Thank you, Mr. Chair.
I thank our guests today for their presentations.
As most of you will know, I represent a region of the country that is very dependent on the nutrition north program. All the things we're discussing here today are very relevant in terms of ensuring that we have a sufficient and affordable food supply in many of these communities.
Today I can tell you that is not the case. Despite the greatest efforts that we have seen with nutrition north, we consistently hear from communities and from individuals across the north that food is still not affordable. We saw explicit examples these past few months in the media coming out of the Nunavut region, but out of other regions as well. Consistently, when I travel through communities in my own riding and others across the north, the number one concern for families remains access to healthy food and affordability of the food. We can never undermine that.
We know that food mail was not perfect, but I think we also know now that nutrition north is not perfect. Anytime we can have $60 million to $70 million in a subsidy going into providing healthy food to people in the north but it's still not reaching them and we can't confirm the subsidies are being passed on, then we have a problem.
My question will be on a couple of things. Unfortunately, we don't have time to get into all the things I want to get into, but first of all I want to ask this. There was a contractor hired by nutrition north to complete a compliance review of the program. It was highlighted in the AG's report under section 6.30. There are a couple of things I want to know with regard to that report. Who was the contractor? What information was provided under the compliance review?
We just want to know, for each year: who was hired to conduct these reviews, how much do these contracts cost the department, and why were those inadequacies not picked up in those compliance reviews?