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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 readin English and InuktitutI need milk. These organized protests over food security and pricing in Canadas 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 preexisting 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 consumerwhich is to say, citizenor 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 Nunavuts 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 securitywhich 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.

Nunavuts 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 sufcient, 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 turkeyfor 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 Dont Want Kids to Be Hungry, Up Here: Explore Canadas 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 2005at the most recent censusthe 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, Nunavuts 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 ones 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 toobut 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 yeara full 52% of their incomeon 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, Nunavuts 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 Nunavuts 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 Nunavuts 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 regioncaribou, 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 roundtrip 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 solutionin 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 proposalseven at the condemnation of the UNs 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-farnorth/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-farnorth/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 agohowever, 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 FMPs 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 abovea 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.aadncaandc.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 governmentas indicated by union tensions, resulting in the Canadian Union of Postal Workers general strikemade 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.

aimsinstead, 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 expensivein an attempt to combat the high obesity rate in the Northbut 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 Norths first fiscal year, from April 2011 to March 2012, $30,747,379more than half of total expenditure on food subsidizationwas 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 indicationfrom 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 benefitingwhat 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 t he 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 magazineand 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 topdown 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.

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