EdinburghNLP/nunavut-hansard-plusplus huggingface dataset:
They are calling upon all levels of government, other organizations, the private sector as well, to work together in partnership to find ways to address poverty in Nunavut, which would include affordable ways of feeding people and give them the opportunity to live healthy lives in their communities.
A few years ago in the Second Assembly, I raised the issue of poverty. I came across a report. It was estimated that as many as 16,000 people in Nunavut were at the poverty levels as identified in Canada.
Indian and Northern Affairs Canada, at the time, had published some statistics that in Cambridge Bay, it cost $384 per week for a family of four to put healthy, affordable food on their table and that was two times the cost of living required in a city like Edmonton. You could imagine the price.
Now a lot of people can afford food and many people are working in Nunavut at government jobs, private sector jobs, and they can afford to eat healthy foods to a large degree, but there are many people in Nunavut who simply cannot afford the food.
Just the other day last week, I was leaving the Legislative Assembly here and an acquaintance of mine, I have met him a few times, and he had a shopping bag, he didn’t mention which store he came from, but he said that he just took out a bank loan to buy a small half bag of groceries.
I said, “Well, that’s not what we want to see in Nunavut, where you have to take bank loans to buy food.”
He was just kidding, but his point was well taken that it’s very expensive to purchase food.
In my community of Cambridge Bay, we do have breakfast programs so that kids can go to school everyday at least with one good meal to start the day off and we’re pushing for that in all of the schools across Nunavut, the government and MLAs.
So we’re working on that, but we need some help up here.
I know that my constituents are aware that we’re having this Committee of the Whole meeting today and tomorrow.
I have been inundated with emails from my constituents employing me to ask certain questions. I would have to censor or filter some of the questions because there are some upset people in Cambridge Bay.
They simply think that the food prices are still too high. They don’t see an improvement in the reduction of food prices.
I’m not going to sit here and say that they fully understand how the Nutrition North Canada Program works. I’m not even sure if you could find a handful of people in this room today who fully and completely understand how it works.
I heard your opening comments and I appreciate what you said. I appreciate that you guys are in business to make money.
I appreciate and respect that you do invest heavily in infrastructure in most of the communities in Nunavut and you do create employment, and that’s good.
We do support business development in our communities and employment, but we also believe that people should be able to eat healthy and that’s a fundamental issue in Nunavut. We want people to have food security, be able to eat healthy foods and be able to afford healthy foods.
The pressure is on our government and the Poverty Reduction Strategy. We have to continually increase funding for the Income Support Program for people to come to our Department of Education that oversees income support to get funding so that they can afford to buy food and clothing.
So the pressure is on us as a government, and the people of Nunavut have asked us as the government and as MLAs to find ways to improve their lives.
When we all started off as MLAs and ministers, we did our vision of Tamapta. We want to improve the lives of our residents in our communities by 2013.
People shouldn’t have to worry about the fundamental, basic needs and necessities of life in a country like Canada or a territory like Nunavut.
I, too, would just like to invite both of you here and thank you for being here and presenting to us.
I think it’s very important for all of Nunavut and for the community of Arviat that I represent.
Just a general comment, Mr. Chairman, and I’ll get into questions later. I think there is concern out there from the community of Arviat in regard to the retailers and how you negotiate your terms and your rates with airlines and also what those rates may be.
I know that when it comes to retailers, a lot of retailers have pulled out of this program because they don’t deal in the bulk that you folks probably do. So it’s maybe not affordable to them to do that. Also, my understanding with the amount of administration that needs to go along with this program, some are limited to doing that too.
I think also that there has been talk there, and this is just for comment for now, that in some of the communities, your negotiated rates with your airlines may be less than the freight subsidy you are receiving through the federal government towards this program. In fact, there might be a net gain in some instances in some communities. You can comment on that later too.
But anyways, thank you for being here and we will have further questions later.
I wish to begin by thanking the representatives of the North West Company and Arctic Co-ops, who are presenting their views.
In our community of Clyde River, this program is felt keenly. Although we do not have a Co-op, we do have a store run by the North West Company.
It is unfortunate that some of the people we have invited were unable to attend, especially the federal government representatives from INAC and other departments who could not make it in.
This reminds me of how the gun registry was rammed through without any involvement of those most affected.
When a program is rushed and not well thought out, it can lead to increased costs when it is being implemented. I foresee higher cost of living for people who are ostensibly the targets for this program here in Nunavut.
A number of residents spoke to me about how they utilize the Food Mail Program. These individuals could order food from retailers down south on their own initiative and their freezers would be full. Many of these people currently have empty freezers as a result of the windup of the Food Mail Program.
