An organization in Newfoundland and Labrador which focuses on food availability and cost likes what it sees with the federal government’s new food strategy.

Unveiled by Prime Minister Mark Carney late last week, the strategy earmarks about $3-billion over ten years to give Canadians more access to locally produced fruit, vegetables and other fresh items at lower prices.

One way to do that will be with more infrastructure such as food hubs and terminals designed to increase competition.

Josh Smee, the executive director of Food First NL, says food hubs are great because they buy from multiple producers and make it easier for people to order from different producers at once.

The system, as he sees it now, involves a few large distributors and a few large retailers, which pushes prices upward.

Increasing local food supply will involve, for one thing, greenhouse growing.

“If it helps people get those kinds of projects off the ground, it will make a difference to the local food supply. We run a couple of food hubs and we value having indoor agriculture,” says Smee. “It means that if you go on the food hub in the middle of January, you know there’s always fresh food there.”

Prime Minister Mark Carney says five large retailers operate 75 per cent of the grocery stores across Canada, dominating the food supply chain and making it harder for independent grocers to compete.

“We’re going to give the Competition Bureau more resources to identify, prevent and combat unfair business practices.  For consumers, we’re going to crack down on surveillance pricing.  We’re amending privacy legislation to protect consumer data…so companies can no longer use it to charge you higher prices.”