Mayoral candidate Olivia Chow is promising to provide lunches in school if re-elected, a move she says will save parents an estimated $1,800 per year. “Prices at big grocery stores just keep rising. With a robust school food program, we can give parents some breathing room. We can save families thousands of dollars a year feeding kids in school. And give parents a break on making lunch every day,” Chow said. “Back in 1990, Jack Layton and I made a plan to feed every kid in Toronto schools. More than ever, school food can save families money and help kids focus on their teacher, not their hunger. We need to keep moving forward, not backwards.” The expansion to lunch, she said, will be phased in and will be funded like the existing school food program, which is paid for by the city, other levels of government, and private donations. “Let’s make universal school lunch a reality,” Chow said at a news conference on Monday morning. “We will phase it in, test it, do our homework, and we will make it a group project. We will work with the provincial and federal governments to make it happen by 2030.” Chow previously expanded the school food program to offer a mid-morning meal to 330,000 students across the city. Toronto’s share of that program currently costs the city $32 million dollars. “The key thing is bulk purchasing,” Chow said. “When we buy in bulk, it saves about 40 per cent of the cost of food. We’ve seen it, we’ve demonstrated it... we want to buy local with the local farmers because we are in the middle of a trade war.” Chow did not provide an estimate on how much expanding the program would cost the city or other levels of government. “We are talking about a real difference in the family budget plus a little bit more time back in your evening so you don’t need to stress about packing lunch,” she said of offering lunches in schools. “It guarantees that every kid will have the energy to learn, to complete, to play.” In a written statement, Chow’s opponent, Brad Bradford, called her school lunch promise “an idea without a plan to pay for it.” “Every kid should be fed. That’s a goal worth having, and I will never argue with it. Credit where it’s due. Toronto’s school breakfast program is one of the best things this city does.” He committed to keeping the breakfast program at every school with full funding if he is elected mayor. “In response to today’s press conference: with respect, it’s not an announcement. It’s an idea without a plan to pay for it, without a plan to organize it, and without a plan to engage the other levels of government on it,” Bradford said. “Here’s the thing about promises you can’t keep. They’re not kind. A parent who hears ‘lunch for every kid’ starts planning around it. When the money is not there, that parent is the one who finds out. Until the mayor gets the City’s finances under control, she has to stop doing this.”