We want nutritious food in all of our communities and for our people, and this is my belief. Unfortunately, the new Nutrition North program seems to be lacking in some areas as far as we can understand.
We have heard from the witnesses that this Nutrition North program will be more effective than the old program.
I seem to understand that those individuals who used to order food items are now buying food from the recipients of this new program, namely, the Northwest Company and the Arctic Co-operatives.
Based on the concerns voiced to us, at least to me, people have noted that the cost of living and prices increase on a daily basis. Perhaps it may be slightly exaggerated. We have these signs in the stores showing how much money we’re saving through this new program.
Where an item was $11.99, it is now $11.79, which is a $0.20 decrease. That’s meaningless when everything at the store costs more to purchase.
That’s all I want to say for now.
I appreciate the fact that the witnesses were able to come here. Thank you very much for coming here.
I’ve just got a short statement that I wanted to make before the questions that I’m going to be asking later.
They’re going to be based on the sealift rates that are negotiated, in what capacity and in what way some of these sealift rates are negotiated through the Nutrition North Canada Program. So I will be asking those types of questions.
One of the things that I wanted to comment on is the fact that Nunavut is brand new. It is 11 years old. We don’t have much of what you call a tax base and we don’t generate a lot of revenue, unlike some of these other jurisdictions.
I want to give an example of Newfoundland and Labrador. When they do their sealifts and the smaller communities bring in the year’s supplies or six-month supplies, they do have the freight subsidized by the provincial government.
Of course, they can do that. They do collect royalties of their oil and gas royalty collections, which amounts to over $3.4 billion for Newfoundland, which is great for the people of Newfoundland.
Their freight is subsidized to a certain degree.
I’ve got to say that for a pallet to come on their sealift, it is $27. It’s heavily subsidized by their provincial government.
We don’t have that option here.
Our pallets cost between $600 and $800 to bring up here to the north. For Nunavummiut, we don’t have that luxury of subsidizing our residents of Nunavut.
This is just a small example of being a territory with no real means of generating its own revenue.
There are opportunities here and there for economic activities to happen and collect royalties that actually go down to Ottawa, but for the most part, there are no revenue generating options for the Nunavut government.
So we’re in a situation where we’re quite envious of other jurisdictions where they are subsidized to a certain degree for the people of their jurisdictions, but in Nunavut, we don’t have that option.
We ask for a lot of help from Ottawa, the federal government, and one of the things that we would have to be aware of is that, as my colleague said, there are a high percentage of folks who are unemployed.
We’re trying to deal with the poverty issue in Nunavut and it is critical that these programs work for Nunavummiut because without that, the poverty cycle just gets worse and worse.
You could say that even though it does generate revenue. Nunavummiut have their hands in some of these things that are happening, so it is very critical that we all pay attention and try to make things better.
Later on at the appropriate time, I will be asking some questions on how the sealift rates are negotiated.
Yes, I am also thankful that the representatives were able to make presentations because in our communities, people utilize the Co-op and the North West Company.
Many people don’t ask too many questions on nutrition. Elders, youth, and the unemployed are not accustomed to asking questions. They are basic consumers who use the North West Company and the Co-op and they comprise a large portion.
It’s regrettable that the invited representatives from the federal government are unable to be here.
I, too, had several questions for them. However, it’s my hope that they will be available some time in the future.
My belief and feeling on this matter is that we are getting another program imposed on us, without feedback from the people it is supposed to serve. With the way certain parts of the new Nutrition North program have been set up, October 2012 is when certain parts expire and this program has different start dates for certain parts.
I believe it should have been introduced only after the program overhaul was thoroughly completed because it has a significant impact on Nunavummiut.
Many of my constituents are unhappy about the new program. They have heard the cost savings are not significant and this makes it pointless.
We expected significant cost reductions, especially on nutritious food.
For example, last fall when the program was first announced, non-nutritious food prices skyrocketed.
A small package of ice cream, for example, is now selling for $29 with the cost imposed by your corporations.
Ordinary consumers are being experimented on as the result of the new program not having been fully hashed out.
If this type of program was proposed in the south, there would be a severe backlash and even removal of the heads of the proponents, and maybe even death threats from impacted people.
I will ask questions later with respect to the issues I want answers to. However, I believe we are owed an explanation as to why this unfinished program is being imposed on us. It has not provided any concrete benefits and seems half baked as far as Nunavut is concerned.
Hon. Eva Aariak (interpretation): Thank you, Mr. Chairman. (interpretation ends) Communication is very important to this government and understanding better on both sides usually goes a long way.
