Government not doing enough to keep tabs on northern food subsidy program: audit – CP
by ahnationtalk on November 25, 2014553 Views
Source: The Canadian Press
Nov 25, 2014
By Steve Rennie
THE CANADIAN PRESS
OTTAWA _ Canada’s auditor general says unscrupulous retailers may be abusing the federal program aimed at helping to offset the high cost of food in the North.
Michael Ferguson’s latest report says Aboriginal Affairs and Northern Development Canada doesn’t know if local retailers are passing on Nutrition North program subsidies to consumers as required, or are instead pocketing some of the savings themselves.
The auditors also had problems with the fact that the department doesn’t collect reliable data on the profit margins of retailers in order to determine whether consumers are benefiting from the full subsidy.
The report calls that a “missed opportunity” to ensure the program is transparent and to ease some long-standing public skepticism about the program’s effectiveness and efficiency.
The northern food-subsidy program, which has an annual budget of $60 million, replaced the old food mail program in 2011. Nutrition North bases its subsidy rates on the remoteness of the communities it serves.
Some places, such as the isolated Nunavut community of Grise Ford, qualify for the full $16-per-kilogram subsidy. Other less remote communities get subsidies as low as five cents a kilogram.
But Ferguson’s team found problems with the way Aboriginal Affairs and Northern Development determined how much each community is subsidized.
The auditors zeroed in on two remote communities in northern Ontario, both about the same distance to the nearest town and lacking year-round road access. One is eligible for a subsidy of $1.60 per kilogram; the other only five cents a kilogram.
“Aboriginal Affairs and Northern Development Canada has not managed the program to meet its objective of making healthy food more accessible to residents of isolated northern communities as it has not identified eligible communities on the basis of need,” the report said.
The department told Ferguson’s team it has looked at expanding the full subsidy to around 50 fly-in northern communities, but doing so would increase the cost of the program by $7 million each year.
The Conservative government has defended the Nutrition North program, saying it has given more people in isolated and remote communities access to healthy and perishable foods.
But the auditors found some decidedly unhealthy foods are being subsidized. Ice cream, bacon and processed cheese spread qualify for the lower of the program’s two subsidy levels.
Other foods that used to be subsidized under the food mail program, such as canned goods and rice, have been dropped.
The Conservative government, which is made aware of the contents of auditor’s reports in advance and given the opportunity to respond before they are released publicly, announced last week it would spend another $11.3 million on the program over the next year.
Conservative MP Mark Strahl, the parliamentary secretary for Aboriginal Affairs and Northern Development, denied that the timing of the announcement had anything to do with the release of Ferguson’s report.
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