Mr. Chair, food security in the north is very important for the government and for those who live in the north.
The nutrition north Canada program is not a cost of living subsidy overall. Many factors affect the price of food in the north: isolated communities, the distance to transport food, the size of the communities, the cost of power, wages, competitive markets, world market trends.
The nutrition north Canada program is really a small part of the overall cost of living in the north, and it's an attempt to try to decrease the cost of perishable, nutritious food, and make it more accessible, but it's not the answer to all the problems on the cost of living in the north.
It's basically a market-driven model. We're trying to promote a more efficient, cost-effective, transparent manner to increase access to nutritious and perishable food, and the information we've been able to gather suggests that, indeed, it is accomplishing that.
It's one way we had tried to address issues around food security and the cost of living. It's not the only way in which the federal government supports the north. There are transfer payments for health, social, territorial financing in the amounts of close to $1 billion, and in the case of Nunavut, $1.5 billion a year. There are other parts of federal government funding that address issues related to the cost of living in the north.
We do want northerners to have quality, nutritious food, and our sense is that by the way we have changed—