We take the concerns about Nutrition North that we have heard from our constituencies and the people of Nunavut very seriously.
I would just like to thank our guests for coming here and providing more information that we need to gain to take the next steps.
I know there will be a lot of questions after this.
I have no more names on my list for general comments, so we will take a 10-minute break and then we will come back with questions.
>>Committee recessed at 14:47 and resumed at 15:06
Chairman: I would like to welcome everybody back. I will now open the floor to members’ questions and I will again start with the Member for Quttiktuq, followed by the Member for Rankin Inlet North.
My first question is for Mr. McMullen.
When you appeared before the House of Commons Standing Committee on Aboriginal Affairs and Northern Development on November 3, 2010, you stated that “The Nutrition North Canada model will deliver five basic improvements compared to the existing food mail system.”
You described these as supply chain streamlining, consumer transparency, subsidy transparency, health focus, and competition and growth. That reflects much of what you had said in your opening comments.
I’m just wondering: in terms of a perspective as a retailer, could you describe in a little bit more detail about the supply chain and the streamlining?
Is that for both of them or just one of them?
Mr. Elliott: It will be for both, but I was going to work with Mr. McMullen first.
Mr. McMullen.
Mr. McMullen: Thank you. To address streamlining, the essential changes were the point of entry, which required retailers or wholesalers to really not follow a normal business model. It forced us into a circuitous route to get goods to market and it was not the most efficient, environmentally friendly, nor cost effective.
So that would be one of the fundamental changes in streamlining the system.
I worked for a number of years for what was a very small company at the time, Canadian based, and we went into the US and the US market laughed at us. They didn’t think we would be successful. And that company was Ikea and the year was 1987.
Our key thing in being successful as a company was our distributional logistics model. We eliminate all of the middlemen, all touches, or what we call footprints, because every time we turned our product over to someone else, they usually stepped on it because it wasn’t important.
In the food mail system, you had a very diligent team working through Canada Post and the airfreight companies to bring the product through a system that required them to jump hurdles that were unnecessary. The inspection points required us to deliver, as Mr. Morrison said earlier, into specific times and mail slots that didn’t fit a normal transportation corridor or a normal transportation pattern.
It required us to use break bulk, send the produce and perishable goods one way and send dry goods another way in many circumstances and at different times. So what that added was unnecessary touches in the system; people had to handle the product.
What also happened, which was inefficient and deteriorated the quality of the product, was that there were lags in the process.
So when it was dropped off at the inspection point, if it missed the window through weather or any other sometimes unavoidable circumstance, the inspection didn’t take place and goods sat.
Perishable goods will deteriorate in too hot or too cold conditions and they will deteriorate quickly.
That was a fundamental flaw in the fool mail system: the inspection procedure.
That has been streamlined out of the process in the Nutrition North Canada model.
Also the inspection process, even if it was done perfectly, someone had to touch the goods and break bulk, someone had to inspect, and that’s a cost of administrative fees, which added to the inefficiency of the program overall.
So I would say the three things: stronger, straighter routing, elimination of unnecessary touches, and getting rid of time delays required by the old system.
I would also say, and Mr. Morrison mentioned this, that if the product quality deteriorated during that process, neither the airfreight company nor Canada Post was held accountable. So if bananas sat on the tarmac in Iqaluit before they went up to Arctic Bay for six hours and the bananas were no longer of the quality to sell, no one was accountable in that system.
As we have said before in the federal standing committee and in our position papers, now we would have direct accountability back through the chain and be able to make claims and those costs were eliminated from the system.
My second question is: are you finding… ? I realize it has only been two months in terms of the hops or the footprints.
I know our federal MP, Leona, when she was explaining the program, one of the added bonuses she said was that food would travel faster and you would get fresher produce in the communities. It was because of those hops you were talking about that were being removed.
Are you finding within the North West Company that this new way of doing business is actually increasing the time and you’re having less spoilage?
Mr. McMullen: As Mr. Elliott says, it is early in the program, but yes, we are.
The time to market is quicker; the spoilage is less.
As a matter of fact, all of the executives in the North West Company will be measured on their performance in terms of what we call shrink and that means that we are all going to be rewarded based on our ability to get product to market in a better quality than ever before.
So not only is Nutrition North an impetus, but our own beliefs in what we have to do in northern markets is going to be reflected in how we are regarded by our board in terms of our performance.
So yes, initially we have had more speed and less shrinkage, and after the routes are fully worked out, we think that’s going to improve to an even enhanced degree.
Again you had mentioned that the accountability was hard with the Food Mail Program, whether it was the retailer who you would recoup costs from or whether it was the airline.
