High price of shipping caribou frustrates Nunavut woman

A sign in Iqaluit’s Northmart store shows the new price of a block of cheese shortly after the April 1 launch of Nutrition North Canada. But opposition party candidates, and at least one Pond Inlet woman, say the program is worse than the food mail system it replaced. (PHOTO BY CHRIS WINDEYER)

With the Easter weekend approaching, Leslie Qammaniq just wanted to get some caribou to share with her family in Pond Inlet.

“The caribou [around Pond Inlet} is very far right now,” she said.

So when she saw on Facebook that someone in Coral Harbour was selling whole caribou for $300, she jumped at the chance.

A week after the meat was packed and shipped, Qammaniq is still waiting for tuktu, even though she’s already paid a $290 waybill for shipping, which basically doubled the cost of the meat.

“It’s all based on what load is coming in on the flights from Clyde River to Pond Inlet, so if it’s a full flight, I’m shit out of luck,” she said.

She’s upset with First Air, the airline shipping it, but the real culprit, she said is Nutrition North Canada, the new federal food subsidy program, which Qammaniq said doesn’t do enough to lower the cost of shipping country food and makes it harder to do personal orders.

She said her one of her preferred outlets for personal orders, a retailer in Val d’Or, Quebec, no longer does personal orders.

“I was able to get fresh bagels from the bakery. I can’t have that anymore and the bread that we get locally is usually dry or not as fresh compared to the food mail I used to get and the selection of the meat is a different quality,” she said.

Qammaniq isn’t the only one unhappy with the new program.

Nunavut’s federal candidates traded shots this week over Nutrition North, with Liberal Paul Okalik promising to scrap the new plan and bring back Food Mail.

“The Conservative Nutrition North Plan is a made-in-Ottawa disaster. It is a failure because they didn’t listen to the northerners,” Okalik said in a statement.

“In the short term, Liberals will bring back the old food mail program. In the longer term, we will rebuild food mail the right way – by listening to Northerners who use the plan, keeping what is good and modernizing what isn’t.”

Aglukkaq shot back with a statement of her own, saying the Government of Nunavut, when Okalik was premier, demanded Ottawa make changes to the food mail program.

She said the program has encouraged competition amongst airlines, eliminated mandatory access points, covers country food and personal orders and features an advisory board made up of northerners.

“Our challenge now is to make sure that the Nutrition North Canada program works effectively in all regions, not to go back to an old, flawed program which Liberal candidate Paul Okalik, the Nunavut Government, mayors, as well as other organizations, demanded be changed,” Aglukkaq said in a statement.

New Democrat Jack Hicks said April 8 that Nutrition North “is a corporate gift to northern Canada’s largest retailers at the expense of everyone else.

“The structure of the program hands two large companies a tremendous advantage, given their buying power with both suppliers and air carriers. It disadvantages both small retailers in the North and individuals who want to purchase food from other suppliers in the South.”

Hicks also slammed the North West Co., releasing information from a shareholders circular detailing executive salaries at the publicly-traded company.

President Edward Kennedy made $2.7 million in 2009, while vice president and chief financial officer Leo Charrière took home $849,000 and Michael McMullen, the vice-president responsible for the North, raked in $756,000.

Hicks said such salaries are made on the backs of Nunavut families.