Nutrition North Program to undergo external review, access to food security, supplement needs highlighted

MLA Jordan McPhail provided media with a copy of a letter he sent to Anandasangaree last month calling for a review of the Nutrition North Program and citing affordability needs in the North, particularly in the wake of 27 scurvy cases in La Ronge, his home community.

The communities eligible for Nutrition North Canada funding. (Government of Canada)

Nutrition North is a federal subsidy program with a $144.8 million budget (2024-25) that helps lower grocery costs in over 120 eligible northern or remote communities. Northern Saskatchewan has three communities that participate in the program: Uranium City, Fond Du Lac and Wollaston Lake. The expectation on grocers who receive the subsidy is to lower the price on select nutritious food items and other essentials, like diapers.

Nicholas Li, an associate professor of economics at Toronto Metropolitan University, recently examined Nutrition North’s publicly available data and determined subsidized price benefits fell short, with shoppers saving an average of 67 cents per dollar of subsidy rather than dollar for dollar.

Li said the data available to researchers is limited, and the methodology being used to assess the program is not available — a concern when it comes to measuring the program’s success.

The program’s effectiveness and grocer compliance is determined by third party audit, performed at the federal government’s request. Summaries of the audit reports and compliance recommendations are available on the government’s website, but the full reports, including details of the audit process, are not.

“From my perspective, there’s three issues. One is availability of data to actually do this kind of analysis on pass through, to researchers, to the public. Two [with audits] the methodology should be known so we can adjudicate and determine if it meets our standards.”

The third issue — what if a retailer violates the agreement?

“If you read the official documentation for Nutrition North Canada, in the event of non-compliance on something, and their auditors have cited non-compliance, it’s like ‘we will work with retailers to resolve the problem,’” he said. “To me, it’s pretty clear the accountability systems are pretty weak.”

In one instance, it will be up to the courts to determine if the costs are being properly passed on to the consumer. Earlier this month, former Nunavut Commissioner Nellie Kusugak and others filed a proposed class-action lawsuit against the North West Company, alleging the retailer has profited millions of subsidy dollars.

In a statement to The Canadian Press, the North West Company said it is “reviewing the claim and cannot directly respond to it out of respect for the legal process.”

‘Accessibility is not the only issue’

A desire for more data isn’t limited to the economists. One physician who works with Saskatchewan’s northern population says when it comes to knowing if vitamin deficiency cases like scurvy are more prevalent, she’s restricted by blood testing limitations.

“Mainly in my experience, vitamin and nutrient testing can be difficult to obtain,” Dr. Victoria Sparrow-Downes said. “I’ve encountered it with a number of tests and this is not exclusive or specific to Saskatchewan.”

Canada’s existing data on vitamin deficiency is based on urban populations and currently lacks information on Indigenous populations. Sparrow-Downes said that’s changing, but existing policies and government guidelines are based on that urban dataset.

“The presumption has been that a lot of issues we see in the north are not prevalent in the rest of Canada. But you do wonder with the rising cost of groceries all over the country, will we start seeing these vitamin and mineral deficiencies that we thought were not prevalent in the larger Canadian population,” she said.

Sparrow-Downes routinely travels the circuit for Saskatchewan’s north, parachuting into Black Lake, Fond du Lac, Uranium City, Camsell Portage and Stony Rapids. She frequents the northern grocers when she can, maybe to grab a quick bite — her usual snack of yogurt, berries and bottled water racks up to $50. She’s grateful for one hospital’s cafeteria program that supplies a healthy lunch, half of which she usually saves for another meal.

Sparrow-Downes said she’s learning independently about vitamin deficiencies. Scurvy was basically a footnote in class, she said.

Many of the patients she sees are subsisting within the confines of what can be transported to their community, often in the form of processed foods. Others, however, devised their own system of preserving food, gardening in the summers, and taking regular stock of what to order in their next freight shipment.

If the Nutrition North Program were to change, or if an influx of fresh foods were to arrive in the remote areas, Sparrow-Downes isn’t sure it could make a difference to the population overall.

“Once those dietary patterns have been established and become commonplace… to just reverse that, accessibility is not the only issue. It might go deeper than that,” she said.

Beyond fresh food limitations, supplements are a rare find in northern grocery stores.

“Really, the interesting thing from a physician’s perspective for me, is in some ways physicians are really the gatekeepers to even accessing these supplements. Because in order for people to get them, if they’re permanently based in the North, we would have to prescribe them so they can be shipped up and people can take them.

“The onus, in some ways, is really on us to do that. But then you have this issue where you also have physicians practicing who throughout their training were not exposed to a curriculum that emphasized this subject at all, or hardly at all.”

—

-with files from Nick Murray of the Canadian Press

glynn.brothen@pattisonmedia.com

by Glynn Brothen

Nutrition North Program to undergo external review, access to food security, supplement needs highlighted

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