Federal government working on review of food mail program

The federal Indian and Northern Affairs Department says it hopes to complete an extensive review soon of its food mail program, which subsidizes the costs of shipping nutritious food to isolated northern communities.

The department is looking at the efficiency of the program, which cost the federal government almost $50 million to run last year.

The review is examining aspects of the program such as purchases, transportation, logistics and economic impacts, review team director Marc-Andre Poisson told CBC News.

Poisson added that the team is also evaluating options such as the distribution of traditional "country" foods and community greenhouses.

"We have a team that was in place here for part of the last year, and we also hired several consultation firms [to do] various studies looking at different impacts," Poisson said.

The review team has completed the research phase, and Poisson said it's putting together all of the information .