Nunavut mayors concerned about end of food voucher program
Funding no longer universal, instead based on individual needs of each child; researchers say its end will lead to a food-security crisis
Solomon Awa is seen at the Nunavut Association of Municipalities meeting in Iqaluit last November. As president of the Nunavut Association of Municipalities, he says the territory’s mayors are worried by the loss of the universal hamlet food voucher program. (File photo by Arty Sarkisian)
The organization representing Nunavut municipalities is “deeply concerned” about the end of the hamlet universal food-voucher program under the Inuit Child First Initiative.
“[The association] remains deeply concerned about the implications of this decision, particularly given the ongoing challenges related to food insecurity in Nunavut,” Soloman Awa, president of the Nunavut Association of Municipalities and mayor of Iqaluit, said in a letter sent Monday to Nunatsiaq News on behalf of the territory’s mayors.
Awa confirmed that Indigenous Services Canada officially told them about the end of the universal food voucher programs for the 2025-26 fiscal year, which Nunatsiaq News also reported last week.
The federally funded hamlet food-voucher program provided $500 monthly for every Inuit child 18 years and younger for food plus an additional $250 monthly for children under the age of four for items like diapers and baby formula.
The program was popular and was used in 24 of Nunavut’s 25 municipalities. Its cancellation was met with disappointment from children’s advocates and leaders across Nunavut.
“People did tell us that they would go hungry for a few days in order to make sure their kids had food to eat. There is no reason to think that’s not the situation we are headed for,” Vandna Sinha, an associate research professor at the University of Colorado Boulder, said of her work in the North in an interview earlier this month.
Awa said the Nunavut Association of Municipalities has written multiple letters urging the federal government to renew funding for the food-voucher program.
Until early March, it was uncertain whether the Inuit Child First Initiative, which funded the program, would continue beyond its scheduled March 31 expiry date.
On March 8 in Ottawa, Gary Anandasangaree, the Crown-Indigenous relations minister, announced a one-year, $121.7-million extension of the initiative on behalf of Indigenous Services Canada.
The universal food-voucher program has ended. Now, requests for food-based funding under the initiative must follow new guidelines that require an assessment of the needs of each Inuit child on a case-by-case basis.
“We are committed to continuing our advocacy for culturally appropriate and equitable supports that meet the real needs of Inuit children and families,” Awa said in his letter.
We are all getting to soft. Reliant on free hand outs. Kids are feed every day at school already… if parents make them get up in the morning and go.
If you have 6 kids under 18 (there are a lot of families with this many) they get as much money as a full time GN employee ($78,000 after taxes are taken). and that is before you include Income support if you dont work. and if you do also have a parent with a job then you are what is classified as RICH.
It’s not a free handout it’s called a safety net which most compassionate government that helps out less fortunate members of society face! Majority of Inuit living in poverty so get off your high horse and show some compassion
Gimme gimme gimme!!! While us working class are paying for it all! Get your free education and do something and get a job!
Not a free handout? Did you read what he said? $78000 is more than a lot of GN workers. And for what, babies cranking out more babies. Why bother to work if your better off having more babies. These new babies will go into society looking for their free handouts too. The cycle continues on and on, never to stop ever…
What’s your strategy or solution to tackle poverty in Nunavut?
We need more housing available, we need to take education seriously, and we need to hold us adults accountable and provide safe homes for the kids.
For more housing there needs to be money to pay for it. Rent and Mortgages by people living in them means getting a JOB. When parents are getting up and going to work that will help the kids go to school to get an education (which will help them get even better jobs). and when parents have to get up in the morning and go to work that would mean not partying every chance they get and creating houses that are not safe for the kids.
-dont drop out of school cause its boring or cause you dont like your teacher
-get a job, get up every morning, no excuses, work hard and don’t complain
-don’t have kids until your financially stable enough to support a family
-don’t waste money on cigarettes gambling and expensive toys like trucks and snowmachines, unless absolutely necessary
-make smart decisions at the grocery store. Ready made processed foods like pizzas, slushies and hungry man’s are not smart decisions.
Only in morning they get eat cereal and yogurt, what about after schools, hot meals at home
You have them and you can’t feed them, why have them? Why is the govt or taxpayer responsible for feeding your kids??
“Funding no longer universal, instead based on individual needs of each child”
It was never universal, it was based on race. It is now needs-based, as it should be.
Exactly. How does the continuos hand-outs make anyone feel like there is
a need to work. It doesn’t. And those that do work make less than those who get the handouts. Stop enabling. Time to make people put in the work and effort to earn money. You want children, you need a job to support them. It’s no the government’s responsibility to raise your kids. Be part of the solution, not the continual problem.
That being said, our government needs to create more realistic job opportunities for people, so they can get their foot in the door so to speak. Recognize the current working population’s level of capabilities, and create jobs that they are qualified for. Give people a reason to want to contribute to society and in turn you’re creating a healthier lifestyle for them and their kids. Kids go to school because parents have to work. Parents work because they want to support their kids and feel useful in society.
