EdinburghNLP/nunavut-hansard-plusplus huggingface dataset:
They actually go directly to the CEO, Edward Kennedy, and me and we will respond, but it should come through that system. The store manager should handle it. He should handle it with great care, talk to the customer, apologize that they purchased a product past the best-before date, reimburse the customer fully, and there should not be any question.
We have a standard.
We do internal audits and external audits. We have two things that are of paramount importance in that audit and that is to make sure that the product has pricing integrity, it’s the right price, and that’s second to dating integrity. So every year, there is a full audit done on that where stores are inspected, and then on a weekly basis, all of the fresh categories where there is a high risk, we have what we call business segment inventory.
So we go through at least once a week all products that are perishable in nature and we look at that product and we pull that product from the shelf. Our stores are required to report shrink, which is primarily going through and looking at the date of the product a minimum of four times a week throughout the store, so we’re sweeping the store on a constant basis.
A store manager is also accountable if they see a product that has got two weeks of dating left to start the process of marking it down.
So we have really had in place a rigorous system. It has slipped from time to time, from store to store, but that’s not acceptable and we will do our best. Please call it to our attention and we will take action.
Mr. Morrison: Mr. Chairman, Co-operatives as local businesses, their first line of contact is the general manager of the Co-operative or another member of the management team.
We have another layer involved in the process and that’s the local Co-op board of directors. The general manager of a Co-operative reports to the board of directors. The members of the Co-operatives elect the board of directors and they have a direct line of contact with the board of directors.
Certainly, if there are issues that are not being directly responded to by the general manager, it should be brought to the attention of the board of directors.
However, as a service federation, our job is to support local Co-operatives and to assist them in operating efficient businesses.
If there are problems and from time to time, we have direct contact with Co-op members where they contact Arctic Co-operatives directly and we will intervene on their behalf with the local Co-operative to ensure that procedures are being followed and, if it’s a dating issue, that the Co-operative is taking proper steps to address the problem.
That’s all of the questions I have for now.
Before we move on to Mr. Taptuna, we will take a five-minute break.
>>Committee recessed at 17:12 and resumed at 17:26
Chairman: I would like welcome everybody back here.
Most of the questions I had have already been responded to, but there’s a couple here that I want to carry on with.
At present, the Nutrition North Canada Program provides a subsidy for shipping commercially produced country foods from federally approved facilities like Kitikmeot Foods, Kivalliq Arctic Foods, and Pangnirtung Fisheries.
There’s information that’s currently on the website. The federal Department of Aboriginal and Northern Affairs Canada indicates that the department “is working with stakeholders and the Nutrition North Canada External Advisory Board to further develop options to support access to country food for Northerners.”
Has the external board been discussing these matters with you?
At this time, no, we haven’t had any discussions on country foods.
We have made our position clear that we would like to engage through Aboriginal and Northern Affairs or the advisory board in facilitating the selling of country food and the transportation of country food if we can play of any assistance at all, but at this point in time, the North West Company has not been approached by anyone.
Mr. Morrison: Mr. Chairman, nor have we been contacted by INAC or the advisory board on country foods.
The issue of country foods is a very important issue to our members. Our members have been requesting for many years that Co-operatives sell more country food in retail stores.
The fact that country food processed in a federally inspected facility is now eligible under the Nutrition North Canada Program, we think, is a tremendous opportunity certainly for the facilities but also for retailers in communities across the north.
The major challenge that we face today is the availability of country foods.
There is not enough volume produced today to meet what we believe would be the demand certainly in Co-operative locations, but we are prepared to do whatever we can to offer country foods as one of the products in Co-op retail stores.
I appreciate the response from both gentlemen there.
There are some communities that are indicating and hoping to create a system here or an organization for inter-settlement trade of country foods, whether that would be char or caribou or even seals and other nutritious country foods.
Would the major retailers of the north like the North West Company or the Co-op be interested in assisting in finding ways to actually get the program in place and assisting in the administration and delivering the possibility of the inter-settlement trade once a plan has been devised and sustainability and feasibility have been looked at and determined? Would the major retailers, such as your company, be interested in actually assisting in the delivery of inter-settlement trade of country foods? Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Actually, sir, we do now. I believe it’s from Rankin Inlet, I might have that wrong, or Arviat. It’s just slipping me right now where we are engaged in the shipping of some country food between communities.
We have already ventured that way before Nutrition North Canada. So we will do anything that we can to assist in inter-settlement distribution of country food.
Mr. Morrison: Mr. Chairman, Co-operatives are certainly very interested in playing a role in this process. As I indicated a moment ago, Co-op members are most interested in country food and greater accessibility to country food.
