Thank you to the committee for travelling up north. Sometimes by travelling in the north it's easier to get a sense of what some of the challenges are that we face. One of the challenges we do face in remote northern communities, not just in Nunavut but across Canada, is access to nutritious food.
So as part of the new Nutrition North Canada program, Health Canada received funding of $1.53 million to focus on culturally appropriate retail and community-based nutrition education initiatives. Those initiatives will promote healthy eating by developing knowledge and the skills for the selection and preparation of healthy foods bought within the stores, as well as including traditional food, what we call country food, within that education piece. As well, the new funding will stabilize existing efforts at the community level to strengthen education levels in communities and to focus on the retailers for establishing community partnerships to lead in community-wide engagements and promotion through the stores on nutritious food.
I'll just use a couple of examples. We have a plan to develop education plans for each community in the aboriginal languages, for example, working with local stores to promote displays of products and provide in-store nutrition education materials in the local languages to the population we are serving. Health Canada's allocation of $1.53 million is for this year, and next year it will be $2.9 million. We will continue to deliver nutrition education programs through those investments.
Thank you.