More money needed to control cost of living in Nunavik: KRG treasurer
Current cost-of-living agreement with Quebec government expires in 2025; talks for new deal likely to start soon
Kativik Regional Government treasurer Chahine Noujeim, centre, says more money should be given to Nunavik by the Quebec government to reduce the cost of living and inflation. (Photo by Cedric Gallant)
Nunavimmiut need more help to deal with inflation, the treasurer for Kativik Regional Government told councillors Thursday.
Negotiations between KRG and the Quebec government are expected to start soon over a new cost-of-living reduction program, which will provide financial assistance for people living in Nunavik.
“The inflation has had a big impact on the region,” treasurer Chahine Noujeim said.
Noujeim cited a new report by Laval University on the price dynamics in Nunavik. It determined that in 2023, Nunavik grocery prices overall were 33.6 per cent higher than in southern Québec.
The report will be used by KRG to bolster its argument for increased financial assistance when it begins negotiating a new cost-of-living reduction program with the provincial government.
The current agreement was negotiated in 2019, and expires March 31, 2025.
In the report’s first edition, published in 2016, the university found that a food basket that cost $100 in Québec as a whole would cost $154.60 in Nunavik.
Under the current agreement that ends next year, the Quebec government provides $115 million over six years.
Noujeim said that to deal with inflation that started during the COVID-19 pandemic, “we need more money to be able to expand the items that can be subsidized in the stores.”
“The money we have, it was good, but it was not enough when we had an issue like the pandemic and the inflation,” he said.
“We could not do more because we did not have enough money to do more.”
The current agreement is separated into six programs offering assistance for elders, reduced airfare, subsidized gas prices, country food community support, help with household appliances, and assistance to purchase harvesting equipment.
According to the 2024 version of Laval’s report, in-store price subsidy programs have had a substantial impact in lowering prices in Nunavik.
“This is the only way we can have the prices go down in an important way,” Noujeim said of getting increased assistance from the government.
“This is why we are stressing this to the government in the new agreement.”
He said more items should be included in the next reduction program.
Inukjuak representative Sarollie Weetaluktuk, who attended the meeting through videoconference, said elders need improved support.
“Inuit who are very well off are better served than elders,” he said in Inuktitut, explaining that many elders have no purchasing power. “There are many elders who have no means.”
“We have residents in the communities that have to go do their laundry at their people’s homes because the inflation is way too high,” even though there is assistance for household appliances in the agreement, Weetaluktuk said.
KRG has not announced yet when it will begin negotiating a new cost-of-living agreement with the provincial government.
What are KRG’s plans to enhance job creation?
Plenty of jobs, few people applying and willing to work.
It concerns me how weak the system is from neglect and rip off. It seems when these subsidies are put in place, the store prices increase in the same plan and timing. The whole program needs a few alert and awarded watch persons to ensure that this doesn’t fall to that kind of abuse. Next time you go out and purchase one of the KRG subsidies items think about that, and be ware you may be ripped off at the stores level in the intent to save.
What does the staff and board at Kativik Regional Government plan to do to reduce COSTS?
Yes you do ask a good question, but the question is old, outdated and useless, not to do with you, but you’re better off asking for summer to come in January, which is more realistic to happen.
No worries. They got us Nunavummiut to finance it thru their outrageously high airfare program thru first air.
People traveling too much, wasting public money, and waste of their own too. That why prices are higher. Buying behaviour needs people to watch and wake up , and stop wasting and throwing out to local dumb and stay in one place with treatment for your itch to roam. There’s more money spend on waste in Nunavik, than anywhere on the planet. Go look at kuujjuaq dump and be enlighten.
Inukjuak representative Sarollie Weetaluktuk, who attended the meeting through videoconference, said elders need improved support.
“Inuit who are very well off are better served than elders,” he said in Inuktitut, explaining that many elders have no purchasing power. “There are many elders who have no means.”
. How??
Elders get their elders pensions and usually coop store gives discount to the elders. Elders who dwells in NHB aren’t paying a lot either. Inummariumut. Are their adult kids just using their retired savings and pension plans ?
I myself living alone am already going through a lot of struggle of paying groceries as well although i am not an elder. EQUALITY PLEASE no matter the younger or elders. We are all just trying to have food on the table.