Researchers to probe who spends how much in Nunavik

Fruit juice enjoys a subsidy of 40 per cent off its regular price in Nunavik stores since Quebec bumped its cost of living subsidies to the region. (PHOTO BY SARAH ROGERS)

Laval University research Gerard Duhaime is leading a new, one-of-a-kind survey in Nunavik next year to track the region’s spending habits. (PHOTO BY SARAH ROGERS)

KUUJJUAQ — Researchers from Laval university in Quebec City will launch a first-of-its-kind study across the region in January 2015 to track the spending habits of Nunavimmiut.

The study will involve surveying families from a number of communities in Nunavik to examine what products they’re purchasing and what their weekly budgets look like.

“What we’re doing is going into the household to try to document what your household buys,” said Gérard Duhaime, the Laval researcher who is leading the study, at a Kativik Regional Government meeting last week.

Duhaime has also led the Nunavik Comparative Price Index study in past years which compare the cost of grocery and household items in Nunavik with those in the South.

“It’s one thing to note prices, but it tells us nothing about what the people actually buy,” Duhaime said. “The results of this will tell us which Nunavik households are the most badly hit by high costs of living and which budgetary items are the most badly hit.”

To do that, local employment officers will visit households in a handful of Nunavik communities. Researchers are looking at six different communities, each representing the region’s different populations, geography or aircraft service.

Selected households will keep a daily journal of their expenses over a two-week period, Duhaime said. Then those prices will be compared to the cost of the same items in southern Canadian centres.

The $500,000 survey, funded by the Quebec government, the KRG and Makivik Corp., will likely take a year to complete, with results ready by May 2016.

That coincides with the end of Quebec’s most recent subsidy agreement with Nunavik, which saw the region’s cost-of-living subsidies more than double between 2014 and 2016.

An annual subsidy of roughly $5 million a year for regional cost-of-living reduction measures was first put in place in 2007.

In December 2013, the Quebec government bumped that to more than $10 million a year for the next three-year period.

Before Quebec committed to a longer term solution for the high cost of living in Nunavik, however, the provincial government wants to better understand the consumer habits of Nunavimmiut.

“According to the research that’s available, we can speak to a 35 to 40 per cent poverty rate in Nunavik,” Duhaime told KRG councillors in Kuujjuaq last week. “But statistics don’t often take into account the high cost of living. When we do, it doubles the rate.”

Recent statistics show that 72 per cent of Nunavik households earn less than $32,000, while 82 per cent earn under $42,000.

“It’s a big problem,” Duhaime added. “It means that even if you earn a pay cheque, sometimes this pay cheque is not enough to make ends meet.

“The best I can do is give you a clear portrait, and then it will be up to you what to do with it.”

In the meantime, the KRG and Makivik have used those increased Quebec subsidies to expand their six existing cost-of-living programs, which offset the cost of food, household items, gasoline and hunting equipment.

Since Sept. 1, Nunavik’s food and other essentials subsidy program has been expanded to include 1,500 grocery items. Some of the new items include toilet paper, dry pasta, mayonnaise and frozen pizza.

Those items receive a 20 to 40 per cent rebate, separate from any subsidy available through the federal Nutrition North program.

A program that subsidizes the cost of gasoline in Nunavik has also been revamped to offer a bigger subsidy to Inuit drivers in the region.

The KRG and Makivik announced last week that starting Oct. 1, the new gasoline program will offer a 40 per cent per litre discount to Nunavimmiut, but only to those who are beneficiaries of the James Bay and Northern Quebec Agreement.