Ulaakut. Qujannamiik, Mr. Chair, for today's invitation to speak to the House of Commons Standing Committee on Indigenous and Northern Affairs about food security in Nunavut.
As mentioned, my name is Lindsay. I am the mother of three young boys. I have lived in Iqaluit, Nunavut, since 2011. I have been filling the role of the director of poverty reduction since 2015, as well as, in partnership with Nunavut Tunngavik, the role of co-chair of the Nunavut Food Security Coalition.
According to the 2017 Canadian community health survey, 79% of Nunavut's children live in food-insecure households, and 57% of households in the territory are food insecure.
The Nunavut food security action plan speaks about how “Nunavummiut have a long-standing intricate knowledge of how to obtain, store, prepare, and consume country food.” “The Makimaniq Plan 2”, Nunavut’s shared approach to poverty reduction, speaks about how, in traditional Inuit society, “there was a...well established...system of parents and grandparents passing knowledge along to children.” However, today, much of this has been broken as the result of federal colonial policies from the 1950s and 1960s, including relocation into communities, relocation to the High Arctic, residential schools, tuberculosis interventions and sled dog killings.
As a result, today there is a lot of concern that country food skills are not being passed to younger generations and that similar skills related to store-bought food are not being acquired.
Food insecurity in Nunavut is complex, and the required solutions and supports are wide-ranging, from hunting and harvesting supports and infrastructure, to fisheries and marine infrastructure, to airport and cargo infrastructure, to mental health and addictions, to housing, to local workforce development, to a strengthened not-for-profit sector, to community food infrastructure, to nutrition, and to financial, life and food skills.
However, today I will focus my remarks on just a few of these: the importance of country food, the importance of sharing food, community food infrastructure gaps that exist in Nunavut, and current goals to build the capacity of community food organizations.
In 2019, the Qikiqtani Inuit Association published “Food Sovereignty and Harvesting” and called for a shift from thinking about food security to thinking about food sovereignty and empowering Inuit to feed their own communities and control their food systems and supply. Country food is not only nutritious; it also plays a critical cultural and healing role in Nunavut communities. The support of young hunter mentorship programs; increased resources for hunter and trapper organizations and community freezers; supports to cover the high prices of gas and hunting and cold weather necessities and supplies; and skill-building opportunities and tools to be able to repair ski-doos and build komatiks are all ways that access to country food can be improved.
The Nunavut food security action plan highlights the critical role that community-based programs play in supporting food sharing and in strengthening connections within communities, as well as in contributing to the nutritional needs of vulnerable populations such as children, single parents and elders. Indeed, a rich diversity of community-based programming and resources has been developed within Nunavut. However, many of our conversations with community food organizations and community members have emphasized the fragile nature of these operations. Many struggle to access the various applications for funding and to even find space in which to run their programs, and their initiatives are ad hoc and come and go without consistent staff and community member availability to provide on-the-ground coordination.
The vision of the Nunavut Food Security Coalition is to foster the development and growth of community food organizations that are able to sustain more comprehensive, innovative, culturally appropriate and sustainable food system projects and life skills projects. To realize this, there is a need for more start-up supports, capacity-strengthening opportunities, multi-year and core funding, and access to reliable community social infrastructure.
I would also like to share how the design of many federal programs intended to address food insecurity in the north have made it difficult, if not impossible, for Nunavut communities to access funding for their priority needs.
Recent changes to the Nutrition North Canada program, new initiatives announced by Agriculture Canada under the national food policy, and recent COVID-19 emergency food security investments have all been welcomed in Nunavut. However, all of these programs could have been designed and delivered in ways that could have had a greater and more sustainable impact in Nunavut and that could better meet Nunavut's priorities.
Cost-matching criteria, language and Internet barriers, eligible and ineligible costs, and contributions and maximum funding levels that do not take into account either the high costs of the north or the capacity and infrastructure deficits of the north are but some examples of the challenges faced. Programs designed within the Nunavut context could go a long way to supporting food sovereignty in Nunavut's communities.
There has also been, more recently, concern that the funding that has been made available this past year to meet the urgency of COVID-19 will not be sustained to meet what has been long-standing urgency of unacceptable food insecurity levels in Nunavut.
In closing, I would like to share with you an excerpt from Makimaniq Plan 2's definition of poverty in Nunavut:
Many Inuit today have successfully bridged two worlds—life on the land, and life in the settlements—but many others have not. Those who have not require more support to meet their basic needs, to acquire the knowledge and skills to live either a traditional or a modern way of life or a mix of both, and to participate fully and take leadership in the decisions that affect their lives.
Qujannamiik, Mr. Chair. Taima.