LETTER TO: Mayor David Miller and Budget Committee Chair Shelley Carroll - Mar 20, 2007
March 30, 2007
City Hall
100 Queen St. West.
Toronto, ON
To: Mayor David Miller and Budget Committee Chair Shelley Carroll
Re: Budget Allocation for Municipally Run Daycares
We are writing to you because we would like you to address a budget problem with major and long term consequences on children’s health. We are talking about the poor quality food fed to kids in city daycares. The city has a huge responsibility and it has been overlooked. It seems that the city sold the contract to the lowest bidder and left the quality of the food up to the supplier.
We are asking you to assist Brenda Patterson, GM of Children’s Services, to bridge the difference in cost between the current quality food fed to kids in city daycares and what the YMCA (as well as Hydrokids, Woodgreen, ActiveKids, etc) has started to feed kids.
With a “zero budget increase” for next year, she cannot make this change alone.
The toddler fee we’ve been paying is $64 dollars a day and when we asked Brenda Patterson, what was the cost for food per day per child we were given a verbal estimate of approximately $2.50. We are still waiting for the exact numbers, which could even be lower. We had been suspecting a very low actual amount, since we had read in the Globe and Mail article “ Have you Any Gwey Poupon, ” 17/02/07, that the price for a “natural lunch” at Woodgreen daycares was only $2.80. So we realized that the city must pay even less than that.
So, our question is: where does the rest of $61.5 dollars go, from the $64 we pay? The price we pay is definitely not reflected in the quality of the food fed to children.
This makes us feel cheated.
We have copied below the statement from the YMCA menu:
“We only use 100% natural ingredients, including organic whenever possible. Our chicken, beef, & turkey are hormone and antibiotic –free, naturally & ethically raised. Fruits and vegetables listed on the menu may vary according to season and availability of fresh, local produce. All items are free of trans fats, refined sugar, excess salt, artificial colouring, thickeners and preservatives. We use triple – filtered water for our cooking, which removes chlorine, fluoride and eliminates the risk of E.Coli, Cryptosporidioum & Giardia.” This is all music to our ears. The YMCA allocates an amount in the low $ 4 dollar range for their food and we believe the city could do the same.
With respect to the city daycare food, we do not have a problem with the menu itself, but with the products delivered by your supplier: the cheapest processed food, some containing trans fats and/or preservatives banned in other countries; an excessive amount of canned food (unsafe exposure to the estrogen mimicker- bisphenol A) ranging from canned potatoes to imported canned fruit; etc. Please refer to our package sent to Brenda Patterson for our issues with the daycare food. We urge you to provide the money to buy local, uncanned, fresh fruits and vegetables and meat/eggs/dairy that come from animals that were not fed routine antibiotics and hormones. Please support local farmers and Canadian fishermen as the food would also be healthier and transported less. We do not want to see anymore canned peaches from Greece and fish fillets from China.
In order for cans to be made, metal ore has to be dug up from some part of the world, refined, turned into cans coated with plastic, fruit must be boiled, sugar added, and then the cans get to be transported half way across the world, and for what — vitamin depleted fruit spiked with bisphenol A and at the expense of children’s health, local farmers, and the environment?
As big and plentiful as Canada is, why are our children being fed poorer quality food from other parts of the world?
We are asking you to assist Brenda Patterson to bridge the difference in cost between the current quality food fed to children in city daycares and what the YMCA feeds kids.
Some of the ways you can do this, by not spending more, are conservation methods. Let’s have eco-daycares, just like the TDSB has started to have eco-schools.
- We propose that the lights go off at night/ weekends (or be put on motion sensors) in daycares and other city buildings.
- We are also proposing that the hot water be put on a timer like is done in most parts of the world.
- Raising the air-conditioning temperature in city buildings is also a must.
- Looking at other places where there is waste in the system, such a paper use, and switch to recycled paper and make double sided photocopying/ printing mandatory.
It is very painful for us to see the energy splurge and know that the cost of our daughter’s food has been reduced to as little as $2.50 a day.
Before you do the allocation for more salary increases and office renovations, we are urging you to look at a daycare food budget that allows children to be fed the food they deserve.
Since other daycare chains, such as the YMCA, Woodgreen, Hydrokids, ActiveKids and some private ones have begun to go organic and feed meat, dairy, and eggs from naturally raised animals, we believe the city daycares can do the same. We would like the city daycares to be equally progressive and eliminate all remaining foods that contain artificially occurring trans fats and also move towards reducing other types of chemical exposures. We believe that such an action would give the city of Toronto a positive progressive image and it would also raise more environmental awareness.
We would like to see a higher proportion of our $64 dollars be spent on healthy food. So we are asking you to divert some of that $ 61.5 that goes somewhere else, back into quality food for children.
Please have a bidding process that will not squeeze out the supplier and in turn lead to sacrificing the quality of food fed to children.
Children’s food is not the place where costs should be cut to the lowest possible level.
So please assist Brenda Patterson with the necessary budgetary increase in order for her to be able to put out an RFP as progressive as the YMCA’s.
Sincerely,
(signed by the parents from the Parent Advisory Committee at Danforth Childcare Centre)