The Great White (Starving) North:

Assessing the Effectiveness of Canadian Government Food Subsidization Programs in Nunavut

Overview

Recently, for the first time in its relatively brief history, Nunavut has been the site of a

wave of social malaise and organized protest. Over the summer, there were demonstrations in

the communities of Arctic Bay, Igloolik, Pond Inlet and Iqaluit, among others, attracting the

attention of news sources as diverse as the CBC and the Huffington Post.1 2 While their numbers

were few, the protestors’ message was clear: we are hungry. One image of the protests, widely

circulated online, had a sign scrawled with the words TOO MANY KNOW THE MEANING OF

STARVATION IN NUNAVUT. Another, perhaps even more damning, featured a young girl,

probably not even five years of age, with a cardboard sign which read—in English and

Inuktitut—I need milk.

These organized protests over food security and pricing in Canada’s North were

distressingly familiar, recalling similar protests which have occurred over the past year in New

1. “Nunavut Residents Protest High Food Prices,” CBC News, June 9, 2012,

http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/north/story/2012/06/09/north-nunavut-food-price.html.

Retrieved December 1, 2012.

2. “Nunavut Food Protest: Inuit Organize Widespread Protest Over Hunger And Food Costs,”

The Huffington Post Canada, June 9, 2012,

http://www.huffingtonpost.ca/2012/06/08/nunavut-food-hunger-protest_n_1581485.html.

Retrieved November 30, 2012.

Delhi, Jakarta, Tehran. More distressing still, many protestors specifically condemned the

newly-instituted food subsidy program from the federal government, Nutrition North, which

was put into action in April of 2011. Designed with the intent of making food cheaper and more

accessible to Canadians living in the territories and other remote areas, it replaced the pre-

existing Food Mail program, run in collaboration with Canada Post. Although presented as a far

better alternative to Food Mail, the effectiveness, implementation, and indeed even legitimacy

of Nutrition North have been the subject of a great deal of debate in the territories, and

nowhere more so than Nunavut. While Nutrition North does provide food subsidies to Northern

Quebec, the Northwest Territories, the Yukon and certain regions of Newfoundland and

Labrador, the bulk of the food (and funding) goes directly to Nunavut—yet Nunavut is suffering

most as a result of this new policy.

Given that the program has been in use for over a year, and has had ample time to work

out its various “kinks,” the time has come to assess Nutrition North with a critical eye. What

must be asked of the program: does it provide Nunavummiut with cheap, healthy, accessible

food? Are the subsidies being passed on to the average consumer—which is to say, citizen—or

does the design of the system inherently favour retailers? Does the subsidy selection/omission

process include and respect Inuit culture, or does it simply act as a government-sponsored,

twenty-first century form of neocolonialism? And, most simply: does Nutrition North work for

Nunavut? Academically, these questions must be answered in order to gain a true and

thorough understanding of Nunavut’s food supply and consumption culture. Politically, and

arguably morally, they must be answered to provide the people of Nunavut with the most

effective and accessible food security—which they deserve as Canadians, and as human beings.

Here we will examine the effectiveness of previous food interventions to Nunavut (and the rest

of the North), and compare them to Nutrition North, in an effort to ascertain the most effective

method at ensuring food security in the region.

Nunavut’s Food Crisis

In 2006, the World Food Summit defined food security as existing when “all people, at

all times, have physical and economic access to sufficient, safe and nutritious food that meets

their dietary needs and food preferences for an active and healthy life.”3 Many nations of the

world are defined as being profoundly food-insecure, but Canada is not among them; however,

if Nunavut were to be assessed independently of the rest of the country, it would in all

likelihood have the dubious honour of being the only food-insecure region of Canada.

