Mr. Speaker, the hon. member talked about linguistic duality, but a growing number of Canadians have neither English nor French as their first language.
When children are hungry, they cannot learn. Yesterday another report came out on child poverty, UNICEF report card number seven, “Child Poverty in Perspective: An Overview of Child Well-being in Rich Countries”. Canada is doing very, very poorly. Canada ranks second last in all OECD countries.
A percentage of young people aged 13 to 15 reported being overweight. The new health commissioner said that today's overweight teenagers are tomorrow's heart attack victims. Partially it is because they are missing their breakfast and there is not a decent lunch program in schools.
Would the hon. member support a national health and nutrition program for every child under 18 in schools and community centres? This would be based on a flexible, made in Canada community development model, building on the existing knowledge base of local organizations and parent groups so kids would not be hungry and would have decent, healthy, nutritious meals in schools. Then they could learn properly, whether it is English, French or any other subject.