Introduced in 2011, the Nutrition North Canada retail subsidy is the latest iteration of federal government efforts to address affordability and food insecurity in the North. The program has long faced questions about its effectiveness and whether it’s actually caused food insecurity to go up.
The subsidy is paid directly to northern retailers to offset the higher cost of transportation and is supposed to be passed along to the consumer.
But a University of Toronto researcher, widely regarded as a leading expert on the controversial program, said it’s failing to improve access to nutritious food and isn’t doing enough to track whether companies like North West are fully passing along the subsidy to consumers.
Tracey Galloway, who has published a number of papers on northern Indigenous communities, found that for each dollar of subsidy given at specific points in 2016 and 2019, retailers passed on an average of 67 cents. Almost one-third of the subsidy can’t be accounted for, she said.
https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/rising-food-prices-canada-north-1.7122481
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