Camus said: “We are suffocating among people who think they are absolutely right.” School food service requires a dose of reflection and debate much more nuanced than those we have witnessed recently. Asking questions is not childish. Besides, children have the art of asking good questions, which sometimes disconcert us.
Ensuring food security for children is not only a laudable goal, but a fundamental right. Child hunger is a scandal in a wealthy society like ours. Ending it should be a societal goal, not just a school goal.
Aside from asking questions about kitchens, cafeterias, suppliers and menus, one should also ask questions about the very principle of school food service. One of the most important practical questions to ask is: What will the children eat during the holidays? If parents cannot feed their children during the school year, what will they do during the two months of vacation? It seems like a sensible question, right?
Wanting to free children from food insecurity is noble, but wanting all people in Quebec to have the right to live daily without hunger is a goal that seems more ambitious to me, but also more just. Parents also experience the suffering of food insecurity.
By feeding children at school, aren’t we contributing to feeding the shame of parents who are too poor to take care of their children? Aren’t we taking away their “parental pride” in being parents like any other? If these parents experience shame, how will they transmit the pride and self-confidence that children need to study? In education, research has shown that self-confidence is a determining factor in academic success.
The other factor in academic success is parents’ income. The main issue is to provide parents with the means to live in food security with their children. Unfortunately, social assistance, employment insurance benefits and minimum wage do not provide the income parents need to pay rent that is no longer affordable and to provide their children with healthy food. We see parents who “fall” into homelessness, and the youth protection department (DPJ) must intervene to protect the children of these parents who have asked for nothing more in life than to be with their children and take care of them.
When parents and children are hungry, we need to do more than teach them how to fish; we need to make sure there are enough fish in the lake. What good is knowing how to fish when social inequalities prevent small fishermen from having access to fish? It is even more disturbing to think that the wealthiest in our society occupy the biggest boats to catch the biggest fish. Just think of the Quebec government’s tax expenditures (RRSPs and TFSAs), which exceeded six billion in 2023. The richest 20% pocket more than 55% of this public windfall, while the poorest 20% do not have access to these billions.
We need a societal solution to food insecurity, which is eating away at our society like the plague. We need a Quebec food insurance plan that would transform our food system from production to consumption. Reinvesting just 50% of tax expenditures in a territorialized and sustainable food system would fundamentally change the face of our agricultural production, distribution and consumption. Faced with this global transformation, the Scandinavians would surely be jealous. But the most important thing is that families and children could find ways to be confident about the future.