On a different subject here, the timing of the Nutrition North Canada Program, in my opinion, was really bad.
We had the global prices of food going up and I want to quote some numbers here. Fresh potatoes increased by 21 percent, beef by 6.5 percent, vegetables by 18.5 percent, and so forth. Not only that but the fuel prices were going up at the same time and the utility rates for this territory went up by 19 percent, as stated here.
In my opinion, the combination of things was real bad luck.
How are you dealing with all of these increases? There is a lot of suspicion in the communities that the markup was because of Nutrition North Canada, not necessarily the cost of everything going up.
Has that been communicated to the communities in a way where they can understand that some of these things were not really the cause of Nutrition North Canada and your store but because of all of these things happening simultaneously?
In my opinion, it seems like it was just a bad deal overall. I just want to get an opinion and some kind of response to that.
I forget which month. After all of the questions today, I forget which day it is, but I forget which month we went to Ottawa. Was that November or December?
Mr. Taptuna, when we presented in November, it was one of my concerns in my presentation. We had the foresight that the commodity market was in a state of flux, so the numbers you quoted are the year-over-year price increases from March.
But when we were in Ottawa, what I said to the federal standing committee was, “Look, guys, this is coming and you need to have a communication policy in place because it is unfortunate.”
At that time, we knew what was happening with coffee. We knew what was happening in coco because of the unrest in terms of coco in that part of the world. We had a good indication of wheat and what was going to occur because Westin had already come to us and said, “Look, you’re going to get it in the spring, guys.
We’re going to have to increase our costs to you.”
There’s nothing INAC could have done about it, but we recommended and suggested, “You have to inform the public that this is not anything to do with your program.” It would have happened in the Food Mail Program. As Mr. Morrison said earlier, in the old Food Mail Program, the subsidy rate was pegged so when oil fluctuated, there wasn’t exposure to the communities, and that has changed in Nutrition North.
So we did put that information out there.
So far, it is a little piece of good fortune, Mr. Taptuna, that the sealift that we did last spring in terms of flour and coffee, we loaded up as much as we could.
In our case, we have reduced the number of products that were shipped on sealift 1,667 less products so we could concentrate more on the flours, coffees, the pastas, and even the diapers and products of that nature.
We did a little better job. We got a little better at the winter road season this year, where we put 20 percent of more products that will become non-eligible in that bundle.
So we had protection because we got out in front of the curve before the large price increase was coming, but when that sealift product is gone this year, later this spring and summer, the communities of the north, as I said earlier, are not immune and you will have that cost acceleration.
You are right, sir, it is unfortunate timing.
In retrospect, I don’t know what INAC could have done other than delay the program.
One of the suggestions that I think is safe to say that both Mr. Morrison and I recommended at that time back before, and Andy correct me when it’s your turn, but we said, “Don’t change the products on the eligibility list in the first year.
Give us a transition period.”
That’s what ended up happening on March 12 when they came back and changed it. We recommended, “Don’t do that because we need to be fair to the consumers and the communities and have a chance to educate them.”
And I believe someone said it earlier, with graphs and pictures to show them the impact of the change.
So a little off topic but a fuller answer.
Mr. Morrison: Mr. Chairman, it certainly is an unfortunate period of time as far as rising food prices are concerned.
So many factors are coming together all at one time and having an impact on the cost of food.
I don’t know if the change from the Food Mail Program to the Nutrition North Canada Program would have made a tremendous difference, except for the freight component, the fuel component.
The cost of commodities, the demand for product, some of the impacts of weather and other things that are destroying crops and such, Nutrition North Canada and the Food Mail Program would have had no impact on commodity prices.
Certainly the fuel issue is something that we believe is very important and we have recommended to INAC and to the advisory board that they make adjustments to the program to take into consideration rising fuel prices.
We don’t believe that just the commodity increases would be adjusted in the Food Mail Program.
Certainly INAC has an important role to play from the communication standpoint, but I think we also have an important role to play in terms of educating consumers on the impact of price.
There was a lot of discussion when the Nutrition North Canada Program came out that the subsidies that are provided will result in lower prices.
I don’t believe that that was actually the case and I don’t believe today that it has translated into that.
Any price benefit will be the result of efficiencies, not the subsidy that’s being provided.
We have to make sure that consumers across the north understand that.
I don’t believe that the old Food Mail Program was well understood and I certainly don’t believe that the new Nutrition North Canada Program is well understood, and we have a responsibility to do a better job on that.
I appreciate the responses back.
Mr. Chairman, there’s a question specifically for Mr. Morrison.
Mr. Morrison, within the Co-op operations and businesses, you do have a hotel chain, Inns North, and certainly these hotels do have restaurants.
