High Food Prices, Hunger and Poverty Up in the North

Written by Luis Fernando Arce, Chief Interviewer

Dismissing the Findings

Image obtained via quinet on Flickr Creative Commons

In the frigid North of this beautiful country, residents are paying ludicrous prices for food and other basic provisions. We’re talking about $20 for a head of cabbage, $40 for 40 diapers, $82 for a case of ginger-ale and $104 for a case of bottled water! What they spend on a few basic needs is equivalent to what people in southern Canada spend in a week.

On May 16, United Nations Special-Rapporteur-on-the-Right-to-Food, Olivier De Schutter, wrapped up his 11-day fact-finding mission through poor, inner-city neighbourhoods in central Canada and other remote aboriginal communities. His findings sparked commotion in political circles, eliciting indignation and resentment from the Conservative government, to which the opposition parties have responded with harsh criticism. Added to this is an open letter signed by more than 150 organizations and individuals asking the government to apologize for what they consider an attack on the UN.

At a press conference in Ottawa shortly before the end of the mission, De Schutter announced that three million out of a population of 34 million people (or more than 900,000 households) in central Canada are “food-insecure;” one in ten families with children under six years old cannot meet their food needs; and two-thirds of the population suffers from obesity due to junk food being much cheaper than healthy food.

[pullquote]$20 for a head of cabbage, $40 for 40 diapers, $82 for a case of ginger-ale and $104 for a case of bottled water! [/pullquote]He stated that it is “time for Canada to adopt a National Right to Food Strategy,” which would include reforms to current subsidies and ensure living wages. He went on to criticize the government for not ensuring province transfer payments on social services.

De Schutter also expressed disappointment in not being invited to meet with any cabinet ministers, which he says is traditionally what happens during these types of expeditions. It “betrays a lack of understanding of what hunger is about,” he told Postmedia News. He also noted that there are severe “blind-spots in the current policies that the government cannot continue to ignore.”

Unfortunately, his findings – which have been echoed by previous parliamentary committees and other independent research – fell upon deaf ears.

Health Minister Leona Aglukkaq dismissed the apparent gravity of the situation by calling De Schutter “patronizing” and “ill-informed,” alluding to the fact that he had not actually been to northern Canada. She suggested the real threat are environmental and animal rights groups that have curbed aboriginal communities’ feeding patterns by protesting game hunting in general. Immigration Minister Jason Kenney also jumped on the wagon saying that the mission was “ridiculous.”

He added, “It would be our hope that the contributions we make to the United Nations are used to help starving people in developing countries, not to give lectures to wealthy and developed countries like Canada.”

The spokesperson for John Baird, Minister of Foreign Affairs, shared similar sentiments when he suggested that, because the world has such dire hunger problems, the UN should make better use of its time rather than going after a country like Canada.

Protesting the Dismissals

The first outcries to this came in the form of the open letter – comprised of a plethora of signatories including politicians and organizations such as former NDP Leader Ed Broadbent, former Progressive Conservative Member of Parliament Flora MacDonald and Amnesty International.

The letter pointed out that De Schutter had spoken with First Nations communities in northern Manitoba to get their side of the story. It also highlighted that James Anaya, UN Special Rapporteur on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, had raised similar concerns about the living conditions of Aboriginal People in the Attawapiskat First Nation in Northern Ontario in 2011. Aboriginal Affairs Minister Jon Duncan viewed the letter as a mere “publicity stunt.”

According to a National Post article, Canada’s record for not heeding UN Human Rights Bodies’ recommendations is poor. It cited another event in 2009 when the federal government rejected a key recommendation made by the United Nations Human Rights Council’s Universal Periodical Review, which called for the country to implement a national strategy to reduce poverty. Bruce Porter, UN Director at Social Rights Advocacy Center, suggested that Canada has adopted a “bad attitude…reflected in its unease to see access to food as a human right and its refusal to declare social and economic rights as on par with political and civil rights.”

Image obtained via quinet on Flickr Creative Commons

At the grassroots level, the government’s attitude has angered many people – particularly from First Nations communities – and driven them to protest.

