Rethinking Food in Canada’s Changing North

In Nunavut, this is something families deal with far more often than anywhere else in Canada.

Food costs more.

It's harder to get, not because the need is different, but because everything it takes to get that food here is more complicated.

But that doesn't mean it has to stay this way.

There are real challenges.

Many of them can change, and there are people and organizations working to make that happen.

But right now, the pressure on families is still growing.

Do you f- uh, feel that food insecurity is easing, or do you feel it is intensifying right now?

I think that the continued rise in grocery prices has continues to hit families really hard.

Um, since COVID, we've seen about a 40% increase in the attendance at school breakfast programs that we support, and that's for a lot of reasons.

Um, but notably is the continued increase in food costs is putting so much downward pressure on families that, again, there might be food available in the house, but the food starts to become a little bit s- uh, more scarce, or the food becomes a little bit less high quality.

Canadians have definitely felt grocery prices rise nationwide, but it's different in Nunavut.

Here, families are paying about one and a half times, let me say that again, one and a half times more for the same groceries as people in the south.

And the same is true for school breakfast programs.

Usually, uh, in the south, a, a cost of a breakfast in a school setting is about two to three dollar per child per day.

And we, we asked a, a school principal and, uh, uh, about their cost and what would be needed to ideally provide a very robust quality program at their school.

And according to their calculation, they were, uh, uh, talking about a, a 12 to $14 per child per day.

Two dollars in the south, 12 to 14 in Nunavut for the same breakfast, for the same kid, same need, very different price.