Feds hold off on revising Nutrition North subsidy list, seek Inuit input
No new details on federal Harvesters Support Grant, set to roll out in April
The Canadian government will wait another year before it decides to stop subsidizing about three dozen food items through Nutrition North Canada. (File photo)
The federal government is delaying plans to stop subsidizing a number of foods through the Nutrition North Canada program.
Last winter, the federal government announced some changes to the controversial program.
These changes included adding new items and creating new and higher targeted subsidy rates for things like milk and infant formula.
“Northerners told us that they want greater savings on healthy foods that are targeted at supporting healthy families,” a federal spokesperson said in an email to Nunatsiaq News on May 2. “They also requested a focus on some items with a longer shelf life, including non-perishable key staples.”
Some items were being considered for removal from the list. Among them were frozen pre-made meals, some processed cheeses and meats, sugary breakfast cereals and tofu (see the complete list below).
While those items were set to be eliminated on April 1, Crown-Indigenous Relations and Northern Affairs Canada decided to extend subsidies on them until March 2020, based on feedback from Nutrition North’s advisory board and from Indigenous groups.
Part of the effort to revise the program will be done with the newly-created Inuit-Crown Food Security working group, made up of representatives from Inuit Tapiriit Kanatami, Nunavut Tunngavik Inc., Nunavik’s health agency and other federal partners.
During the April meeting of the Inuit-Crown Partnership Committee, Inuit leaders signed off on an agreement that will see the working group review Nutrition North’s subsidy list, ITK said.
The Inuit working group will also evaluate the impact of Nutrition North specifically on reducing food insecurity among Inuit.
“This work will be undertaken by the Inuit-Crown Food Security Working Group and is expected to begin within the current fiscal year,” ITK said in a May 2 email.
That group will also have a hand in designing the new Harvesters Support Grant, a $62.6 million program announced last fall that was set to begin in April.
Ottawa has yet to announce any details on how the grant will work.
Below, a complete list of items being considered for removal from Nutrition North’s eligibility list:
• Hash browns, and other potato products
• All other dried unseasoned vegetables (e.g., onion flakes, dried vegetable mixes, seaweed)
• Fruits or vegetables such as star fruit, passion fruit, bok choy
• Unsweetened dried fruit (other than raisins, dates, prunes and currants)
• Croissants, garlic bread and items with fillings, confections, cheese, extra sweeteners or coatings.
• Sugary cereals (with added sweetener, low in fibre, or with confections)
• Rye and other semi-perishable flours and cake and pastry flour
• Fresh and frozen pasta—excluding combination foods that contain pasta
• Chocolate milk, strawberry milk and other flavored milk, milk with sweetening agents, milk drinks, milk shakes and milk shake mixes
• Processed cheese spreads with added seasonings, spices, condiments, chocolate, fruits, vegetables, pickles, relishes, nuts, prepared or preserved meat, prepared or preserved fish
• Yogurt with added jams, cereal, spices, vegetables, confections, seasonings, herbs, or nuts
• Fortified soy beverages
• Ice cream mix, ice cream with cookies/candies/syrup
• Ice milk
• Frozen yogurt, sorbet and sherbet
• Cuts of bacon except side bacon
• Turkey bacon,
• Deli meats (except for baloney, ham, turkey)
• Cured and smoked products
• Products that are seasoned, breaded, battered, or in pastry except for fish sticks and fish cakes
• Nut butters except for peanut butter
• All seasoned, salted or sweetened seeds and nuts.
• Tofu and similar vegetable-based meat substitutes (e.g., vegetable patties and nut burgers)
• Toddler formula
• Baby juices
• Items in plastic containers or foil pouches
• Garnishing and flavoured oils, salad dressings, dips
• Shortening
• Fresh pizza, pizza pops and pizza pockets
• All types of salt that are not table or sea salt
• Fresh and frozen combination foods (e.g., lasagna)—excluding those containing products that are breaded, battered or in pastry or desserts, poutine, prepared sandwiches, hamburgers, hot dogs, prepared salads, other prepared foods for immediate consumption that are subject to GST.
Nazis!
Concerned Inuk, you only should be concerned with your comment. It’s readers like you who only try to poison other members and residents without providing any suitable alternates.
Referring to NSDAP without having a clear background or knowledge, and comparing the Nazi one-party totalitarian dictatorship to Canada, is just childish, especially if you are trying to compare “assimilation” to one of the biggest right-wing extremist political group who started the biggest Holocaust
Godwin’s law (or Godwin’s rule of Hitler analogies) is an Internet adage asserting that “As an online discussion grows longer, the probability of a comparison involving Nazis or Hitler approaches if an online discussion (regardless of topic or scope) goes on long enough, sooner or later someone will compare someone or something to Adolf Hitler or his deeds, the point at which effectively the discussion or thread often ends. Promulgated by the American attorney and author Mike Godwin in 1990, Godwin’s law originally referred specifically to Usenet newsgroup discussions.
