Nunavik repeats call for major tweaks to Nutrition North

A shopper stocks up on groceries at Kuujjuaq’s Newviq’vi, where members of the Nutrition North advisory board toured during recent meetings in the Nunavik hub. (PHOTO BY SARAH ROGERS)

Nutrition North Canada needs to take a “serious second look” at the new subsidy program before it forces the price of food and other household products to rise throughout Nunavik, said Makivik Corp. president Pita Aatami.

Aatami spoke at a public meeting held in Kuujjuaq Nov. 8, attended by Nutrition North director Leo Doyle and members of the program’s advisory board.

Aatami said Nutrition North dropped too many essential items that were once covered under its predecessor, the federal food mail program.

“If [Nutrition North] is going to be restrictive to certain products, the cost of living will go up,” Aatami said. “It might be a case of ‘if it ain’t broken, don’t fix it.’

“Your focus is on nutritious foods,” Aatami told program officials. “But there are essential goods that might be taken for granted in the South but are needed just as much, like cleaning and hygienic products.”

Fewer subsidies on non-perishable items has meant that retailers in the North must bring more items up through sealift — rather than flying them in — which requires more warehousing space in Nunavik communities.

“These warehouses cost a lot of money to build. It can cost anywhere from two to three times as much as it what cost to build a warehouse in the south,” Aatami said. “We don’t have the same opportunities that you have in the South, where you can rent a building to store your goods.”

That’s why delegates to Makivik’s annual general meeting last April passed a resolution to have the program’s economic impacts monitored.

The Kativik Regional Government has also asked researchers at Laval university to conduct regular price analyses in Nunavik stores.

At the Nov. 8 meeting, the KRG’s Quebec City-based political attaché, Louis Mercier, rhymed off a list of items that will lose their subsidies come October, 2012, when the program is fully implemented.

That list includes canned foods, dried pasta, shampoo, detergent, toothpaste and diapers — all items which are commonly used across Nunavik, Mercier said.

“There’s an assumption made by Nutrition North that these items should be shipped by sealift and should still be cheaper on the shelf,” Mercier said. “But we’re not sure yet.”

But Nutrition North director Doyle said the program’s goal is to encourage the northern food supply chain to run as “efficiently as possible,” which means encouraging better use of marine transport.

““The food mail program created an incentive….. to fly in products that, in most other northern regions, were overwhelmingly brought in on marine service,” Doyle said. “And it was understood that that type of distortion was most pronounced in Nunavik, in terms of the value of the subsidy and what it meant….”

Doyle added that Ottawa took a decision to focus the new program on nutritious food, as opposed to non-food products.

But as promised by program officials, subsidy rates will continue to be flexible.

Nutrition North has already recently adjusted subsidies across much of Nunavik and Nunavut — in most cases, increasing them.

But some Kuujjuammiut at the public meeting wanted to see a comparison of food mail’s rates with the new subsidy rates, to see if they were actually saving money on certain foods.

Doyle said it’s difficult to compare the two, since the old subsidy rates were kept private by Canada Post and the airlines it used to ship products.

Nutrition North’s original rates were based on the lowest market rate found in any given community, Doyle explained.

“When we got our first quarter data [and] we looked at how much the program was being used, it was our understanding that we were going to lapse money under the program if we didn’t adjust the rates upward,” he said of the recent changes to subsidy rates. “We knew that there were rates in certain communities that needed to be adjusted.”

Nutrition North’s transition period comes to an end in October, 2012, when the expanded list of eligible items will be scaled back.

Doyle expects the new list of eligible foods to be announced in the coming weeks, to give retailers time to adjust before next year.

Nov. 8 was Doyle’s second visit to Kuujjuaq to address questions and concerns about the program, after he met with the KRG’s regional council last September.

An audio recording of the Nov. 8 meeting at the Katittavik town hall, was provided to Nunatsiaq News from Aboriginal Affairs and Northern Development Canada.