Thank you, Mr. Chair, guests, and fellow speakers. This is the first opportunity for the alliance to sit in front of any committee, and we appreciate it.
My name is Jim Deyell. I represent the Affordable Food Alliance, and I have with me today two associates who represent the third one, as there is one missing. With me are Alasdair MacGregor and Helen Barry, who represent the Fédération des coopératives du Nouveau-Québec. The representative from Arctic Co-operatives Limited is absent from the table today. As for me, I represent the North West Company, once the Hudson's Bay Company.
The Affordable Food Alliance, as I said, comprises three major food and general merchandise retailers in northern Canada, including all northern parts of the provinces, with the exception of New Brunswick, Nova Scotia, and Prince Edward Island. Our customer base is in excess of 100,000 people, and we represent over 150 northern communities.
Along with me today are Helen Barry and Mr. Alasdair MacGregor, from store development of the Fédération des coopératives du Nouveau-Québec. Absent is Mr. Jim Huggard, from the Arctic Co-ops.
My position with the North West Company is director of public affairs. While I represent the alliance, my work experience has been with the North West Company. In all, I have 41 years of experience in the north. The combined experience of those of us sitting at the table today is close to 100 years, so we claim some authority to speak on the subject of the north, although none of us is aboriginal or Inuit.
My observations over those years of experience in regard to childhood obesity is that we have indeed an increase. It's very evident. It is somewhat in keeping with the changing lifestyles, to a more sedentary rather than a nomadic lifestyle. It is, however, much more than that.
We have seen a marked increase in the population, the demographics of which we are probably all aware of here at this table. Some of those demographics have been mentioned. What has not kept pace with this growth, however, is the infrastructure in housing to accommodate the population needs.
We now have, and have had for some time, overcrowding in homes, where double digits make up the household complement of two- or three-bedroom houses. In some cases, these homes have limited facilities and considerable difficulty with structured family activities such as sleeping habits and meal preparation. In the latter, I believe there are educational challenges in the preparation of healthy meals. Hence, the prevalence to use ready-to-go goods. High amongst that selection are pop and chips. I have no doubt that the per capita consumption of sugar-laden goods by our northern customers exceeds that of the average Canadian.
What are we trying to do about it? For the past fifteen years—and this is specific to the North West Company—we have had an in-store healthy living program that has a specific focus on guiding the customer to shelf staple products that have lower sugar or fat and a higher fibre content within the items' ingredients. We use a simple icon that identifies a product, and it's the means to direct the customer to that product. It's an in-house program that has the backing of nutritionists and dieticians for guidance. Our food merchandise offer is under scrutiny to determine the best choice for the consumer as we replace that assortment.
We also focus on the four key food groups in order to give this program balance. We further support this program with pamphlets directed at teaching about healthy food choices. Several people in this room are familiar with our program, and we have received recognition for it from health agencies.
Key among the challenges we see is that of the diabetes epidemic. Here our approach has been to fundraise for research into finding a cure for diabetes. To date, our fundraising has exceeded half a million dollars. This is a staff-driven initiative that includes participation in the Hawaii marathon. This year we are sending seventeen participants to that marathon. These are people from within the store group and people from the communities in the north.
My partners in the alliance have their own in-store initiatives to work for a better quality of life for the customers we serve. To that end we have aligned ourselves with FNIHB to support them at the store level with our programs on healthy eating. Specifically, at the moment, we are looking at issues of under-nutrition and are focusing at this time on a series of recipe cards that will be distributed through the store systems.
We work with Johns Hopkins University indirectly through Joel Gittelson, with his program on healthy stores initiatives that is going on in Cambridge Bay and Ikaluktutiak.
The question we are being asked today is on the role and the responsibility of the federal government from the point of view of the alliance. The alliance was formed for that very reason. It was the firm conviction of the members that to make perishable nutritious food more available to the customer we had to pool our resources and seek cooperation with the private and public sectors. Specifically, we focused on the food mail program—which has already been mentioned today—provided by INAC.