There it is. I’m also surprised Nunatsiaq would print such meaningless one word quips. Especially given their fine reputation of censoring otherwise reasoned comments.
Food mail, bring it back, appoint one person per region to notify everyone of this program, problem solved.
It makes no sense to me that some of these items are up for removal from the program.
For example, why remove nut butters, vegetable based meat substitutes, toddler formula, yogurts (though I might be able to see the highly sweetened ones removed) ?
Also on the list is some actual fresh produce – how come iceberg lettuce gets a subsidy but bok choy gets nixed? Iceberg lettuce has almost 0 nutritional value.
So baloney is healthy but weiners are not? Who knew? And there are some fruits and vegetables being removed. Seaweed? I have this idea in my head that seaweed is highly nutritious. Am I wrong? Meat substitutes and Tofu and vegetable-based meat substitutes, soy beverages (presumably for people who are allergic to milk-based products). etc…. some of these deletions make no sense to me. I think that pretty soon the only thing that will be subsidized will be white macaroni , minute rice and white bread.. Nutrition Nazis pretty much hits the nail on the head.
“”While those items were set to be eliminated on April 1, Crown-Indigenous Relations and Northern Affairs Canada decided to extend subsidies on them until March 2020, based on feedback from Nutrition North’s advisory board and from Indigenous groups.
Part of the effort to revise the program will be done with the newly-created Inuit-Crown Food Security working group, made up of representatives from Inuit Tapiriit Kanatami, Nunavut Tunngavik Inc., Nunavik’s health agency and other federal partners.
During the April meeting of the Inuit-Crown Partnership Committee, Inuit leaders signed off on an agreement that will see the working group review Nutrition North’s subsidy list, ITK said.
The Inuit working group will also evaluate the impact of Nutrition North specifically on reducing food insecurity among Inuit””
Who will know if the mandated involvement will make a change, but I surely hope so. Bring back food mail? It also had drawbacks, but if you had a credit card, you were able to order easier, cheaper, with lovely shipping rates.
Besides, you should be careful in using the “Nazis” definition unless you know what you are talking about
You hit the mark with what was so wrong with Food Mail program… you have to have a credit card. Not everyone has one. and those that need these programs most (highest level of being food insecure) are the ones least likely to have a credit card. Try be in a community with out a bank and get a credit card… not easy to do.
I wish i had a solution but i dont. I think if there were not for profit companies that could provide the basics to feed families and not be thinking about the Bonus they could get then i think the Nutrition North program could have worked… unfortunately the Northern and even the Co-op are still profit orientated.
You’re right……………… but since Food Mail ended, prepaid credit cards have become very, very common. Why wouldn’t that solve the problem?
It’s time us Inuk do something about this. We should lobby to vote for someone who will bring back the old food mail program. Where is the ITK and KIA now? How are MPs like Hunter or even our premier Joe helping us? They don’t seem to care. When discounts are put in the hands of retailers like Coop and Northern we no not see ANY benefit. The old program worked and allowed people to order from stores like Safeway. Our politicians and Inuit organizations are run by greedy lying scumbags who throw us a cracker once in a while. It’s time we speak with our votes and elect people only who will fight this battle as it’s one of our greatest expense and impacts all things in our lives.
The old program was imperfect also, let’s look forward and create something better, things were not always better in the past.
Maybe if we all convinced our local Co-op to not try make a profit that they can share back with us but to break even so all the costs were as low as possible things could get better. i have no problem them charging high amounts for things like pop chips and icecream (i would still buy now and then, but maybe i would be healthier), but use the profit from that to decrease the costs of Diapers, Milk, Flour…
Or NTI, KIA, KitIA, QIA should open stores that are for us and have them actually do something on the ground that helps the communities.
Sweet and Sour. The federal bureaucracy in its tradition knows no bounds in the roundabout of native/state business, nutrition north program is bang in there. Do not expect or look to the Gatineau bureau of Native Affairs to much of anything with it now and any time sooner or later as it answers to no one.
The retailers are free to apply the subsidy as they choose.
Do you see Northmart applying a subsidy to hamburger meat? No. What about other things that Inuit typically eat?
Northmart applies small subsidies to items that Inuit typically buy. Most subsidies are about 5%.
Most of the subsidy goes to cow milk. It is subsidized about 60%.
Cow milk is not even close to a traditional Inuit food, but it is one that southern children drink lots of.
You know what goes with milk?
High sugar cereal that comes in big boxes and does not qualify for a Nutrition North subsidy.
Northmart putting most of their subsidy on cow milk is just a way for them to encourage sale of the high price (and high profit margin) sugar cereals that rot our kids teeth.
Time for a change.
I agree, time to educate ourselves about dairy. As adults, we don’t need it, but we’ve been brainwashed by the industry into believing it is an essential part of our diet. It isn’t.
Question:
Why does Northmart always take all the heat over this? You rarely ever hear anyone complain about COOP even though I don’t think they are doing anything different?