Effectively, while images of protests, hunger, anger, and disenfranchised individuals certainly

stir the heart, the food crisis in Nunavut is one best measured in dollars and cents. A standard

frozen turkey—for Thanksgiving or Christmas, now often celebrated in Inuit communities—

costs $96.14 in Iqaluit, which consistently has the cheapest groceries in the territory.4 A small

bag of oranges has been reported to cost $21.99 in Arctic Bay, a 331ml can of pop running

$5.25 in Grise Fiord, $25 for a head of cabbage in Igloolik, and more worryingly still, a standard

package of infant formula reportedly costs upwards of $55 throughout the territory. Everything,

3. “FAO Policy Brief: Food Security, Issue 2,” The Food and Agricultural Organization of the

United Nations, June 2006. ftp://ftp.fao.org/es/ESA/policybriefs/pb_02.pdf. Retrieved

November 30, 2012.

4. “I Don’t Want Kids to Be Hungry,” Up Here: Explore Canada’s North, December 1, 2012,

http://www.uphere.ca/node/828. Retrieved December 1, 2012.

from produce to meat to eggs to dairy to flour, costs a minimum of double what it does in

southern Canada (and very often, far more than that.) Even non-food essential items, such as

non-prescription drugs, diapers, hygiene products, cost many times more than anywhere else in

the country.

These prices would be staggering at any income level, but in 2005—at the most recent

census—the average Inuit living within Nunavut earned only $16,669 annually.5 By comparison,

the average non-Inuit, non-aboriginal person living in Nunavut earned more than triple that, at

$60,047 per annum. In other words, Nunavut’s food crisis is localized in race, disproportionately

rendering Inuit households more food insecure than their non-Inuit counterparts. Given the

incredibly young population of the territory (with a median age of 26) and the high birth rate,

three-quarters of children in Nunavut live in food-insecure homes.6 Even the most modest of

lifestyles, with sufficient nutritious food for one’s family, is simply unattainable for most Inuit

Nunavummiut. Even worse: the cost of food in Nunavut is steadily increasing. The Revised

Northern Food Basket, operated through the department of Aboriginal Affairs and Northern

Development (the AANDC), recorded perishable food prices from 2006 to 2008 in a number of

northern communities. It provided an amended version of the initial Northern Food Basket,

from which data was first recorded in 1990. This updated basket contained only essential

groceries to feed a family of four: dairy products, meat and alternatives, eggs and fish, grains,

5. Canada. Statistics Canada. Inuit in Canada: Selected findings of the 2006 Census. Ottawa,

2006. Retrieved November 30, 2012.

6. “Nunavut Residents Protest High Food Prices,” CBC News, June 9, 2012,

http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/north/story/2012/06/09/north-nunavut-food-price.html.

Retrieved December 1, 2012.

potatoes, fruit and vegetables, and the necessary oils and fats.7 The basket is, by all accounts,

highly conservative in its food distribution, representing only sufficient food for the caloric

needs of an individual at “the mid-point of the low-active range (at least 30 minutes of walking

or similar exercise per day)” of the Canadian Estimated Energy Requirements, “plus 5% to

compensate for the additional energy needs of the cold climate.”8 Suffice it to say, the RNFB

accounts for the barest minimums of necessary food consumption, which makes its obscenely

high prices all the more distressing.

In Kugaaruk, the pilot community for the Kitikmeot Region of Nunavut, the price of the

food basket increased from $137 in March 2006 to $166 in November 2008 with no comparable

increase in income.9 The southern food basket being used as a reference point, from

Edmonton, Alberta, increased over that period too—but from a paltry $73 up to $83. No pricing

surveys have been ordered by the AANDC since then, but given the anecdotal data available

from individual consumers and through news reports, one can only assume that the price has

risen still higher.10 Using the data from November of 2008, the average Nunavummiut in

7. Canada. Nutrition North Canada. Report on the development of RFNB published in 2007.

Ottawa, 2007. Retrieved November 30, 2012.

8. Canada. Nutrition North Canada. Report on the development of RFNB published in 2007.

Ottawa, 2007. Retrieved November 30, 2012.

9. Canada. Aboriginal Affairs and Northern Development Canada. Revised Northern Food

Basket - Highlights of Price Survey Results for 2006, 2007 and 2008. Ottawa, 2008. Retrieved

December 2, 2012.

10. It is worth noting that these prices also reflect the policy of the time, the now-defunct

Food Mail program.

