Bevington, NDP announce proposal for Nutrition North subsidy program

Northwest Territories MP Dennis Bevington, along with a group of NDP MPs that includedRomeo Saganash, Niki Ashton, Charlie Angus, Carol Hughes & Jonathan Genest-Jourdain,announced his party's proposal to fix the highly criticized Nutrition North food subsidy program this morning.

Bevington has been highly critical of the Nutrition North program in the past. Last month, he questioned whether the government has followed through on a promised $11.3 million boost to funding, and asked in parliament last week why the program wasn't available in over 50 northern communities.

The NDP's proposal includes incorporating those communities into the Nutrition North program, as well as initiating a comprehensive review of Nutrition North with northern residents as full partners. It also suggests creating program eligibility criteria for affected communities based on their "real circumstances," and working with northerners to develop a sustainable solution to food insecurity.

The $60 millionNutrition North program, designedto help defray the cost of nutritious food in the North by providing retailers with a subsidy that they are supposed to pass on by cutting food costs for consumers, has been under scrutiny since an auditor general's report in November revealed that Aboriginal Affairs, the federal department which oversees the program, is largely in the dark about whether Nutrition North actually does anything for the people who need it the most.

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Yesterday, the Conservative governmentannounced in a press release that Nutrition North registered retailers must make profit margin information available to independent auditors forcompliance reviews.