Madam Speaker, it is a real honour to rise today to speak to such an important piece of legislation, Bill C-322.
Canada has led the world in many regards, and in particular, most recently, I think of the way we have been leading in terms of developing new technology for adopting clean energy, the green revolution, and everything we have done to support that.
One of the things Canada has not, unfortunately, led the world in, or at least within our G7 counterparts, is a national school food program. A national school food program has already been adopted by the other six countries in the G7. Canada remains the only country in the G7 that has not yet adopted such a program. I want to congratulate my colleague for bringing forward such an important initiative.
I heard comments from Conservatives moments ago that this was just about reporting and putting together data, and that there was really no substance to it. I am sure that is what they will use as their justification for voting against it. However, in reality what it would do is set up a framework for a national school food program and the manner in which the data would be collected and reported back to the House.
Of course, Conservatives, who are keeping their eyes on forming government, would never want to see that kind of data put before them, because it would be a constant reminder of something that they are just philosophically against. This issue is a perfect example of the philosophical divide between Conservatives and Liberals. Let us be honest: Conservatives do not believe there is a role for government to play when it comes to supporting communities. They believe in an “every person for themself” approach; the strongest will survive, and that is it.
However, that is not how we look at this. Liberals look at our responsibility to ensure that children have the best possible start, because if we do that, we give them the opportunity to be successful and to be contributors back to an economy to the fullest of their potential, and to our society.
When I heard the NDP colleague before me speak, I heard her talk about the importance of the program's being universal, and I would completely agree with her on that. Having a universal school food program gives the ability for the stereotypes to be eliminated. I will give a perfect example of this. I have mentioned this in the House before, but it is important for me, so I will mention it again. In Kingston there is a food sharing project. It is basically a group that was started a number of decades ago through various means of accessing food, bringing food together, putting it into different baskets or boxes and delivering food to schools, where children can take some of the food at their own discretion.
The food sharing project led by Andy Mills in Kingston relies on a lot of volunteers to help to make it work, because there really is not a stable source of funding. I have had the opportunity to volunteer, and I have taken my family with me when I have done this on a couple of occasions. I was really surprised the first time that we did this. My eight-year-old, who was five or six at the time, came. While we were packaging the food, he looked at me and he said, “Oh, so this is where all that food comes from that I see in school.” I found that remarkable because what it said to me is that Frankie, my now eight-year-old, did not realize where the food came from or what the purpose of it was. All he knew was that in his school there was food that every child had the ability to get if they were hungry—