An Investigation into the Failure to Implement a Universal School Lunch Program during WWII and Postwar Reconstruction in Canada: The Case of Ontario

The purpose of this research is to investigate the various social, political and economic factors that contributed to Canada’s failure to implement a universal school lunch program during the 1940s. Although Canada developed several other social welfare programs in the post-war period, it remains one of the only industrialized nations that does not provide hot meals to children in elementary or secondary schools. Data from the province of Ontario, a major site of postwar reconstruction and policy-making, has been taken up to inform the broader national discourse on school lunches from the 1940s. National, Ontario provincial and City of Toronto archival records were collected and analyzed according to common themes, in order to identify key barriers that constrained government support of a hot meal program. Archival records were identified using key words, and were limited to materials created between 1930-1952. Analysis suggests that sufficient need for a hot meal program had not been established during the 1940s. Despite misleading nutrition messages, rates of malnutrition and nutrient-related disease were at an all-time low, and many Ontario school boards did not appear to have the necessary infrastructure required to supply all pupils with hot meals. The Canadian government had already employed significant resources to improve existing social security programs by coupling them with health education. This strategy reflected a shift in understanding malnutrition as a knowledge-based problem, as opposed to income-based. This understanding was further reinforced through the moralized dissemination of nutrition information, which placed blame on women for improperly raising their children. Ultimately, the strong uptake of nutrition as a public health issue in Ontario may have limited prospective responses to solutions already utilized in the public health domain, and directed favour away from a universal school lunch program for Canada.

Cape Breton Provides Pointers for the Adjustment Programs Required by the Decline of the Old Economy (Working Paper 14)

The Cape Breton Development Corporation need not, should not, be dying in the way it is. “Devco” has been widely represented as a failure dragged out too long. In fact it had for a time considerable success in a role too difficult to be often attempted. The main failure was in the political will to stick to its purpose. This commentary is in three parts. The first, major section discusses the purpose of Devco and the policies that served the purpose quite well but were maintained for little more than a decade. It suggests that the benefits would have been greater if Devco had been started earlier in the period of postwar prosperity. The second section comments on the enfeeblement of Devco in the 1980s. The removal of its development function also weakened, and has eventually led to the abandonment of, Devco’s social purpose in the operation of coal mining. Third, a short epilogue pointing out that, while the Cape Breton case is extreme, there will be increasing need to moderate the socially disruptive consequences of accelerating economic change. There are lessons from the Devco experience: the longer remedial action is delayed, the more difficult and expensive it becomes, and the more necessary for its effectiveness is a steady political will.