Thank you, Mr. Speaker. We’ve all heard the concerns raised in media reports this week about cancelled school nutrition programs. On Wednesday I tabled messages from Kaw Tay Whee School students describing how much they need and enjoy the meals and snacks provided at schools. Comments such as “having enough food makes my brain smart so I can learn” state the benefits of this program poignantly and eloquently. When a child says, “I like to eat breakfast,” what do you think that says about whether a child usually gets breakfast?
In every session I’ve spoken on the vital need to concentrate our greatest efforts on early childhood development. Studies, results and our own experience prove that failure to give a child adequate nutrition can cripple intellectual and physical development, lifelong health, educational and occupational achievement and the prospects for a productive life.
As even our meagre statistics on the extent of poverty show, too many people in this Territory are simply unable to provide their children with a healthy diet. Many are too poor to buy food. The damage to parenting skills at residential school experience, family and personal problems...the reasons for misfortune are many. No matter what the reasons, the reality is many children simply don’t get enough to eat.
Our responses to business plans, motions in this House, requests for a milk subsidy and for funding reallocations have repeatedly called on this government to make adequate food for young children a first priority. What do we get? Cancelled programs by ECE and empty words from the Health Minister on Nutrition Month. Yes, parents must be responsible, but for those who can’t be, must we insist that our youngest and most vulnerable citizens, our children, pay the lifelong price?
School nutrition programs use existing institutions, our daycares and schools, to cost effectively deliver a service exactly where it can have the most long-term benefit. We talk about efficiency and effectiveness of delivery. What could be simpler?
This year we spent close to a million dollars on the Premier’s questionable consultation process Creating Our Future Together. The predictably ambiguous results were hardly food for thought. The Premier likes consultation, so his Cabinet colleagues agreed to the money. Then let them all go back and read what comes from the mouths of babes, Mr. Speaker. They are doing nothing to put food into those mouths. Happy Nutrition Month. Mahsi.