Stop talking about needing money to build houses. People need to feel safe and secure in their own space – we NEED housing!. We need government to step up and make progressive, continual action instead of just words.
26 years of Nunavut being a territory and we don’t have much to show in terms of bettering our communities.
Houses = safety
Secure, safe households = happy people
Happy people = betterment of society!
We see hear everyday after day people’s posting for left overs often now and why is this !,
How will our children to become home owners in this day of cost of living who lives as grown up still living with family?,
Sad but true future because of poor leadership who thinks things are running well as greedy has took over right from bottom ups to federal government levels…
They got our votes we are back in the storage they don’t care about us
The Mayor is concerned so is NTI and the GN concerned too?
I just love how there are families out there with 6 kids and unemployed parents who were receiving upwards of $88,000 (tax-free) per year in Canada Child Benefits and Food Vouchers while living in Public Housing.
That’s like receiving a biweekly paycheque of $3,500 and not having to pay any housing expenses. And then they get Social Assistance on top of that.
The whole program seems rather unplanned. Providing a generous benefit and then ripping it away seems like poor policy.
It was a classic Trudeau vanity project. Completely mindless, and all about the ‘feels’.
This ICFI funding was never intended to be for “food vouchers” but was suppose to be given based on needs if you look at the mandate of this program. The people reviewing the applications should have denied funding from hamlets requesting funds for food.
While this definitely helped families afford food in our territory this was not the intend of this particular program. Hopefully, the FEDs see the benefits of how funding was distributed and either create a “food voucher” program or pass along funding for either the Territory or Inuit Org. to distribute funding for “food vouchers” based on some sort of criteria that is fair and equitable for all families in Nunavut.
Why doesn’t NTI use some of that Nunavut Trust dividends and interest to fund a food voucher program?
NTI has been sitting on new federal money for a few years now, take a look at their differed funds! It’s huge, NTI has failed terribly at getting these funds out and no one seems to care.
If it’s easy for you to say to a mother of a 2 year old and 6 months old telling them to get a job, get daycare organizations for them, it’s really not that easy!
The kids of the 2 year old and 6 month old probably have a father (It take 2 people to have a baby), He should be working and providing for his family.
And if you tiguak them and they dont have a father… well maybe you should not have taken them as you cant support them.
i work all my life and only got older not richer. now i leatn that many unemploy parents who bums smoke,beer and money, makes more then me and even post online for freebee, never the less, i wont let that non sense give me-give me people matter, get into my head and spoil my day at work,nope, i will carry on and still work. while they just wine about this & that, asking more freebe, just cause they are from iqaluit. and then when they see me or you with a nice car, the’ll just start rummours about dealing and bootleging cause they cant understand some one can work hard and yes, buy nice thing, its beyond their system abuser and limited gettho ganster mind set. welcome to iqaluit.
I too have been working all my life from 18 on to 70s. I have very little sympathies for those wo ask for freebies and had no inclination to find any form of work. And bingo jackpot in Arviat I have heard recently there was a 30K jackpot. How could ppl in need afford to buy these cards? There’s always $$$ for booze and bingo cards.
This is where the parents should be providing those meals, why do you need a handout, get to work.
Some of these comments are coming from right field, what’s going on here? Sound so American with these comments, should the federal government be putting these program funds into rich people instead? Or subsidizing rich companies instead? Which the government already do anyway, way too much influence from our southern neighbour on too many Canadians today.
What’s going on here is that many middle-class working people are now living a worse quality of life than those that are unemployed, and they are tired of it.
That’s hard to believe I guess you haven’t been unemployed in Nunavut because this statement is completely false and it sounds more like someone complaining and playing victim. Being greedy and out of touch with reality.
People are definitely not living better when unemployment, they are going hungry,do not have a voice but people like you like to crap on them when there’s actually some good support for the needy. You’ve been hearing way too many slogans.
You may need to do a little digging into Inuit culture before you conclude that being frustrated with freeloaders is a foreign thing brought to us be Conservatives or Yankees.
It is definitely not. Children were raised to be independent human beings by around 16 including harvesting for themselves, starting a family and keeping their own households.
A person that would not do that would be subject to a great deal of scorn, and be rebuked for being lazy. This social pressure was used to ensure that people did what they needed to do.
Young people doing nothing, or refusing to do something, would simply not be tolerated in the past.
And, in today’s context, we all know that if an Inuk is willing and able to work in Nunavut, there is a job waiting for them. But if they do not take a job or keep it, society does not criticize them for that.
We have forgotten that part of our culture. We only remember the sharing part. Yes, we share a great deal and we should always share. But, it is not only that.
If nobody is out making a living anymore, there will be nothing left to share, unless you get other people to share what they have, like southern Canadians are doing for us now.
Having universal welfare programs implemented on Inuit did as much to destroy our culture as anything else southerners did. Maybe people should begin to realize that.