Nutrition North’s new point-of-sale system not helpful, says professor – CBC

We still don’t know what retailers’ freight costs are, says Tracey Galloway

Dec 11, 2015

A professor studying the effectiveness of the Nutrition North program says showing consumers how much they’re saving on receipts is not increasing accountability or transparency of the food subsidy for Northern and remote communities.

In July, the federal government announced that retailers under the program have until April of 2016 to put a “point-of-sale” system in place, which will spell out, on their receipts, how much customers are saving because of the subsidy.

The change was introduced following a 2014 Auditor General’s report looking into the $60 million program, which found that the federal government did not know whether retailers in the North are passing on the savings to consumers.