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Former Food Mail program managers clarify Nunavut price survey – Nunatsiaq News

Why has Aboriginal Affairs and Northern Development Canada failed to report on the cost of the Revised Northern Food Basket?”

September 20, 2013

As former managers of the Food Mail Program, we were interested to read your story on the Nunavut Bureau of Statistics recent food price surveys in Nunavut communities (“Yes it’s expensive to eat in Nunavut: food price survey,”August 22, 2013.)

However, your reporter’s comparison of the total cost of the Nunavut bureau’s selection of 28 items in 10 Nunavut communities with the cost of a healthy food basket that would feed a family of four in Ottawa for a week is invalid and therefore highly misleading.

The bureau’s costs are not the cost “for a selected weekly basket”, as your article claims. In fact the bureau cautions that this “is not an official basket, but rather a tool for overall price comparison between communities.”

The total cost of these 28 items, ranging from approximately $216 in Iqaluit to $256 in Gjoa Haven, says nothing whatsoever about the cost of feeding a family of four – or any other size, for that matter – in these communities.

Read more:http://www.nunatsiaqonline.ca/stories/article/65674former_food_mail_program_managers_clarify_nunavut_price_survey/

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