Kugaaruk was paying $8632 per year—a full 52% of their income—on feeding their family of

four the most meagre of diets. Account for the high birth rate (an average of 3.04 children per

woman in 200211) and the high rate of unemployment or partial employment and it becomes

obvious that the vast majority of income earned in Nunavut is spent on food staples.

In a singularly twenty-first century expression of food insecurity, obesity rates are also

disproportionately high in Nunavut. Across the country, 33% of Canadians are overweight and

18% are obese; in Nunavut, 36% of people are overweight and a full 26% are obese.12

Paradoxically, this does not discredit reports of starvation in the North, but rather supports it—

in a culture of (comparatively) cheap, calorie-dense foods, many are forced to consume large

quantities of sugars and starches when they are available, and precious little else the rest of the

time. Type 2 diabetes, once rare among the Inuit, has risen along with food prices, and is now

nearly on par with the national average, approaching the crisis rates for non-Inuit aboriginal

people.13 The health complications associated with obesity and Type 2 diabetes are many and

well-documented; in a territory where hospitals and healthcare practitioners are few and far

11. Canada. Canadian Council on Social Development. Demographics of the Canadian

Population. Ottawa, 2002. http://www.ccsd.ca/factsheets/demographics/. Retrieved December

1, 2012.

12. Canada. Statistics Canada. Health Indicator profile, age-standardized rates annual

estimates, by sex, Canada, provinces and territories. Ottawa, 2012. Retrieved December 2,

2012.

13. “Inuit Type 2 Diabetes Gap Worsens,” CBC News, May 10, 2011.

http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/north/story/2011/05/10/diabetes-inuit.html. Retrieved

December 2, 2012.

between, these health problems have the capacity to cause even more harm than they might in

urban environments.

In other words, Nunavut’s food crisis is a perfect storm of food insecurity, high prices,

low incomes, obesity, health problems, and limited food accessibility. A food subsidy program

cannot reasonably be expected to rectify all of these problems, but it cannot be considered

effective unless it lowers prices (and, pragmatically, makes healthy food options accessible to

the average Nunavummiut.) If this data collected pre-2011 serves as any indication, the Food

Mail program failed to achieve either of those objectives; however, the data from 2012

suggests that Nutrition North is following a similar path to failure in its first year of

implementation.

Challenges to Nunavut’s Food Supply

In face of all of these dire statistics, one is inclined to wonder why nothing substantial

has been done to rectify the situation in Nunavut thus far. After all, the territory has been in

existence for over a decade, and while its population is not large, it is constantly growing—

surely in a country as wealthy and socially conscious as Canada, such profound food insecurity

could not be left unattended for long? However, the food crisis in Nunavut is extremely

complicated, predominantly because of its location. The remoteness of most, if not all, of

Nunavut’s communities, paired with a lack of infrastructure for food production within the

territory itself makes importation of food into Nunavut a near-certainty. Vegetables and fruits,

flour and other starches, even the cheap and unhealthy processed foods which regrettably

make up so much of the diet for those with limited incomes: all must be brought into the

territory from cities hundreds, if not thousands, of kilometres away. (The obvious exception to

this principle is meat hunted from animals indigenous to the region—caribou, seal, ptarmigan,

etc.—which is called “country food.”)

Necessary supplies must arrive in the communities by plane, typically to tiny airports or

even tinier airstrips; as the global cost of fuel rises, so too does the cost of these crucial flights.

The airspace is difficult if not treacherous for even the most experienced of pilots, and this

paired with a small consumer base means that those few airlines that fly up north have a

powerful, monopolistic grip on the region. It is approximately 2,200km from Winnipeg to

Toronto, and with some shrewd negotiation one can purchase a standard round-trip ticket for

$500; the distance between Toronto and Iqaluit is roughly the same, at 2,300km, but finding a

round-trip ticket for less than $1,700 is virtually impossible.14 The same pricing applies to

shipping of freight: dry, non-perishable cargo is brought to the communities via Sealift, at a

price of between $238.87 to certain communities up to $420.45 per 1000kg (or 2.5 cubic

metres.)15 Obviously the transportation of perishable food is much more expensive, due to the

speed at which it must be transported, and the temperature controlled environments under

14. Data based on price comparisons accumulated from Google Flight, based on the prices of

Air Canada, West Jet, First Air and Canadian North, respectively, for a non-peak season round-

trip flight (January 9 and January 13, 2013.) Peak season flights were, obviously, significantly

more expensive in each case.

