NUNAVUT

With Nutrition North Canada coming into effect last Friday, at least two grocery stores are not happy with the new federal program and decided not to sign on to fill personal orders due to high freight rates and extensive amount of additional paperwork.

Charlynne Holowaty, general manager of Cantor's Grocery in Winnipeg, said the store decided to work out a freight deal with an airline instead of working with the federal government's Nutrition North Canada program due to a mountain of new paperwork to be completed monthly. - NNSL file photo

Winnipeg-based Cantor's Grocery Ltd. is currently looking for other options to continue filling personal grocery orders for customers in the Kivalliq region.

"We don't want to stop and leave them high and dry but we're working toward something different and there won't be any restrictions on what they can order," said Charlynne Holowaty, general manager of Cantor's Grocery. "We'd rather do it to make the customer happy and not Indian Affairs happy."

Holowaty said the new program makes it an expensive endeavour for customers to order from them. Under the old Food Mail program, Canada Post did the shipping at a flat rate of 80 cents per kilogram. Under the new program, retailers are to work out their own shipping arrangements and submit claims to INAC for subsidies which differ by food category and community.

Holowaty said, with no freight subsidy, communities like Coral Harbour and Baker Lake would pay shipping rates upwards of $8 per kilogram of food and $6 per kilogram.

Coral Harbour's highest subsidy for a select list of perishable healthy foods is $3.40/kg, Baker Lake, $2.

"They hit us like a rock when they told us they were taking it away," said Holowaty. "The customers are not going to be able to afford the freight the way Indian Affairs is doing it. We've decided to go on our own."

Under the new Nutrition North Canada program, Holowaty said on top of finding partnerships with freight companies on their own, the store is required to update its equipment to keep track of the weight of all items sold monthly.

"They wanted us to update all our equipment so that we knew exactly in (kilograms) how much we sold of broccoli, how much we sold of apples. Paperwork at the end of the month was too much," she said. "It wasn't worth our time."

Justin Nelson, assistant general manager of the Yellowknife Direct Charge Co-op, said the same thing – high freight rates and massive amounts of extra paperwork led the store's board of directors to stop filling food mail orders. Nelson said the Yellowknife Co-op shipped between 150 and 200 personal orders a month to the Kitkmeot region.

Now on their own to find a freight partner, Holowaty said Cantor's Grocery is trying to work out a deal with First Air to ship to Kivalliq communities, along with providing a 10 per cent discount on purchases.

Residents in Rankin Inlet are upset over the high cost of shipping personal orders to their community and others in the territory.

At an information session in the community earlier this month, residents voiced displeasure for the lack of support for southern companies offering mail order services.

"Individual ordering and having access to a wider range of products in the south is an important component of this program," said hamlet councillor Kyle Sheppard during the meeting, adding the large amount of monthly paperwork stores are required to do is being done by design. "They're not doing enough to encourage southern retailers to participate."

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