Arctic Bay food price pics spark quarrel over Nutrition North

Retail prices for grocery items deemed to be of poor nutritional value have risen across the eastern Arctic in recent weeks, sparking fears about the potential impact of the Nutrition North Canada program, which starts April 1. (SUBMITTED PHOTO)

Blaming the federal government’s Nutrition North Canada program, Arctic Bay residents complained loudly this past week about skyrocketing food prices in their community.

To press their case, some residents used the internet to distribute digital pictures of food items that, in a transitional measure, became ineligible this past Oct. 3 for the outgoing food mail freight subsidy.

“Many items, such as cream for baking and cooking, bacon, are now shipping at $13.23 a kilogram. Have you ever paid $15 for a pound of bacon? How about $8.00 for a pint of cream,” Arctic Bay resident Clare Kines wrote in a letter to Nunatsiaq News.

Side bacon, along with many other food products containing high levels of sodium and sugar, became ineligible for air transportation subsidies as of last October.

Other items, many of them non-perishables, were also dropped, on the grounds that such goods should be shipped via sealift.

The Nutrition North program, which doesn’t start up until April 1 this year, is intended to force airlines to compete with each other for retailer freight business.

It also eliminates the use of awkward mandatory entrance points like Val d’Or, Quebec, from which most eastern Arctic food mail has been shipped.

After April 1, retailers may hire airlines to ship eligible food items directly from wholesalers based in areas like southern Ontario, where wholesale goods are likely cheaper.

But many Nunavut residents aren’t convinced that the program will reduce food prices and they don’t like the elimination of transport subsidies for items like Cheez Whiz and Ocean Spray cranberry-flavoured drinks.

Ron Elliott,an Arctic Bay resident who represents the Quttiktuq constituency in the Nunavut legislature, said last week that his constituents fear what the new program will bring.

“Although there are high expectations that this program will serve to improve access to, and lower the cost of, nutritious food for tens of thousands of Northerners, many of my constituents are understandably concerned about the new model of program delivery,” Elliot said in a letter to Elizabeth Copland, the chair of an advisory council set up to monitor the new program.

And Yukon MP Larry Bagnell blasted the federal government over Nutrition North in the House of Commons this past week.

“Low-income northerners were shocked at massive price increases in food prices caused by the government’s removal of subsidies,” Bagnell said Feb. 14.

John Duncan, the minister of northern affairs, responded by saying the Nutrition North program doesn’t start until April 1, and can’t be blamed for the price increases that Bagnell complained about.

“Mr. Speaker, the food mail program was in effect since the 1960s. The Liberal government never made any changes. It became very inefficient. This is not a cost-cutting exercise. We are spending more than was ever spent under the Liberals,” Duncan said.