High food costs in North make eating healthy on a budget hard
- Jeanelle Mandes | February 23, 2015
For years, food costs have been high in the northern communities due to a number of reasons which is why the Chamber of Commerce released a Northern Business Task Force Report which contained recommendations.
Steve McLellan, CEO of the Saskatchewan Chamber of Commerce, says the food costs in the north are expensive depending on the product.
“It can be crazy expensive, for example, a jug of milk can be as much as $16-18 dollars,” says McLellan.
“Food is more expensive and it’s harder to get in terms of fresh produce simply because it’s an extra day to get it that far north,” he adds.
McLellan says there’s a program called Nutrition North which is a Federal Government program which subsidizes the kilogram costs of food being shipped north. Depending on the community, the program ships primary foods such as milk, dairy and cheeses to name a few.
There’s a per kilogram discount which varies on the community. McLellan says this is a program that is needed for implementation across Canada. Saskatchewan has the lowest subsidy rates and thinks the north is much eligible for higher rates.
“[The Northern Food subsidy] is not working very well for Saskatchewan and the reason it’s eligibility for a community is based on that community or suppliers use of what they call ‘Food Mail Program’ a previous Federal government program,” says McLellan.
Many Saskatchewan community stores did not use it because the products were not being shipped properly. McLellan says the Northern Saskatchewan communities are being unfairly untreated because the criteria to use the previous program should have no merit on the need to have food subsidy, it should be on the remoteness of the community.
“Food is a critical element of life, good food means healthy children, healthy adults, and children will be able to focus on their education and adults will be able to focus better by focusing on their families,” says McLellan. “The cost of food up north means there is less available on a family budget and it often means the food is not as good as others. Without good quality foods, families suffer. It makes no sense that we’re seeing this happen in Northern Saskatchewan,” he adds.
He says the retailers up north do a good job recognizing the value of some products; most northern grocery stores put a low profit markup because they know that families need it.
Scott Hales, owner of Scott’s General Store in Stony Rapids in northern Saskatchewan, says the extra costs comes from freight because it costs money to ship food to his store.
“The quality of goods when [the food] gets here, a lot of times produce gets thrown away because there’s damage and people don’t like to buy it. All those costs are still incurred in the goods when it’s here,” says Hales.
Hales has been this store owner for 30 years in August this year and says there was a food mail program that worked in the past but didn’t work because the post offices didn’t have freezers and coolers to handle the food that were supposed to be shipped through a food mill system.
Hales says because of that, they don’t sell a lot of the fresh produce in his store because of how expensive it is. He says he would like to see some improvement with the freight subsidy.
“I would like to see freight subsidy program revised so it will work and whoever is setting up the food subsidy program should ask a few questions to the retailers that do sell groceries in the north and find out a system that will work,” says Hales.
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