Is the Nutrition North Canada Program also being subsidized for the restaurants at the hotels?
Mr. Morrison: Mr. Chairman, yes, when Co-operatives bring in products to be sold as food in hotel restaurants, it is eligible under the program.
I appreciate the response from Mr. Morrison.
One last question, Mr. Chairman, is that within community Co-ops, there is a dividend, what they call a patronage pay, for the membership of the Co-ops.
Some of these communities do not have access to some certain airlines, so they’re not participating in the actual Nutrition North program. Now, are the patronage dividends being used in other ways to actually subsidize some of these smaller community Co-op stores that aren’t part of the Nutrition North program because of the airline not going to these certain communities?
Mr. Morrison: Mr. Chairman, I’m not sure I fully understand the question. I’ll try to answer it and please correct me if I missed the point.
Virtually every Co-operative in Nunavut and the Northwest Territories participates in the Nutrition North Canada Program.
As community owned businesses, when Co-operatives are successful, they return their profits or their net savings, as we call it in the Co-operative, back into the individual owner members. The return of profits is based on the business that each member transacted with the local Co-operative.
The more an individual purchases from their Co-operative, the greater their share of the bottom line of the Co-operative that the individual is entitled to.
Arctic Co-operatives, as the Co-operative, does the very same thing. We provide services to our members. When we are successful and we are a profitable Co-operative, we return our net savings, our profits through our member Co-operatives in proportion to the business that they transacted with their federation.
There is not a strict tie into the Food Mail Program and patronage refunds. The patronage refunds are based on the profitability of the local Co-op and the business that the members transact with the Co-operative.
My last question, Mr. Chairman, for both of them: to which jurisdiction do you pay your corporate taxes to?
Mr. McMullen: We’re a Winnipeg based company; that’s where our corporate headquarters are.
We would pay taxes according to the filings that we do as a corporate citizen of the province of Manitoba.
Mr. Morrison: Mr. Chairman, Arctic Co-operatives Limited is incorporated under the Co-operative Associations Act of the Northwest Territories.
Even though our home office is located in Winnipeg, we would pay federal tax and it’s a little over my head, but I believe we’re paying provincial tax within the province of Manitoba.
Even though we are incorporated under the Northwest Territories Co-operative Act, one important component with our member owners is that the Co-operatives that are located in communities across the Arctic, 23 in Nunavut, 8 in the Northwest Territories, pay tax based on their location.
So the Nunavut Co-operatives will pay tax. Obviously federal is a big part of the tax bite, but they also pay the Nunavut tax as well, as the Northwest Territories would pay federal and Northwest Territories tax.
I’ll try to be clear, concise, and to the point. I’ll try again. I wanted to speak from a political and personal point of view in looking at the big picture, Mr. Chairman.
I am a taxpayer and I will speak as such. I am a politician and I will speak from that perspective. I am also an owner member of a local store in Kugaaruk.
I am also a consumer of the produce and products in question.
Mr. Chairman, as a taxpayer, I care about the success of the program that we are talking about in this forum and I want the program to succeed to its fullest.
As a politician, Mr. Chairman, I want to have a good relationship with the majority government, in our case.
As an owner member of a local Co-op, I want to ensure that with the products in mind, I want them to be delivered to the shelf in the sellable commodity that we are talking about because we create jobs in the local community.
As a consumer, I want to eat healthy foods that are not spoiled.
So I wanted to ask both gentlemen about the tracking system of the products and produce from the time they leave the supplier to the point that they make it to the retailer at the local store.
When it comes to the delivery of the produce and products, there are a number of elements that we have to contend with. One is perhaps some of these produce and products are trucked to one point. Perhaps in handling, they’re subject to natural elements.
How do you keep track of all of the produce and products under the food subsidy program? You are working with different airlines. You are working with different trucking companies.
Zeroing in on the last part, how we track a product from the point of origin to shipment, we have an invoicing process that identifies the vendors and identifies the route through the various stages.
So we track it from the point of origin, the vendor, to where we essentially take ownership in a central warehouse.
That’s primarily in Winnipeg but it could be in Edmonton as well. We have some consolidation points.
From there, we have a system where it’s usually a truck that comes and picks up the product from our warehouse and takes it as far as possible, as quickly as possible, and then we put it on air. Now that system will change a little bit, but our tracking mechanics is we know when it’s supposed to arrive from the vendor, how long it’s supposed to sit in our warehouse, especially with perishable goods, and how long it’s supposed to take in the different parts of the transportation network.
There are points in the transportation network where the visibility is less, but for the majority of the time, we have a handle of where the product is and how long it’s taking.
