New Northern Canadian Food Subsidy Rates Posted
The federal government has announced subsidy rates for its new Nutrition North program, which helps cover the costs of shipping healthy, perishable foods to isolated northern communities.
The new rates, posted on the Indian and Northern Affairs Department’s website Thursday, apply to communities in the territories and in northern Saskatchewan, Quebec, Labrador, Ontario and Manitoba.
Nutrition North is replacing the federal government’s Food Mail Program, which subsidized the costs of transporting grocery items to communities that don’t have regular road and marine access.
Under the old program, retailers and individual consumers in the territories paid a fixed rate of 80 cents per kilogram for having grocery orders shipped by air.
The Nutrition North subsidy will instead go mainly to retailers, which in turn will negotiate their own freight agreements, including rates, with airlines that service the communities.
Rates vary
In Nunavut, where all communities are considered remote, the subsidy ranges anywhere between 20 cents a kilogram for eligible food shipments to Arviat and $11.30 a kilogram for shipments to Grise Fiord, Canada’s most northerly community.
In Iqaluit, Nunavut’s capital city, the subsidy rate is $1.80 a kilogram.
Individuals who prefer to order their own groceries from southern retailers will have to pay what the airline charges for shipping, then apply for the Nutrition North subsidy that applies to their community.
Those who shop at northern retail stores could save money, depending on what freight rates the retailers negotiate with airlines.
The Nutrition North program depends on competition among airlines and retailers to lower the costs of transporting perishable foods.
High Arctic mayor worried
Lowering the cost is supposed to result in fruit, vegetables and other nutritious foods being available to northerners at prices that are not prohibitively expensive.
But there is next to no airline or retail competition in Nunavut’s High Arctic communities — Grise Fiord, Resolute and Arctic Bay — and leaders say consumers there could potentially pay more as a result.
“It’s not a promising thing for the communities of [the] High Arctic,” Mayor Meeka Kiguktak of Grise Fiord told CBC News on Wednesday.
Only one airline, First Air, services Nunanvut’s High Arctic communities. A smaller airline, Kenn Borek Air, has a contract with First Air to fly into Grise Fiord.
$15 for bacon: MLA
As well, fewer items are being subsidized under Nutrition North, which aims to encourage healthier eating.
A package of bacon, no longer subsidized under Nutrition North, now costs $15 in High Arctic communities, said Ron Elliott, the MLA for the area.
“The government of Canada is once again telling us what we should be able to eat and what’s good for us and what’s healthy,” Elliott said.
Grocery items that are not food, such as toilet paper and soap, have also been deemed ineligible for the Nutrition North subsidy.
Kigutak said most residents in Grise Fiord have relied on personal food mail orders or the local Co-op store. But with fewer items subsidized under the new program, she said more people will be at the mercy of the Co-op, the hamlet’s only store.
More bargaining power
Leo Doyle, acting director of the Nutrition North program, said even communities that have one store and one airline servicing it can benefit.
Those communities can negotiate one rate for all their cargo, then get reimbursed for the amount that is subsidized under the program, he said.
“Their bargaining position with the airline, even if it’s just one airline, increases,” Doyle said.
Doyle added that food shipped under Nutrition North will be a bit fresher than in the past because there will be less handling of produce boxes.
The Nutrition North program is expected to be fully implemented on April 1.