Last Saturday, Leeslee Papatsie – founder of Facebook group Feed My Family, with more than 18,000 members – organized a protest in an empty parking lot across from her city’s grocery store where more than 30 members of the community gathered.

They say the limited number of retailers leaves them little choice as to where they can buy food; and the new Nutrition North Program provides subsidies on healthy, perishable foods directly to the retailers rather than the shippers, like the old Food Mail Program did. Even Aglukkaq “has previously blamed retailers,” reads a Huffington Post article.

Ron Elliot, MLA for the High Arctic Communities (Grise Ford, Resolute, Arctic Bay), concedes that the Nutrition North program has worked in subsidizing nutritious foods; but the price of some basics, such as baby formula, diapers or flour, are still way too high and residents have no other choice but to pay the high prices.

Northwest Company owns most of northern Canada’s grocery stores. The vice president of Northwest Company, Michael McMullen, says the high cost of doing business in the north is due to transportation costs. When comparing the amount of cash needed to stock a Giant Tiger store in Winnipeg (where Northwest Company is located) and one across the border in Manitoba, he says the former would cost less than $200,000, while the latter would need more than $2 million. They would need ten times the inventory in the north to do the same level of business as in the south, he clarified. He also noted that there has been a 15 percent reduction in costs through the Nutrition North program.

[pullquote]Inuit living in the territories made about $43,378 less than non-aboriginals, with a yearly average income of $16,669 according to Statistics Canada .[/pullquote]But only the items on the eligibility list are subsidized, so infant and women’s products are not included. The list is set to be trimmed this October.

Other citizens from the south, including some of the government officials mentioned above, have posed the question: why not move or hunt?

According to various reports by previous UN Human Rights Bodies and by Jennifer Wakegijig, Nunavut’s territorial nutritionist, deeply rooted income inequality and poverty issues plaguing Aboriginal residents make these options quite arduous.

In 2005, Inuit living in the territories made about $43,378 less than non-aboriginals, with a yearly average income of $16,669 according to Statistics Canada .

Wakegijig also found that, among other issues, three of four Inuit pre-schoolers are food insecure; that half of the children between 11 and 15 years-old go to bed hungry; and that two-thirds of Inuit parents run out of food on a regular basis. Added to this is the fact that the average age in Nunavut is 24, meaning that most of the population is not within age to contribute to household incomes.

As for moving, Elliot stated, “If you can’t afford to feed your family, you can’t afford to fly.” Indeed, within Nunavut a one-way ticket south may run up to $2,000. Hunting, according to Papatsie, can be a two to three day expedition (missing work), and the equipment, which includes snowmobiles and other expensive gear, are simply way too pricey for someone living paycheque to paycheque; Elliot estimates the price to hunt is around $150 per day. According to Inuit Tapirisat Kanatami, Canada’s national Inuit group, more than 42 percent of Inuit agree that hunting is too expensive. Former MP, Jack Anawak, also agrees.

Manitoba’s premier, Greg Selinger, says he is working with local private food providers to try to find a solution and to lower the price of basics such as milk, which is about $7 per litre. Together with politicians from the three northern territories as well as from Labrador and northern Quebec, Selinger is pressuring the federal government to expand its $54 million Nutrition North Program, and to implement a national strategy that would ensure that retailers pass on the savings of subsidies through lower prices. Manitoba has also implemented school nutrition programs, funded community gardens and greenhouses, and is giving out loans to residents to buy large freezers.

The Nunavut government has made poverty and food security top priorities in their agendas as well. It has already implemented a school-breakfast program throughout all its communities, as well as cooking and prenatal nutrition classes. It has also formed a Food Security Coalition with representatives from six different government departments and Inuit organizations to ask, among other things, for aid in order to build better infrastructure and thereby reduce transportation costs.

The Conservative government has not yet issued an apology for its comments towards De Schutter’s missions or expressed any game-plan to tackle the rampant hunger problem up in our Great North.

Sources:

– CBC
– CTV
– HuffingtonPost
– ipolitics.ca
– NationalPost
– Yahoo News (Human Rights advocates demand federal government apology)
– Yahoo News (Canada Food Envoy Fight)
– Yahoo News ( Northerners blast high prices for basic food)