15. “Sealift Rates for the 2012 Season: Arctic Re-Supply of Dry Goods,” Nunavut Sealink &

Supply Inc. http://www.arcticsealift.com/en/medias/Globalnglaistarifs.pdf. Retrieved

December 3, 2012.

which it must be exclusively carried. The cost of moving anything to the North is significant;

perishable food even more so.

Attempts at establishing in-territory food infrastructures have been limited, due to lack

of capital investment, but also fraught with difficulty. To combat the high price of produce in

Nunavut, many environmentalists and local food activists proposed the construction of

greenhouses.16 These greenhouses would necessarily eliminate the cost of shipping, the volume

of food lost to spoilage in transport, and allow for greater variety in both produce grown and

consumed. However, they are far from being a catch-all solution—in communities where many

are forced to live in over-crowded homes, and the construction of any building is difficult and

drawn-out, the production of greenhouses has stalled.

The combination of the cost of production, the difficulties in building on permafrost, the

limited hours of sunlight (necessitating hundreds of hours of heating under high-wattage heat

lamps) has led the federal government to be somewhat hesitant to address the numerous

greenhouse grant proposals—even at the condemnation of the UN’s Special Rapporteur on the

Right to Food.17 Outside of a few small greenhouses, built and maintained by private citizens,

there has yet to be any success in developing greenhouse infrastructure in Nunavut. While the

expansion of existing country food industries and processing plants are potentially viable for

16. “Greenhouse Idea Grows in the Far North,” The Globe and Mail, July 16, 2012.

http://m.theglobeandmail.com/news/national/greenhouse-idea-grows-in-far-

north/article4421650/?service=mobile. Retrieved December 3, 2012.

17. “Greenhouse Idea Grows in the Far North,” The Globe and Mail, July 16, 2012.

http://m.theglobeandmail.com/news/national/greenhouse-idea-grows-in-far-

north/article4421650/?service=mobile. Retrieved December 3, 2012.

ensuring sufficient meat protein to all communities, additional initiatives must be put in place

to provide all Nunavummiut with access to sufficient and affordable fruits and vegetables.

Food Mail and Nutrition North

While food prices in the North, and in Nunavut in particular, are at an all-time high, the

persistence of these high prices is nothing new. Both the citizens of High Arctic and the

Canadian government have been aware of these challenges to food transportation since the

centralization of Inuit peoples more than a half century ago—however, it is only in the last two

decades that the question of food security has become exceptionally pertinent. The first

government effort to reduce the burden of food cost to Northerners began in 1986; the AANDC

first took measures to assess the cost of food to Northerners in 1990, at the release of the first

ever Northern Food Basket. This basket proved that the subsidy program was eminently

necessary, and yet did not do enough to make food accessible to the average family in the

territories.

The Northern Air Stage, or Food Mail Program, hereafter FMP, was administered by

Indian and Northern Affairs Canada. Their department received funding from the federal

government, which they passed on to Canada Post; Canada Post used this funding to cover the

cost of moving perishable foods rapidly by air into isolated communities. FMP did not provide

food, or even shipping, for free, but it did dramatically reduce the price of shipping perishables

into the North. Perishable food products could be shipped at a rate of $0.80 per kilogram, plus

a flat price of $0.75 per individual parcel.18

There were a wide variety of products which were included under the FMP’s shipping

scheme: dairy, meat, fruits and vegetables in fresh or frozen state, infant formula, bread, juice,

non-prescription medications, eggs, and “any combination of the above”—a nutritionally viable

frozen dinner, for instance. Not all food products were eligible under the FMP; sweets,

confectionary, sweetened pastries, pop, and other sugary products were not subsidized, and

would be shipped in at a slightly higher rate of $2.15 per kilogram; this was still substantially

less than unsubsidized shipping costs. Private citizens of the North paid the costs for the

shipping and the products themselves. Food retailers (such as North Mart) existed in the North,

but they predominantly sold the unsubsidized, ineligible food, and very few perishables. What

little they did sell was at disproportionate prices, often spoiled, and the subject of a great deal

of malaise among the people of the territories.

