The NDP’s Flin Flon candidate in the April 19 provincial election says his party will increase funding for programs to make healthy food more affordable and accessible if re-elected as government.
Tom Lindsey said in a March 9 press release that the NDP would double funding to the province’s Northern Healthy Foods Initiative and create a new $500,000 Healthy Foods Initiative Fund to support more community gardens, community kitchens and other programs to help people access healthy food. The NHFI, he said, is already supporting work in more than 80 communities and has helped develop more than 900 gardens, 60 small greenhouses and small livestock and poultry products in a dozen communities.
“All Manitobans should have access to healthy food, no matter where they live,” said Lindsey. “The best strategies to support northern families come from northern communities, and the NDP will be there to support what works for them.”
Other proposals include providing $120,000 to develop a Manitoba Food Policy with partners such as Food Matters Manitoba, AKI Energy and the Northern Association of Community Councils and establishing a $10-million capital fund to build greenhouses, community kitchens and culinary arts classrooms in northern schools.
“By helping northern communities start their own self-sufficient gardens and greenhouses, and by promoting traditional harvesting and food preservation methods, we can increase food security and create good job opportunities for the long term,” said Lindsey.
The provincial government launched a pilot program to subsidize retail food costs in 10 Northern Manitoba communities - Tadoule Lake, Brochet/Barren Lands, Shamattawa, Berens River, York Landing, Churchill, Pikwitonei, Ilford/War Lake, Thicket Portage and Pukatawagan – in October. In seven of the 10 communities covered by the program, retailers will be eligible for subsidies on fresh milk, vegetables and fruit which will lead to lower prices for consumers, with savings of as much as $6.40 on a four-litre jug of milk.
Manitoba Liberal leader Rana Bokhari visited St. Theresa Point Dec. 22 to announce her party’s pledge of $25 million towards Northern Manitoban food subsidies and nutritional counselling programs. The subsidy aims to encompass all Northern Manitoban communities, with higher priority placed on more impoverished communities, with regional counsellors distributed between multiple communities.
