Thank you, Mr. Chair.
I too want to welcome all of the witnesses. And I apologize; I'll be leaving after this. I have another meeting to go to.
I was particularly surprised by what you said about the children. I thank your wife and the other teachers who are obviously invested in making sure that these children and these families are fed. Unfortunately, the Nutrition North Canada program isn't designed to solve all those social programs, although I agree with Ms. Pelly that there is more to do.
What Nutrition North is designed to do is make it affordable for families to have nutritious food. The old program does not allow us to ensure that it's food that is making its way up to the north. In fact, the Minister of Health was here the other day and explained that it costs 23¢ per pound to transport food by sealift, but it costs $2.50 per pound to go by air. And who pays for that extra cost? The consumer pays that. It's built into those diapers that Ms. Novalinga was talking about; it's built into the prices.
What this is designed to do is to ship everything we can possibly ship by sea or by winter road, because it's cheaper—which means that consumers benefit from reduced prices—and only ship by air the items that are perishable; and we subsidize that because we want nutritious food to get there quickly.
And we eliminate the jumping to entry points. As the minister described, there are times up north when they have to ship food to an entry point in Winnipeg just so that it can go back to the north, if they want to use the old program. This is silly. By eliminating entry points, by allowing all of our retailers to use the method they want, a competitive method—they could use your airline, they could us First Air—the retailer negotiates, and the savings come to the consumer. Fresh food gets there without interruption. That's what this is about.
I have heard from Mr. Fogarty in particular that he doesn't know what's involved in the program. I encourage all of you to visit the website, first and foremost. I also encourage you to speak with the Government of Canada. We have a number of people working on this who are dedicated to making sure we get this right.
As we've noted, the engagement process was lengthy. I want to remind you, Mr. Kusugak, that there was further engagement with your community; it wasn't only the one time in May that there was exchange. In fact you mentioned May 2009, but on June 10, INAC officials also appeared before the board of directors and spent an hour explaining the program. There was also an exchange of letters.
It's important that you never feel you can't continue to consult. I welcome you to consult and to give your opinion, because we want to get this right.
Mr. Fogarty, you're concerned about not being included. If you were using the food mail program and providing perishable foods as you were before, you will be able to register. But you have to register, and I can assure you that if that community is on the Nutrition North Canada program, you will be able to use it. And I thank you, because I know you are concerned about quality, and that's why we want to allow you to provide that kind of food to those communities in a fast, rapid way, whereby you don't have to worry about spoilage, etc.
But it's the nutritious food we're going to cover. We're not going to cover Ski-Doo parts any more, we're not going to cover tires any more, because the consumer loses when we are subsidizing abuse of the system. And more often than not, that's what was happening.
I want to ask Ms. Novalinga a question about the prices.
Who has told you what the prices are going to be? The diapers, etc., are non-perishables. They can be brought by sea—isn't that right?—or can be brought by winter roads. They should be 23¢ a pound, not $2.50. They should be lower in price by the time this is done.
Who gave you these forecasted prices—which retailers?