Available in Inuktitut
Date: November 21, 2014
Nutrition North Canada (NNC) is a Government program that was launched on April 1, 2011, to provide Northerners with improved access to nutritious and perishable food.
The NNC program:
- Follows a market-driven model which promotes efficient, cost-effective and transparent means of helping Northerners access nutritious perishable food;
- Provides funding directly to registered retailers, wholesalers, and northern country food processors and distributors, who must apply, meet the program's requirements and enter into agreements with Aboriginal Affairs and Northern Development Canada (AANDC), and
- Provides subsidies for country foods from northern processing facilities to retail stores in the North. This helps bring more country food to grocery stores in the North.
Since 2011, the Government of Canada has invested $2.9 million for community nutrition education activities and $53.9 million annually for subsidies as part of the NNC program.
Economic Action Plan 2014 (EAP 2014) reaffirmed the Government's commitment to Northerners, like other Canadians, to have access to quality, nutritious food and enhance funding to NNC to help improve access to healthy food in the 103 northern isolated communities which benefit from the program. Today's new investment includes an increase of $11.3 million dollars in 2014-2015, and a new compounded 5% annual escalator which will be applied to the grants and contributions funds disbursed by AANDC to retailers and suppliers, who will in turn pass on this funding subsidy to Northerners. The escalator will be applied from 2014-2015, resulting in a subsidy budget of $133.7 million over the course of this year and next ($65.2 million in 2014/15 and $68.5 million in 2015/16).
This new funding is only for food subsidies. It will help respond to the increased demand on the program resulting from population growth and for subsidized foods in areas of the country where there is a much higher cost of living.
NNC has already reduced food prices on eligible items since its implementation in April 2011:
- The cost of the Revised Northern Food Basket for a family of four dropped on average by 5.6%, or approximately $110 per month, between March 2011 and March 2013.
- The average annual volume of healthy food being shipped to northern remote communities has increased by approximately 25% during the first three years of the program.
