gender, one-quarter to two-thirds of children arrive at school without a nutritious breakfast.

The US feds spends $1.24 per student daily on school meals. A November 2008 Harvard University review of 102 studies concluded the US breakfast program “is highly effective in…providing children with a stronger basis to learn in school….and helping with…discipline and inter-personal behaviors.” Butler-Jones said as much last summer. The Canadian feds don’t spend a cent--not even for First Nations students--and provinces pay only 3.5 cents per student with weak nutrition standards.


Considerations

There are no foreseeable environmental impediments or delays for establishing this decentralize food procurement program. However, proactively setting strong eligibility rules for foods would help create opportunities to minimize the environmental impact of food production and transportation methods, e.g., by favouring local produce.

Provincial governments have broad constitutional authority to deal with health and education matters, but not exclusive authority to safeguard the health and well-being of Canadian children. The federal government has long-recognized authority to regulate the food supply, concurrent authority to safeguard public health, and clear legal authority to make conditional financial transfers to other levels of government and non-profits for programs related to federal or provincial heads of power under the Constitution Act, 1867. The feds have (for decades) made conditional transfers to the provincial health care budgets, and now, for instance, already grant and transfer $137 million directly to school boards for various projects, according to Statistics Canada. The constitutional authority and political duty for the federal crown to spend in relation to First Nations students is undisputed. Federal assistance is especially justified when the economic rationale and the compassionate imperative are aligned.


Political Implications

There are few more practical, more caring justifications for spending public dollars in a recession than to help parents of improve the health and scholastic achievement of their children while creating jobs for Canadian farmers and meal program administrators.

The Centre for Science in the Public Interest, Breakfast for Learning, the Canadian Home and School Federation and their tens of thousands of volunteers across Canada would welcome long overdue federal funding and increases to provincial contributions.

in 2005, the federal, provincial and territorial ministers of health hatched a strategy (the “Integrated Pan-Canadian Healthy Living Strategy”) calling for federal government price supports, subsidies and infrastructure investments for healthy eating, which expressly places “particular emphasis on children and youth.” The NDP explicitly called for such a proposal in its 2008 election campaign. Preliminary Liberal Party policy discussions concerning a national food policy include an informal brief on a school meals program.
Because price inflation is largely confined to certain categories of food, investments in school meals is a sensible application of the federal Conservative Party’s election commitment to “provide practical help to Canadian families to assist them with higher costs of living.”