Indigenous and Northern Affairs Committee on May 27th, 2010

Evidence of meeting #19 for Indigenous and Northern Affairs in the 40th Parliament, 3rd session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was million.

A recording is available from Parliament.

On the agenda

Main Estimates 2010-2011: Votes 1, 5, 10, 15, 20, 25, L30, L35, 40, 45, 50, 55, 60 and 65 under INDIAN AFFAIRS AND NORTHERN DEVELOPMENT

Supplementary Estimates (A) 2010-2011: Votes 1a, 10a, 20a and 25a under INDIAN AFFAIRS AND NORTHERN DEVELOPMENT

MPs speaking

Also speaking

Michael Wernick Deputy Minister, Department of Indian Affairs and Northern Development

Nicole Jauvin Deputy Minister and President, Canadian Northern Economic Development Agency

4 p.m.

NDP

Jean Crowder NDP Nanaimo—Cowichan, BC

Can you get us more detailed information on the number of projects that have been announced, started, and completed? That would be helpful. You have a map that shows some of it, but it's still pretty difficult to sort out.

4 p.m.

Conservative

Chuck Strahl Conservative Chilliwack—Fraser Canyon, BC

Absolutely. Normally in the quarterly reports we try to give that detail, but we can certainly dig up whatever level of detail you want, and it's all part of the public record. I'm not sure whether the website doesn't have it all, but certainly we need to get that for you and we'll do it quickly.

4 p.m.

Liberal

The Vice-Chair Liberal Todd Russell

Thank you.

Now we go on to Mr. Rickford, from the great riding of Kenora.

4 p.m.

Conservative

Greg Rickford Conservative Kenora, ON

It is a great riding.

Thank you, Mr. Chair, and thank you, Minister, for coming here today.

I'm somewhat relieved. Seven minutes goes by so quickly, so I'm glad that my colleague mentioned Canada's economic action plan pre-emptively, because I can focus on an issue that I think is important to a number of committee members' ridings and is very important to mine. It's the Nutrition North Canada program.

I want to acknowledge the hard work of your office and this newly established advisory board in the serious revamping of a program that always had the best intentions but had some serious structural defects perhaps from the outset that prevented it from accomplishing its goals. In a couple of communities in my riding that I worked in before becoming elected, we worked around the program; we simply looked for other options with air carriers and Winnipeg Harvest and the likes to get subsidized foods to particularly vulnerable groups in the maternal and child health program that we established in one example. There have been tremendous challenges, and I appreciate that.

There were a number of problems identified at the time that this program appears to be trying to address, Minister. I was wondering if you could comment on a couple of them. There are six or seven, and I know that time just doesn't provide for it, so I want to focus on the issue of the integrity of the program in terms of eligibility versus non-eligibility. For example, there were some lists of foods or products that were on it. This program, built by northerners and to be overseen by northerners, is going to hopefully work through that.

The second one was the performance of the program in terms of not being measured sufficiently. It's always interesting that in one isolated community, potatoes might cost $13, and in another $18, and one community may be no farther north or south than the other. All that was explained was that it was more expensive to buy the potatoes, but the reason wasn't really identiied. There were program inequities, and you had this flat subsidized rate of 80 cents per kilogram, but that didn't deal with the fact that there are communities where products are much more expensive. Even in my own riding it's much more expensive for a product in, for example, Fort Severn than it is in Pikangikum or something like that.

Finally, Minister, to the extent that my time provides for it, could you comment on the importance of bringing the private sector into this as a stakeholder? They had already been somewhat involved, but I think the perception on the ground in the communities was that they weren't providing a subsidy; however, under this program we appear to be making very stategic partnerships with them that bring benefits that people can actually see. I understand that the program has a mechanism for showing that to the individual.

I'll stop there. Perhaps you can spend the back half of my time. I have a timer, and there are three and a half more minutes. I started it before he would have, so if you could go ahead, Minister, that would be great.

4:05 p.m.

Conservative

Chuck Strahl Conservative Chilliwack—Fraser Canyon, BC

Thank you. This is not part of the economic action plan.

4:05 p.m.

Bloc

Marc Lemay Bloc Abitibi—Témiscamingue, QC

Oh! You see, I told you.

4:05 p.m.

Conservative

Chuck Strahl Conservative Chilliwack—Fraser Canyon, BC

I can't say that this one is.

A lot of work went into the design of this program. There were a lot of meetings, a lot of consultation, and I think what we've come up with is a good balance.

To answer, I'll just go directly to some of your questions.

The idea that underpins it all is that the object is to deliver more nutritious foods at the best possible price and make the most nutritious foods the most affordable. The changes we've made in the program are designed to do that—for example, the eligibility list. If somebody says “My favourite fatty, salty food is no longer on there”, we say that's not surprising, because Health Canada helped us develop the list that said the most nutritious foods need to be subsidized the most—your milk, eggs, vegetables, and fruit. That is the stuff that's expensive to move, but the more of it you can get into people's hands, the better it is for their diet.

The second thing is that we put an emphasis also on country foods. One of the problems before, because of the design of the program, was that country foods were eligible, but they had to come from an entry point. So people said “If I can get my caribou down to Churchill then I could fly it back out to my community.” But that doesn't make a whole lot of sense. So there's an emphasis on country foods because country foods have obvious health benefits for people who are on that diet. It's a low-fat food, it's healthier, it's available locally, and it provides some employment opportunities locally as well.

On the eligibility list, first of all, we worked with Health Canada. We also took out things that were non-perishable. We will be taking out non-perishable and non-food items and asking people to move those in ways other than the most expensive way, which is by air freight. So the horror stories that we heard of people flying up spare tires on the food mail program, displacing milk and eggs, won't be possible in this program, and we don't apologize for that. We have to focus on the food. And things that can be brought up there on the sea lift or on the winter roads, if that's possible—for example, things like disposable diapers—should be transported in the cheapest way possible. Use the sea lift, use the winter roads, but don't fly them in, because flying them in is the most expensive thing you can do.

That's how the eligibility list was put together.

Another issue is that the performance of the program is a common complaint—for example, people ask how the program is working and how they know it's working. You hear the stories.

INAC will be working with each eligible community to make arrangements to make sure. As you say, they're all remote, but remote has matters of degree. Somebody who is really remote needs a different rate from someone who might be fly-in but relatively close by. It makes a huge difference in the cost. So those have to be calculated and those arrangements have to be made with the retailers in order to make sure it happens.

It's also important that we have an advisory board. One of the things we heard is that these decisions that are made need to be adjusted as we go forward. The people on the program who are seeing it on the ground, if you will, or in the stores, don't have a way of influencing what's happening, whether it's the eligibility list or how it's delivered or a bunch of things. So one of the things to not only help us deliver the program, I think, more fairly but also to assure people that this needs to be guided by people who actually use it in the north, is to put the advisory board together to give us advice on everything from eligibility lists to how the food is handled when it arrives and whether they think it's being passed on.

And then there's a whole audit provision of an official audit position relationship that will have to be established, which every retailer has to agree to—