Thank you very much.
I want to turn to Minister Vandal on Nutrition North.
In the last fiscal year, the northern affairs department allocated $134 million to Nutrition North. Almost half of that money went to the North West Company, a massive corporation that made $190 million of profit last year. The Nutrition North program is supposed to bring down grocery prices for northerners. Instead, we're seeing it help CEOs.
According to a recent study at U of T Mississauga, only 67¢ of each dollar in grocery subsidies is passed on to consumers. People here in northern Manitoba, in Nunavut and elsewhere are experiencing significant hardship. Nutrition North is not working for them the way it's supposed to, when a family-sized box of cereal costs $17.99 and a litre of olive oil costs $36.59. The list goes on.
Presumably, neither the minister nor anyone else in the government would tolerate paying this price for their own groceries, so why should northerners? What is this government doing to address real food insecurity in the north and also to ensure that Nutrition North funds are not going to line the pockets of companies like the North West Company?