ST. JOHN’S, N.L. — A mother in a community where the cost of living is one of the highest in the country says grocery prices are “inhumane” and retailers are putting profits ahead of people’s basic human right to food. Rosie Harris lives in a blended family with seven children in Nain, the northernmost community […]

Labrador residents say ‘inhumane’ food prices force families to go hungry

ST. JOHN’S, N.L. — A mother in a community where the cost of living is one of the highest in the country says grocery prices are “inhumane” and retailers are putting profits ahead of people’s basic human right to food. Rosie Harris lives in a blended family with seven children in Nain, the northernmost community […]

The federal government is reviewing the program, and Li said it should consider introducing price caps on products subsidized with public money. Ottawa should also consider helping to establish co-operatives or government-run stores, he added. He pointed to the state-owned Pilersuisoq stores across Greenland, and La Federation des cooperatives du Nouveau-Quebec, a network of co-ops across Nunavik providing grocery stores, hotels and even cable television. “They’re not run in the same way as publicly traded profit-maximizing corporations,” he said, noting that many co-ops in Inuit communities in Canada were established with help from the federal government. “The belief was that instead of just having Northern Stores, which are the successor of the Hudson’s Bay Company kind of colonial enterprise, you need to have more local ownership,” Li said, referring to the company’s origins as a trading corporation from the 1600s whose operations were often intertwined with the British Empire. In the meantime, he said the Canadian government should make more data available about the prices retailers charge for products subsidized by the Nutrition North program, so the public can hold the companies accountable. Harris said those reviewing the program should visit Nain, and witness the impacts of the food prices. “If they could see, from my point of view, all these struggles for all these families,” she said. “Sometimes it feels like we go on the back burner because we’re far away.”