SINGH – Why we should provide free meals for Kamloops City council
(Image: Unsplash.com)
By ARJUN SINGH
The Kamloops Chronicle
IN LATE 2005, I was sworn in as a city councillor alongside a great group of Kamloopsians. After the installation ceremony, the city threw us a reception — quite a lavish one, actually. I wasn’t expecting it.
Arjun Singh.
I wrote about it on my civic affairs blog, admitting I was taken aback, but ultimately glad that members of my campaign team got to attend. I saw it as the city’s acknowledgment of their contributions to democracy.
Soon after, someone — via email or blog comment — accused me of being one of the “pigs at the trough.” That stung. It was a gentler time, and I wasn’t yet used to that kind of criticism.
Around the same time, I attended my first closed council meeting, which traditionally begins at noon with a working lunch. I passed on the sandwiches that day and sat there, a little stiff and uncomfortable, while my colleagues ate.
A week or so later, a council colleague invited me out for lunch downtown and came clean: he had been the one who sent the criticism — as a joke. He apologized. And I never skipped the council lunch again.
I tell this story because the question of whether to feed elected officials has again attracted some community interest. Darpan Sharma, who ran for council in 2022, for example, has made my support for free council meals — and occasionally dinners — a recurring point of criticism. So let me explain why I think this practice isn’t just reasonable. I think it’s genuinely important.
Before our current council’s dysfunction, those lunches did something no agenda item ever could: they gave us time with each other as human beings. It’s much easier to collaborate across real differences in values and politics when you know the person across the table — not just their vote, but their kids, their weekend plans, their love of fishing or hockey or the holiday season.
You don’t get that around the council table. You don’t get it in the middle of a heated debate. But at a lunch, I’ve watched councillors with different worldviews laugh together, find common ground, and build the kind of quiet trust that makes governance actually work.
There’s a saying in meeting culture that the best conversations happen at the cookie table. Council lunches are the cookie table.
There’s also a practical argument worth making. Council work has grown significantly — in scope, in hours, in public demands. Councillors are regularly asked to buy tickets to charity events and community fundraisers. We’re frankly probably not paying councillors enough.
That said, I understand the criticism. Many people bring their own lunch to work every day. Food bank usage is rising. Public belt-tightening is a real and reasonable expectation. These are fair points.
Maybe times do need to change. But I’d want us to be honest about what we’d be giving up. The informal time that council shares over a meal is, in my experience, one of the most effective relationship-building tools available to any governing body. Better relationships mean better collaboration. Better collaboration means better decisions for the city.
If we eliminate the free lunch, I genuinely wonder: what replaces it?
Arjun Singh is a former Kamloops City councillor and is currently the executive director of the Kamloops Local News Society, which publishes the Kamloops Chronicle. This column also appears in the May edition of the Chronicle. He can be contacted at info@kamloopschronicle.com.
ArmchairMayor.ca 
I’ll keep it simple.
I am also in full agreement that work lunches where we learn about our colleagues away from the formality of the workspace, and this is critical to functioning as a team. No one argues that Arjun.
Its called take out and ordering in, and even occasionally some potluck … in any case, at regular meeting type work places, attendees pay the bill.
Done it many times.
The problem isnt the eating, its about the taxpayers paying for it.
The fact our friend Arjun just doesn’t get this, even after all his years of service, and the fact that he has seriously questioned the issue enough to write this piece, but he doesnt get this simple addition … suggests that the presumption means the automatic attachment to ‘the trough’ isnt an unfair observation.
Arjun … we like ya … but come on dude.
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It’s hard to believe in this day and age of difficult fiscal priorities that Mr. Singh is using his platform to lobby for free meals.
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Sorry, Arjun, I believe that “sense of entitlement” sandwiches are on your menu today.
There is absolutely no way you can persuade me that you are not able to buy your own lunch. If folks around the horse shoe want to have catered lunches, have a fund to which each person interested can make their own financial contribution. It can’t be that difficult to have a cost figure per person put onto catered lunches.
Maybe back when you were on council, there weren’t as many human beings (who are sometimes called “street people”) outside City Hall. They often go hungry or make a dumpster their source of food. They can only begin to imagine what it would be like to sit down to a free meal that has been bought by the taxpayer.
Shame on you, Arjun. Shame on you.
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His words are those of Yesterday’s Man. Clearly the former councillor doesn’t understand the symbolism free lunches have in today’s society, nor do the councillors who’ve followed in his footsteps.
No Incumbents!
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Let them eat cake
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There are other most effective relationships building tools available. My favourite one is to go for a nice hike in the trails around Peterson creek or Kenna Cartwright park. Each easily reachable, without any danger, and quite cheap to undertake. The extra bonus about hiking Kenna Cartwright park is that, with the right choice of trail, one can easily see the City’s maintenance yard and see the ample amount of wasted space available. So yes, hike or ride (on a bicycle, which is my other favourite relationship-building activity) the city you are supposed to govern to see the world from a different, very enlightening, perspective. What I just described is the proper mindset I wish my rule-makers had. Lastly, the disfunction of the present council is just the symptom arising from previous councils not at all attuned to what was happening in real time around them.
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My colleagues and I used to bond over lunch too–eating together is fun and relaxing and we did it often. The difference was we all brought our own lunch. What’s stopping the councillors from doing the same? Or can they only bond over lunch if the taxpayer pays for it?
I get that in the scheme of things, free lunches at city hall won’t make much of a budget difference. The point is optics. While more and more residents depend on the food bank and/or have to tighten their food budgets, it looks bad for well-paid councillors ($52,000 + $18,000 TNRD stipend for part-time work) to continue to eat at the taxpayer’s expense.
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