Independent audits of remote regions of the then-Northwest Territories revealed that

“from 100% to 123% of income was required [to pay for food] in Air Stage communities in

1990-1991 and from 86% to 125% in 1993,”19 indicating that the program had a significant

impact on pricing in those communities (although, as the auditor stated, “in most isolated

18. Canada. Aboriginal Affairs and Northern Development Canada. Information Sheet: Food

Security in the North: The Food Mail Program. September 15, 2010. http://www.aadnc-

aandc.gc.ca/eng/1100100035938/1100100035939. Retrieved December 3, 2012.

19. John Lawn et al., “Food affordability in air stage communities,” International Journal of

Circumpolar Health 57 (1998): 182.

communities, families would still find it difficult to afford a nutritious diet.”20) Audits

preformed by Indian and Northern Affairs a full decade later reported similar results: the Food

Mail Program definitely made food more accessible to Northerners, and particularly

Nunavummiut; however, by even the most conservative of estimates, it did not make food

accessible enough. The program was not an utter failure, but it could hardly be considered a

genuine success.

From July 1993, the rates of the FMP did not rise with inflation or the actual postal cost

of shipping to these communities, remaining stable, in an effort to keep food accessible.

However, the costs of fuel, food, and labour rose, and the population of the territories

(particularly Nunavut) grew, the FMP became increasingly expensive to run. In total, the

program cost the government approximately $20 million in its first fiscal year of 1986/1987; in

its final year, from 2009/2010, it was costing the country $65 million. To a conservative

government with a desire to reduce the national deficit, this was an undue cost for a program

which was, somewhat contentiously, a failure. That, paired with an increasingly uncomfortable

relationship between Canada Post and the federal government—as indicated by union tensions,

resulting in the Canadian Union of Postal Workers general strike—made the viability of FMP

ever more tenuous. On May 21, 2010, the Canadian government announced a new program,

called Nutrition North, which was to fully replace the Food Mail Program as of April 1, 2011.

20. John Lawn et al., “Food affordability in air stage communities,” International Journal of

Circumpolar Health 57 (1998): 187.

Nutrition North has three categories for food products: higher subsidy level, lower

subsidy level, and unsubsidized. Many of the foods subsidized by FMP remain so under

Nutrition North as “higher subsidy level,” for instance dairy, meat, fresh fruits and vegetables.

(Non-prescription drugs, infant care products, and many semi-processed foods such as cereal

and cheese have lost their subsidy.) Individual communities across northern Canada and the

territories are ranked based on isolation level, and subsidized accordingly. For instance, in

Qikiqtarjuaq on Baffin Island, high subsidy level foods are subsidized at $4.80 per unit and low

subsidy level foods at $3.00; conversely, in Grise Fiord, high subsidy foods are discounted

$16.00 per unit and low subsidy foods at $14.20.

Unlike the FMP, Nutrition North operates on a principle of subsidizing the retailer,

rather than the consumer. Suppose that a litre of milk costs $4 in Southern Canada, but the

combination of shipping and transit brings the price of that same litre up to $13 in Rankin Inlet.

The retailer selling that product will be subsidized by Nutrition North for the southern half of

the shipping cost (from the initial shipping point to the Northern Entry Point, typically in

Churchill), while the federal government subsidizes the shipping from the Northern Entry Point

to the isolated community in question. In order to be eligible, a retailer must have applied and

been approved by the AANDC.21 They are required by Nutrition North to pass on the subsidy to

their customers as part of their contract as an approved retailer; however, if recent protests are

any indication, many retailers are not following through. If the subsidies were being offset from

retailer to consumer, as in the proposed plan, Nutrition North would be more than meeting its

21. Canada. Nutrition North Canada. About the Program. March 30, 2012.

http://nutritionnorthcanada.ca/abt/index-eng.asp. Retrieved December 3, 2012.

aims—instead, it has made many foods more inaccessible to consumers. For instance, the

frozen meals and pizzas once subsidized under the FMP (because they were a combination of

foods covered under the subsidy, for instance, frozen vegetables and dairy products) are now

unsubsidized at any level.

