Today will be 19 days

since the introduction of the Nutrition North Canada Program.

Below is one of the questions with possible answers from the NNC web site.

How will consumers know the subsidy is being passed on under the new program?

Answer: One of the key accountability and transparency measures is the requirement for retailers to demonstrate the subsidy is being passed on to consumers by printing the community's subsidy level on customers' receipts and through audit of transactions. Other communications activities include row and shelf signage to identify eligible items, food basket displays and pamphlets. Additionally, INAC will assess the consumer satisfaction level through annual store-distributed surveys.

Now the awful truth:

If the residents of Nain awoke from a collective 10 year coma and went shopping today there would be no way anyone would be aware of this generous subsidy that is purported to make some of the goods they buy cheaper than if there was no subsidy. And how would they, as there is nothing, nada, zilch, zip, in writing in any form to inform the alleged lucky consumers that this shipping subsidy [plus the provincial subsidy that piggy backs on the NNC program] is being passed onto them.

Nothing on any receipt, nothing in the form of signage on the walls, or on the shelves or on the goods purchased to indicate that there is a subsidy, let alone it is benefiting the consumer.

This fly’s in the face of the main objective IMO of replacing the old system with the new NNCP.

So it is not only politicians on the campaign trail who are loose with the truth, is it?

Added to that lot is the fact that since the new program started the boxed freight coming into the communities now has no indication makings stating that the goods in those boxes is shipped under the NNCP.

At least under the old program each package or box shipped under the program had a Canada Post sticker on it as an identifier as being shipped under the Food Mail Subsidy Program.
Now there is nothing on the boxes to ID them.

Due to my own ‘due diligence’ I have garnered that at first freight that came in under the NNCP had no identifying waybill or manifest. That has since changed so that there is an ID of goods shipped under the NNCP on the shipping waybill.

I also discovered that two people who work for the Department of Health at Nunatsiavut Government have been asked by Health Canada to do a “price check” of certain goods in the stores that use the NNCP. The results of these checks are then sent out to some bureaucrat in some nondescript building some place in Atlantic Canada for analysis. It is not known if and when the results of this analysis will be made public.

The thing is the public; you and I, Joe and Jane consumer do not know this. For all intents and purposes the retailer could be pocketing the subsidies and laughing all the way to the bank. All the hoopla and rhetoric that the NNCP was going to improve our health and well being by making our food expenses lower could be just that, hoopla and rhetoric.

Where is the openness and accountability people?

On the weather front: Lots of snow banks around town tells me the latest falls have been the highest this season.

While the weather did not actually clear the ceiling and visibility improved enough for a couple of planes to get in late yesterday, Grandson Matthew manage to get out to see his sister and Carter, everybody happy.