Thank you, Mr. Chair.
Thank you to the witnessers for coming today; I appreciate it.
This is a very serious and important topic for northerners, people who live in isolated and remote communities where the cost of food is simply out of sight these days. That includes many of the communities that I represent in the Northwest Territories. Some of which, like Lutsel K'e, only get a five cent per kilogram subsidy even though they're far away from any road system. Others are in similar situations. Some don't receive any subsidy at all.
When this program was set up to take over from food mail, was there any consideration of the fairness to the communities when you chose simply to take the communities that were using food mail to the greatest extent and apply that across the board to all of them, even though many of them would have retailers that would be able to use this subsidy correctly, as you had put it in? Most of those communities that don't have the subsidy probably have a store that would be available. Why would you think that you could initiate a program that was not fairly and equitably cast across northern Canada? What was the rationale in the department to make a move like that when quite clearly, as Canadians and as representatives of the Government of Canada, we have to deal with people fairly and equally across this country? Why was that decision made in the fashion that you took it?