One could potentially argue that this change in subsidization promotes healthier eating

by making convenience foods prohibitively expensive—in an attempt to combat the high

obesity rate in the North—but that would fly in the face of most Canadian economic and social

policies, which promote healthy eating through education and making healthy foods less

expensive, not the inverse.

A conservative government, built on purportedly strong fiscal values and a belief in free

enterprise and free will, cannot in good faith endorse a policy which rewards monopolistic

control of markets and a stranglehold the people unlucky enough to need them. And even this

“health” argument crumbles when one considers the new policy to eliminate non-prescription

drugs and hygiene products from the subsidy program; intentionally or unintentionally

rendering these items prohibitively expensive serves no health or wellness function to the

community at large. If only the Nunavummiut, who are predominantly Inuit, are having certain

foods denied to them by government policies, then the policy is not acting in the general public

interest; it is attempting to control the choices of a minority group by attacking their purchasing

power. For a capitalist society to prohibitively price, tax, or otherwise financially control an

indigenous minority group is nothing short of neocolonialism and must be addressed as such.

Conclusion

Of the $55 million dollars spent on subsidizing food in Nutrition North’s first

fiscal year, from April 2011 to March 2012, $30,747,379—more than half of total expenditure

on food subsidization—was spent in Nunavut alone.22 Nunavut reported 31,906 citizens at the

last census; in other words, the Canadian government is subsidizing the food of Nunavummiut

at $963.68 per head annually… Yet those same individuals are paying more than triple the

national average for the food products they consume.

The citizens of Nunavut are eminently aware of this, if their protest signs are any

indication—from Iqaluit to Igloolik, one theme repeated on those hurried cardboard signs was

Nutrition North is not working. Indeed, Nutrition North cost just $3 million dollars less in its first

year of implementation than the final year of the Food Mail Program; yet, over that year, the

cost of living, and specifically, the cost of eating in Nunavut skyrocketed. The government (and

by extension, the southern taxpayer) is barely benefiting, the retailers have obtained a price

monopoly which does them no good as their products spoil on the shelves, and the citizens are

obviously not benefiting—what was proposed as a solution to the expensive problem of feeding

the North is developing into a zero-sum game for all.

If there are to be legitimate solutions for Nunavut, and other isolated communities in

Canada, then they must be arrived at through a means other than those presented by Nutrition

North and the federal government. Evidently, in this particular instance, putting control over

food distribution and subsidy distribution in the hands of private retailers has not paid the

22. Canada. Nutrition North Canada. 2011-2012 Full Fiscal Year: Data per Capita. August 8,

2012. http://nutritionnorthcanada.ca/faq/rpt2011-12-eng.asp#ac4. Retrieved December 2,

2012.

dividends that were anticipated at any level. It has only bred a culture of starvation,

dissatisfaction, price gouging, and social resistance: none of the things one seeks in a

government-sponsored initiative, of course!

In the wake of Nutrition North and the ensuing the food protests, a woman named

Leesee Papatsie started a Facebook group called “Feeding My Family,” in the hopes of creating

a space where families in the North could share both their frustrations and their suggestions for

navigating the difficult food markets of the territory. Eighteen months later, the group has

20,135 members (roughly two-thirds of the population of Nunavut), who largely post helpful

information for their fellow Northerners. Leesee has consequently been named “Northerner of

the Year” by Up Here magazine—and her story is indicative of a profound social change in the

North.

These food solutions so desperately needed in the territories are unlikely to arrive top-

down from Ottawa: they will emerge from the grassroots, from the people of Nunavut. If

Nunavut is ever to be fully fed, then those grassroots groups must be nurtured.