At any point in the process, time for some reason has become extended, usually because of weather when we’re talking about Nunavut, then what we do is reorder the fresh product to supersede the product that’s already in the pipeline.
I hope that addresses the question.
Mr. Morrison: Mr. Chairman, the process that is followed by the Co-operatives begins at the local level.
When a local Co-operative orders a product, they generate a purchase order, the purchase order is tracked by number and location, it is provided to our vendors, the vendors generate invoices, which are tied back to the purchase order, the product and the invoice are consolidated in a particular location, either at a distribution facility or at a trucking company location, the information from the invoice is carried over to the air waybills, and the air waybills are the basis of receipt at the local Co-op level.
So there are multiple steps in the process where the product is tracked along the way, starting from the local Co-operative, following up on what they ordered and knowing what they ordered, and right through to their receiving process to check off what has come in, in comparison to what has been ordered. All components of that process are used in our reporting to Nutrition North Canada.
I have a question for both Mr. McMullen and Mr. Morrison.
In carrying on with what Mr. Ningark was asking with reporting and how the companies are actually signed up with Nutrition North Canada, is the business set up as one specific retailer or northern retailer or is each store set up as a separate entity?
Mr. Elliott, our application to INAC is as a singular company.
Mr. Morrison: Mr. Chairman, the Co-operatives have submitted one application to Nutrition North Canada with 30 different locations as being part of the overall agreement.
Part of the reason why I’m asking this line of questions is getting ready for tomorrow and Mr. Harper is here. In terms of paperwork and administration, I know he feels that it’s extremely onerous. Maybe that’s one of the advantages of having the big companies.
If I understand correctly, maybe again explain how, once products are purchased, it all is filtered into one specific location. So in terms of buying power and the money flow, it all gets streamlined to the head office in, for both cases, Winnipeg, and then you deal directly with Nutrition North Canada in terms of how many or the tonnage or the kilograms that are shipped in and out and the money flowing back and forth.
In total, we have 65 eligible communities. So our application to INAC, as I said, was under one corporate entity and, as referred to by Mr. Morrison, it encompasses the total number of locations.
In terms of the administration, we have multiple vendors that are part of the process because the invoices, which are produced by our stores, their orders essentially, go to those vendors, and then the product starts to flow through the pipeline. So we have to track for all 65 locations and 4,000 plus products through the entire system.
But here’s the thing: all retailers that I know always had tracked their products wherever they originated. So a small business or a large business always had to know where the product was, how they tracked them, how they ordered them, and how they bought them.
This Nutrition North Canada system requires us to validate that path and validate the process. That’s the administration.
Yes, it is more detailed, but if you take it back a step, if you’re ordering products on a regular basis through a set of vendors, you haven’t changed that in Nutrition North Canada. You might in some cases, but you’re doing that work anyway and now this a process of tracking it, which is the orderly maintenance and book keeping required in most businesses.
So there is certainly a degree more of administration, but in fact it is work that has to be done.
And the better it’s done, the better you can track for control, taxation purposes, auditing purposes from the federal government, making sure your vendors are billing you appropriately, making sure your truckers are billing appropriately.
So the work is done. Nutrition North Canada is just another format and as I said, it is more administration but it is work that you have been engaged in all along.
Mr. Morrison: Mr. Chairman, very much as is the case with the North West Company, the Co-operatives must track their products in the very same manner.
Obviously it is slightly different with the local Co-operatives because each Co-operative is a separate legal entity.
So we have 30 sets of books that are involved in the process. We certainly consolidate the process, but we are extracting information from 30 legal entities, pulling it together, and reporting to INAC on the various components of the program in accordance with their rules and regulations.
As Mr. McMullen indicated, we track products all of the time. We have to know what’s ordered, we have to know where it’s at, we have to know when it’s coming, and we have to verify it when it hits the shipping dock of the local Co-operative.
I suppose the one difference that we are dealing with under the new program is consumption reporting. Health Canada and Nutrition North Canada are most interested in consumption.
What impact will this program have on healthy eating?
Are people eating more of lettuce and tomatoes and like product?
One of the requirements that we have agreed to is to provide that kind of information to Nutrition North Canada. We haven’t collected information in that particular fashion previously.
However, we see the value in contributing to healthy eating and being able to better evaluate the program, so we are committed to providing the best information possible.
Mr. Elliott: Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Again thank you for those answers.
My next question brings up more questions, but I’ll start with Mr. Morrison.
The thing that I don’t understand is you’re saying that this information is available and the information is there and you know what’s going in and out of the communities and you can track it.
You’re tracking it already, yet earlier when I asked questions, you weren’t aware of what was happening in Resolute Bay and obviously you weren’t aware of what was happening in Kimmirut.