MLAs pepper Nutrition North officials with complaints

Cambridge Bay’s Wilfred Wilcox, left, chair of the Nutrition North advisory board, visited Nunavut’s legislative assembly Oct.25 with Stephen Van Dine of Aboriginal Affairs and Northern Development. (PHOTO BY SARAH ROGERS)

Nunavut MLAs, who spent Oct. 25 in the legislature grilling officials from Nutrition North Canada, want to know why the six-month-old program has yet to benefit the “average Joe Inuk.”

Many MLAs, including Nunavut’s premier Eva Aariak, said Nunavummiut must have more access to country foods, if Nutrition North wants to encourage people in the North to eat more nutritious food.

“On Baffin Island, for example, there are hardly any caribou, but plenty of fish,” Aariak said during the Oct. 25 meeting, which was open to members of the public. “People do inter-community trading with other regions. I would encourage the program find a way to support that.”

Tagak Curley, Nunavut’s minister of health and social services, told Stephen Van Dine from Aboriginal Affairs and Northern Development and Wilfred Wilcox, chair of Nutrition North’s advisory committee, that Nutrition North ignores the traditional Inuit diet.

“Our diet is really quite critical to our identity,” Curley said. “And you’ve failed to recognize that. What you deem as country food is deemed [that way] by the Canadian Food Inspection Agency.”

Nutrition North can only provide subsidies for country foods processed in federally-regulated commercial plants – of which there are only three in Nunavut.

“I don’t know if it needs to be regulated,” Curley told Nunatsiaq News. “People [have been] shipping country food back and forth for years. And the airlines have responded to it – they have basic [subsidy] programs. All we are asking [Nutrition North] is to subsidize that as well.”

Improved access to country food continues to be a dominant issue in his department’s discussion with Inuit communities, Van Dine told the MLAs — but it’s something which is not yet part of the Nutrition North program, he acknowledged.

“We’re now trying to at least get a full picture of the country food supply chain and the players who are involved in it,” Van Dine said, adding that it includes many “health and safety” issues.

“There are a whole number of things that could happen with country food outside of Nutrition North,” he said. “I think there’s an opportunity for other jurisdictions to decide how NNC can complement some of their own initiatives.”

Country foods are also promoted through some of Nutrition North’s healthy living initiatives, which are funded apart from subsidy rates.

Van Dine also fielded criticisms of the program’s revised eligibility list – which comes into full effect October 2012 – from MLAs who are concerned that it limits shoppers’ access to popular store-bought foods.

Rankin Inlet South MLA Lorne Kusugak said that people in his community rely on food items like white flour, tea and macaroni, staples in the local diet that are not subsidized under Nutrition North.

People can’t afford to eat, Kusugak pointed out – let alone nutritiously.

Van Dine couldn’t promise to add those items to the eligibility list, but assured MLAs that Nutrition North’s list and subsidy rates were “dynamic.”

“As we get new information, we have the ability to adjust the subsidy rates,” he said. “It could happen before October 2012. I think there’s some comfort in people knowing it’s not set in stone.

“The flip side of that is you have to give people some level of predictability,” he added. “We need to balance that.”

Part of that challenge is making sure the program is well understood, something both Van Dine and Wilcox believe they’re making headway on.

“I’m hoping that we have some answers and that information just has to be better bundled for communications,” Wilcox said.

Wilcox said the program has brought improvements in his hometown of Cambridge Bay, such as fresher produce and a wider variety of foods.

“And that seems to be common in a lot of the communities I’ve visited over the spring and summer,” Wilcox said. “I’m sure there are a lot of things that need to be fixed, and we’re working on that.”

And that’s what MLAs said they were hoping to hear.

“They sound like they are responsive and we want to see them account for that,” Curley said following the hearings.

Nutrition North officials will head to Kuujjuaq to take part in a public consultation on Nov. 8.