Who is actually now responsible with the new model?
I think when you were in Arctic Bay, you had mentioned something about $12 million worth of spoilage last year with your company it had received through products not arriving on time or like you had said, sitting on the tarmac somewhere.
Is the responsibility now with the contracts that are negotiated? Is it Nutrition North Canada that comes up with that difference or is it the airline itself?
Mr. McMullen: Thank you, Mr. Chairman. The accountability is with the retailer.
Shrinks or losses are not part of Nutrition North Canada’s cost structure. It is our accountability as what we would call the channel captain to understand our entire chain and understand where failures occur and take the appropriate action. That means when vendors deliver a product to our warehouses, we have an inspection procedure.
We require, for example, certain dates, a certain quality of bananas, bananas go through a series of stages, and we inspect and we reject at that point in time.
That has been there traditionally, but now that we control it further in the chain, we will be capable of doing a clearer job on that.
When it goes into the chain and we pass it through a second party that we have contracted, our contract will have clear relationship language that says who is accountable.
We expect the product to arrive at a certain timeframe, in a certain quality, and be handled in a certain way. If those obligations are not lived up in the supply chain, then our partner, in this case, whether it would be a truck or specifically with Nutrition North, an airfreight company, they are held accountable and we would claim back. This way, we will recover any expenses that are not of our doing through the chain and it will lower the costs overall.
Mr. Elliott: Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Okay, that helps.
Ultimately, depending on who is handling it and where it gets caught up, it seems like it would be the retailer who would be responsible for recouping that.
But one of the things I have heard in some conversations I’ve had with people in terms of one of the concerns they had with the program and how fast freight moves is the fact that under the Food Mail Program, it was through Canada Post and there was a priority. So there was a time limit of 72 hours, and I’m not totally familiar with all of the ins and outs of the Food Mail Program because I figured we’re not going back to that, so I’ll learn more about the new Nutrition North Canada Program, but the onus was on getting it there within a certain amount of time.
Again, I’m sure you can appreciate, with three communities that are at the end of the food chain, we’re always concerned about how long it takes materials to get to my communities.
So the big fear now is everything is going as freight. People are saying and are concerned that pistons will show up at the same speed as bananas, at the same speed as other materials that are coming into the community.
In your opinion, is that going to happen or is it not going to happen?
Do you have something within your contract that if it’s not delivered, then it’s the airline that’s responsible for coming up with that difference?
Mr. McMullen: Mr. Elliott, in the negotiations with the airfreight company, we specify a time through the channel and, if anything, and working in partnership with the airfreight company, the Nutrition North model allows us to shorten that time.
Milk is a perishable good. We want the longest dating possible in your communities, in all Nunavut communities, and in all of the northern communities. So it is in our best interest, as it is our airfreight carriers, to move the goods as expeditiously as possible.
Our airfreight partners are “incented” by that to make sure that there is no one in the chain who wants to have products not sellable.
There is no one because it’s in everyone’s best interest to get the product as quickly as possible in the highest quality form with the longest dating into our communities.
So what happens with the food model is both the airfreight company and Canada Post did not have that sense of urgency as extreme as we do when we’re accountable at the end of the day for the quality of product in the market and we control the channel. So my answer to you simply is we will move it more expeditiously to the best of our ability in this model because we could not control the way we will today in the old food mail model.
It worries me. Again, in communities that I represent where you only have one airline, obviously you’re making and negotiating deals with them. According to what Nutrition North Canada says and in my dealings with the federal government, the whole program is based around competition.
When you don’t have that competition and stuff is being left behind… .
I’m getting concerns from constituents that shelves are empty in Resolute Bay and there hasn’t been juice there for three weeks. You just wonder: what other option do you have? I’m wondering: how do you have that built into your agreement to get that fresh produce or fresh milk on the shelves so it’s not being put out at a lower quality?
Just before we continue, I would like to tell Mr. McMullen that when he is done, if he could just address the Chair.
That way they understand that you’re done. It just makes it a little smoother.
I will try and catch up to speed with the protocol. Mr. Elliott is engaging me so much, I’m just making so much eye contact with him that I can’t stop myself.
I can’t address Resolute Bay.
There are many supply chain problems in the north, as you are all aware.
For example, if you asked our store managers, “What product gets to your store the last?”
It is potato chips. That’s a shocker because that’s not what anyone in this room probably expected to hear, but it’s the product that will sit in our depots for the longest. Our priority is on healthy products, with or without Nutrition North Canada or food mail.
Why? Our communities count on us to deliver this product day in and day out. Why?
It also has a limited shelf time. If we don’t move it quickly, we simply can’t sell it.