Tweaking Nutrition North

Nunavut MLAs, meeting together as committee of the whole, continued hearings Oct. 25 that began this past June on the federal government’s Nutrition North Canada program.

Don’t expect much. If MLAs were as serious about this issue as they claim, they would have got involved much earlier.

Ottawa announced the Nutrition North Canada program in Iqaluit on May 21, 2010.

That session featured lengthy briefings put on for invited representatives from Nunavut Tunngavik Inc., the Government of Nunavut and other organizations. All the relevant information, except for community subsidy rates, was available then to anyone who wanted it. That includes information about which food items would be eligible, which ones wouldn’t and when and how the new system would come into effect.

Nunavut MLAs could have studied the new scheme at legislative assembly sessions held in either June or October of 2010. But they somehow managed to ignore the issue until this past February, when they finally agreed to hold special hearings that didn’t even start until the year 2011 was half over.

Still, the Nunavut legislative assembly’s belated Nutrition North hearings have turned out not nearly as futile as they could have. In spite of themselves, MLAs have so far managed to make a modest contribution to the public interest.

That’s because the three northern retailers who appeared before them this past June, despite the self-interest that biases their views, supplied a more honest assessment of the program than most regular people normally get to hear.

On this front, comments from the independent Iqaluit retailer, Kenn Harper, and Andy Morrison, the CEO of Arctic Co-ops Ltd., were especially useful.

The first lesson is this: there’s no turning back. The Canada Post food mail program is dead. Despite all the braying and bellowing about bringing back food mail, it can’t and won’t be revived.

“Please do not let the news reports and political grandstanding that has taken place over the last year fool you. The old food mail program was not just flawed, it was broken,” Morrison told MLAs. Of course, if MLAs had bothered to inform themselves, they would known this five years ago, when Ottawa began the process that led to Nutrition North.

The second lesson is that Nutrition North’s freight subsidies were never designed to directly reduce the cost of eligible food in the Arctic. As Kenn Harper told MLAs, its actual intent is to stabilize the status quo and restrain the food mail program’s soaring costs within a predictable budget.

Lower prices, such as they are, have come about because retailers, especially the big ones, now use the program to transport food to the Arctic more quickly and more efficiently from cheaper sources of supply. This ought to produce better quality and more variety. But consumers will not see dramatic price reductions.

The third big lesson is one that northern consumers will not want to hear. Food prices are rising around the world and northern Canada will not be spared.

Millions of people are being lifted out of poverty in countries like China and India. Naturally, they’re buying more stuff, including better food. At the same time, bad weather and political instability has hurt food production in many places. The result? More demand and higher prices.

At the same time, we all know the cost of electrical power has already risen in Nunavut by 19 per cent. Retail grocery stories, whose power bills are no subsidized, are already passing this onto you every time you pull money out of your pocket at the cash register.

The Nutrition North Canada cannot, by itself, fix the complex economic and social issues that produce hunger and want in Nunavut. It’s highly unrealistic to expect that it ever could have.

But it’s also obvious the program contains flaws that can be corrected.

Such as:

• Badly calculated subsidy rates have led to price increases in some communities, such as Kimmirut. To fix this, Ottawa should adjust freight subsidy rates of subsidy where they’ve been set too low;

• No provision for rising energy costs. If fuel and electrical power costs continue to rise, so will the cost of transporting and storing food in isolated Arctic communities. To be as effective in the future as they are now, subsidy rates should take rising energy costs into account; and,

• The administrative costs borne by retailers are too high. This is because the federal government wants retailers to record enormous amounts of information about the food products that they buy and sell. To fix this, the federal government should either reduce the reporting requirements or increase the compensation given to retailers.

• The absence of credible nutritional education. Far too many northern consumers are wasting their money on pop, chips, cheezies and processed food, the kinds of food that will take years off your life if you eat enough of it. The price signals built into Nutrition North need to be supported by better information about nutrition. JB