There are several studies of the dietary habits of the first nations and Inuit people, at least going back as far as 1992. Some of these have resulted in changes to the policy of the food-mailable items. The most recent study that we know of was the pilot project offered to three communities, one by the name of Kangiqsujuaq, in Nunavik; the second being Kugaaruk, Nunavut; and the third one being Fort Severn, in northern Ontario. This study was jointly administered by Health Canada and INAC. It commenced some three or four years ago, and the results of the study have been published.
The study was, in effect, to check on the dietary intake after an increase in the freight subsidy, from eighty cents to actually thirty cents per kilogram. The study was to see what effect this actually had on the dietary intake of the consumer.
At the same time the government was doing this study, we, in our stores, were viewing it as well from a sales point of view, to study the increase in sales that the freight subsidy actually caused. In particular, we focused on produce, fruits and vegetables, and the dairy lines. The program extension that INAC and Health Canada was offering here was in fact focused on just those commodities: fruits and vegetables and the milk and dairy product lines. They call them “highly perishable goods”.
What we saw as retailers was a marked increase in the purchase of these lines, and the consumer was much happier with the lower prices. Essentially, the difference was only 50¢ a kilogram. It was not really all that significant; however, it did make for downward changes in prices. As the chief indicated, four litres of milk cost $11.99 in most places in northern Canada that have this mail service. By taking a further 50¢ off that, you took $2.25 off the price of that bag of milk, so it was significant in that sense, but that's still much higher than we pay for our milk down here.
We measured the food category in terms of how it relates to the overall basket the consumer is buying. What we saw happening here was that with the reduction, the amount being spent on produce moved from about 3¢ on the dollar upwards to 6¢, and that's significant. It may not sound like a lot, but the line in the sand that most retailers are looking at today for a balanced basket is somewhere around 10¢ on the dollar, so it was a significant move upwards. We also saw this in dairy.
The government report on the pilot project was quite technical and not easy reading for those uneducated in nutritional facts. However, what was understandable in that report were these two words: food deprivation. This was a fact that was still quite evident even after the subsidy had been applied. The study showed us that for a family of four—two adults and two teenage children—the income, on a social assistance base after shelter, was around $1,692. That was on social assistance after shelter, two family allowances, and a quarterly GST cheque.
They then took the Canada's food guide basket and bought it at northern prices, only to find that in fact all but $90 was spent. But the thing about the Canada's food guide basket is that it does not include things like ammunition, gasoline, or the basic necessities of following a traditional lifestyle, so “food deprivation” certainly resonated with us. It resonated very dearly with the retailers, and at this point the retailers felt they really had to do something to extend this program, or to at least extend the increased subsidy. We felt it had to be extended to all remote fly-in northern communities. In fact, we felt a moral responsibility to push this. Equally so, the federal government had a moral responsibility to act, given the evidence.
There are about 140 such communities. The current subsidy mail program is only used by about 60 of those. It cost INAC about $42 million last year to pay for this program, and that has an approximate 16% increment built onto it each year. For the past number of years, INAC has only budgeted $27 million plus to support this program, and then the manager of the program has to go cap in hand to the treasury or within INAC itself to come up with the shortfall.
It is estimated by INAC and ourselves that to extend this 30¢-per-kilogram program to all 140 communities and the inhabitants thereof, it would cost an additional $31 million. If that was done, we would be servicing 92,000 people. If you do that on a per capita basis and break it down, it only comes to 90¢ a day, which really is not a lot of money—essentially, the price of an apple a day.
We have continued to push for this. We have sought advice. We have written to many. We have met with many. We have demonstrated on the Hill. We have actually handed out apples on the Hill to try to make our point. But it has generally been to no avail. We have not seen any positive movement in this at all, no positive response from the government, yet we feel it must happen and we continue to push.
We are encouraged to see that, just in the last week, the minister—