A national school food program for all: Towards a social policy legacy for Canada

Ruetz, Martin and Ng focus on the national school food program for all. In the 1930s and 1940s, the US, the UK, and many other countries developed a National School Lunch Program in response to the Great Depression - the biggest economic crisis of the last century- however, Canada did not choose this path. In the spirit of building back better in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic, they have the opportunity to create a social policy legacy for Canada: a world-class, universal, healthy school meal program for all children and youth. When it comes to national school lunch programs, Canada is an outlier. Internationally, school meals are the norm: 83% of all countries provide free or subsidized school meals, according to the World Food Programme.