Food insecurity a persistent problem in Canada’s Arctic
Few Inuit families can afford $28 cabbage, $105 bottled water
“Old Mother Hubbard went to the cupboard to get her poor dog a bone. When she got there, the cupboard was bare ...”
There is a place where Old Mother Hubbard’s predicament is a fact of life, where 70 per cent of preschool children do not have daily access to nutritious food and 60 per cent of adults say there are days their family has no food at all. Children forage in dumps for expired food discarded by stores.
We’ve seen food insecurity in many parts of the developing world. However the place we’re talking about isn’t in the developing world — it’s in Canada.
The rate of food insecurity in Canadian Arctic communities is six times the national average, according to Inuit Tapiriit Kanatami (ITK), an organization that represents Canadian Inuit. It is the highest rate of food insecurity in the world for aboriginal people living in a developed country. The World Health Organization defines food insecurity as a lack of access to “sufficient, safe, nutritious food to maintain a healthy and active life.”
More compelling than statistics are the stories on the Facebook page Feeding My Family. A single mother goes without meals so her kids can eat; parents keep their kids home from school because they don’t want to send them on an empty stomach; a family visits relatives just to get a meal.
Inuit cousins Leesee Papatsie and Eric Joamie were outraged with the hunger in their communities. They turned to Facebook to make the rest of Canada aware of the food crisis they face. Within 10 days of its debut, Feeding My Family had gained more than 10,000 followers.
Papatsie and Joamie believe Canadians would be shocked to learn what food costs in Canada’s Arctic. We certainly were shocked when we visited Iqaluit, but even more so by the photos posted by Inuit shoppers in other communities in Nunavut’s Baffin region. The price of a head of cabbage in Arctic Bay was $28.54; six cans of concentrated orange juice in Igloolik were $51.89, and a 24-pack of bottled water in Clyde River was $104.99!
Food is expensive because it must be flown to remote communities from cities such as Winnipeg, Montreal and Ottawa. A federal government program — Nutrition North Canada — provides subsidies for some food. However the Nunavut and the Northwest Territories governments say consumers are not benefiting from the subsidies and have called for the auditor general to investigate the program.
High food prices devastate Inuit families. According to a 2012 study by the American Society for Nutrition, the average weekly cost of groceries for a family of four is $380. The study found that almost half of Inuit adults earn about $20,000 a year, but pay more than $19,000 annually for food. Papatsie explained this leads to a vicious cycle where one grocery bill devours most of a paycheque so people must borrow to make it to the next payday. Come that payday they must pay off the debt, leaving even less money to buy food and creating the need to borrow even more. In Joamie’s community of Pangnirtung, 300 km north of Iqaluit, people phone radio talk shows pleading for listeners to lend them money or donate food.
The only reason people haven’t starved, said Papatsie, is because the Inuit communities traditionally share with those in need, and because they can hunt to make up the shortfall.
But even hunting may soon fail to meet the desperate need. The cost of buying and maintaining hunting equipment and the snowmobiles necessary for travelling far out onto the tundra can be tens of thousands of dollars—out of reach for many. And for those who are able to hunt, the chances of finding game are decreasing. According to the ITK, over the last 20 years Nunavut and the Northwest Territories have seen a reduction in caribou herds — one of the primary traditional Inuit sources of food — with population declines as high as 95 per cent in some areas.
The food situation in Canada’s Arctic is garnering international attention. Last December, the United Nations Special Rapporteur on the Right to Food criticized Canada for failing to adequately address Inuit food security.
The federal government must work with Arctic communities to ensure that programs intended to provide affordable access to nutritious food actually work. And Canada is long overdue in developing a national food policy that recognizes access to food as a basic human right.
In a rich country like ours, Mother Hubbard should be a nursery rhyme, not a real-life horror story.
Canada is long overdue in developing a national food policy that recognized access to food as a basic human right.