Thank you, Madam Chair.
Thank you to the officials, and happy new year, everybody.
Thank you for the information. You said your focus is on the nutritional health and well-being of Canadians, so I'm going to talk about an issue that's near and dear to me, and that's breakfast programs.
If we look at the research, we know that school breakfast programs are highly effective in providing children with more nutritious diets and better cognitive abilities. They're more alert, they pay attention, they do better on standardized tests. They have a stronger basis to learn in school, with better cooperation, discipline, and interpersonal behaviours. You also see an improvement in emotional and physical health, and less sick days.
Dr. Butler-Jones, in his 2008 report, observed the following:
When children go to school hungry or poorly nourished, their energy levels, memory, problem-solving skills, creativity, concentration and behaviour are all negatively impacted. Studies have shown that 31% of elementary students and 62% of secondary school students do not eat a nutritious breakfast before school.... As a result of being hungry at school, these children may not reach their full developmental potential--an outcome that can have a health impact throughout their entire lives.
I'm a former vice-chair of the breakfast programs in Toronto. We fed 110,000 children every morning.
One in four go to school hungry, and hungry children cannot learn. Is there a plan to develop a national breakfast program? We're one of the only industrialized countries without them.