Northerners seek subsidies for country foods

Nutrition North officials say they have yet to find a way to offer a subsidy on country foods going from one northern community to the next.

The program’s advisory board has indicated a “strong desire” from Inuit and others in the North to ship country foods at a subsidized rate to and from other communities, a Nutrition North spokesperson told a May 31 public meeting in Iqaluit.

The program now provides a subsidy for shipping commercially-produced country foods from federally-approved facilities – of which there are three in Nunavut.

Subsidizing personal shipments between Nunavut communities “has not been addressed yet,” said Stephen Van Dine, the director general of devolution and territorial relations under Aboriginal and Northern Development Canada.

‘We don’t have the machinery yet, but we’re working on it,” Van Dine said.

Iqaluit resident Monica Ell told the May 31 meeting that the cost of shipping food to relatives in other communities is too steep – despite subsidies offered by some northern airlines.

Ell asked Nutrition North officials if local hunters could be registered as eligible suppliers under Nunavut’s hunter support programs.

But Van Dine explained that Nutrition North can only provide a subsidy for the transportation of country foods processed in federally-regulated commercial plants.

Those distributors can only be registered as eligible suppliers if they have a business number issued by the Canadian Revenue Agency and meet other program criteria.

There are currently three Nunavut country food distributors registered under the program: Kitikmeot Foods in Cambridge Bay, Kivalliq Arctic Foods Ltd. in Rankin Inlet and Pangnirtung Fisheries Ltd.

Those companies can ship their country food products to other eligible northern communities at subsidized rates that vary from $0.60 to $6.60 per kilogram.

In Nunavut’s legislative assembly June 1, Peter Taptuna, MLA for Kugluktuk, asked a Nutrition North hearing if major Northern retailers could play a role in the inter-community trade of country foods.

Representatives from both the North West Co. and Arctic Co-operatives Ltd. said they were interested, but neither company has been approached by Nutrition North or any commercial plants in the territory.

“Our members have been requesting for many years that co-operatives sell more country food in retail stores,” Arctic Co-ops CEO Andy Morrison told the hearings. “The fact that country food processed in a federally inspected facility is now eligible under the Nutrition North program, we think is a tremendous opportunity.”

But Morrison said the availability of commercially-processed country foods poses a challenge – he said there is not enough volume produced now to meet the demands at co-ops across the territory.