Nutrition North Canada: the finger-pointing begins

Iqaluit-Tasiluk MLA George Hickes Jr.: “When it’s left up to the retailer to pass on the savings, they’re responsible to their shareholders. They’re not responsible to the consumers.” (FILE PHOTO)

Romeo Saganash, the NDP MP whose constituency includes Nunavik, said Nunavut MP Leona Aglukkaq has “abandoned the people of the North. “As a person from the North, I’ve never seen anyone so out of touch with the North and its peoples,” Saganash said.

For a federal MP, this week’s release of the Auditor General of Canada’s report on the flaws of the unpopular Nutrition North Canada freight subsidy is either something to capitalize on, or something to answer to, depending on your political stripes.

The NDP’s Romeo Saganash, who represents Nunavik, was quick to pounce on the report’s findings, saying Nov. 26, the day after Michael Ferguson released his NNC audit report, that the Conservative government, and its Inuk MP Leona Aglukkaq, “were abandoning the people of the North.”

“She’s been chairing the Arctic Council for the past two years. What has gone on with the Arctic Council? I don’t think she’s achieved anything under her chairmanship,” Saganash said.

“I don’t understand. I think she’s abandoned the people in her own region. As a person from the North, I’ve never seen anyone so out of touch with the North and its peoples.”

Aglukkaq responded with a written statement Nov. 26, acknowledging Ferguson’s call for improved scrutiny and transparency in the program.

“I will work with the minister of Aboriginal Affairs and Northern Development Canada, Bernard Valcourt, to ensure that AANDC makes progress in implementing these recommendations,” she wrote.

“As a mom, I know how important healthy food is for our children and our families.”

Now, if you’re a Nunavut politician and you don’t want to descend into partisanship, you just stick to the facts, which were laid out plainly in the performance audit, released Nov. 25.

That’s what Nunavut’s George Hickes did, the MLA for Iqaluit-Tasiluk, speaking the day after the audit’s release.

He knows how hard it is to feed a family in Iqaluit, let alone more remote Nunavut communities, where some food items double in price.

He also knows how difficult it is to run a business in the North, and make enough profit to keep it sustainable over the long term.

But this subsidy doesn’t exist to help businesses thrive, Hickes said; it’s supposed to help people buy healthy, affordable food.

And so Ottawa needs to do a better job ensuring the subsidy that northern grocers get through the NNC results in the lowest prices possible for the nutritious foods on the NNC list.

“I just can’t see how this program is truly benefiting the average consumer, the way it’s structured. It helps. I don’t think anyone can deny it helps,” he said.

“But when it’s left up to the retailer to pass on the savings, they’re responsible to their shareholders. They’re not responsible to the consumers.”

Nutrition North, which replaced the longstanding Food Mail subsidy program in 2011, offers eligible retailers in 103 isolated and northern communities a range of freight subsidies based on the cost of shipping eligible food items.

Days before the audit was released, the AAND parliamentary secretary held a news conference in Iqaluit to say his department is adding $11.5 million to it’s roughly $55 million budget for next year and that the announcement had nothing to do with the auditor’s report, which was imminent.

That now seems unlikely. The auditor general’s report noted the program is perennially over-budget.

In his report, the auditor general concentrated on five problem areas with five corresponding recommendations — all of which were accepted by AANDC with promises to remedy the problems.

But Hickes said fixing what’s broken won’t be easy because it will require northern retailers to disclose proprietary information such as deals on air freight worked out with airlines and details of their profit margins.

Right now, retailers do not need to disclose the heavily discounted freight rates they negotiate with northern air carriers.

But Ottawa would need to know that information, Hickes said, to assess whether all the subsidy money is used to reduce the price of food, or to subsidize the high cost of running a store in the Arctic.

“One of the things I really noted [in the report] was that transparency needs to be there in a way so that people can feel comfortable knowing the subsidy’s working,” Hickes said. “That’s a key component of this whole project.”

And with the auditor pointing out that the NNC program’s own oversight committee rarely met to assess whether it was working or not, how could anyone have confidence in it, Hickes asked.

Saganash said he would be pleased to sit on a committee to look into improving the program, if one was ever set up.

But Northerners would have to be an integral part of the solution, he said.

“I don’t think we lack an imagination as people of the North in order to deal with this issue. It’s high time we sit down together, iron out how we want to approach the whole issue of healthy foods in the North at an affordable price,” he said.

Aglukkaq said in her statement that, despite the hurdles that need to be overcome, the NNC has had some successes. And she said she’s confident it will get better.

“I want to be clear, that while I am pleased the program has increased access to healthy food, I am committed to working on behalf of my constituents to improve it,” Aglukkaq said. Then she pointed her finger elsewhere.

“Northern retailers have a role to play as well. It is incumbent upon them to demonstrate to their customers how they are passing along the subsidy,” she said. “If they want to be part of this program, they need to do a better job.”