EDITORIAL – Caputo’s contradiction: yes to food banks, no to school food bill
An editorial by Mel Rothenburger.
IT SEEMS A CONTRADICTION that MP Frank Caputo tweeted a photo of himself and some local politicians and others at the Holiday Train the other night shortly after voting against a bill aimed at creating a national school meals program.
That’s because it is. Caputo’s tweet commented, “A beautiful #Kamloops #Thompson #Cariboo night to welcome the CP Holiday Train. What a turnout, with proceeds to the food bank.” He added a Canada Helps link where people can donate.
Supporting the food bank is a great thing. But when Private Member’s Bill C-322 came up for a vote at second reading earlier this month, Caputo and other Conservatives voted against it.
Liberals, NDP, Greens and the Bloc all voted in favour.
Mel Rothenburger is a regular contributor to CFJC Today, publishes the ArmchairMayor.ca opinion website, and is a recipient of the Jack Webster Foundation Lifetime Achievement Award. He has served as mayor of Kamloops, school board chair and TNRD director, and is a retired daily newspaper editor. He can be reached at mrothenburger@armchairmayor.ca.
ArmchairMayor.ca 
Just for a moment can we put away the politics. We know many kids are going to school hungry and we know the value of nutrition in regards to learning, so isn’t investing in our children belly’s really an investment in their minds and isn’t that the whole point of education? Am I wrong in thinking that a food program in schools is a means to optimize learning?
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He is just part of a group poised to take Canada (and from the photo the province too) in a “new” direction…a direction obscured by a dense fog.
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The direction this country has been going in for 8+ years sucks, so yes, by all and any means, let’s go in a new direction. A direction away from massive increases in spending causing inflation and higher interest rates, away from a massive increase in the size of the civil service with no dicernible benefit, away from increasing taxes and oppressive over-governance, away from climate-change obsession, away from moral weakness and now de facto support of Hamas and other terrorist regimes. How about a direction toward fiscal responsibility and accountability, toward individual choice and self-determination in how you spend the money you earn to support your family rather than it being arbitrarily confiscated because Big Brother knows how to waste it best? Toward supporting our own citizens rather than corrupt regimes that the corrupt UN tells us we should support, toward actually doing something about the opioid crisis other than giving addicts free drugs, toward doing something meaningful about gun and drug smuggling at our ports of entry and borders rather than picking on already over-regulated and law-abiding citizens? I would be, and am very much in favor of those directions proposed. The current government has been an unqualified disaster and a complete failure in every respect, and ought to be ashamed of themselves.
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