Nutrition North review deadline passes with no sign of report
Federal government picked Aluki Kotierk to lead external review of the food subsidy program more than a year ago
Aluki Kotierk, the former Nunavut Tunngavik Inc. president, is seen speaking in January 2024. She was expected to submit her review of the Nutrition North subsidy program to the federal government Tuesday. But a spokesperson for Northern and Arctic Affairs Minister Rebecca Chartrand said Wednesday the report has not been received. (File photo by Jeff Pelletier)
A day after the deadline for a report on an external review of Nutrition North, the federal government says it has still not heard from its own special representative tasked with the job, says a spokesperson for Northern Affairs Minister Rebecca Chartrand.
The federal government named former Nunavut Tunngavik Inc. president Aluki Kotierk in February 2025 — more than a year ago — to lead an external review of the food subsidy program.
“We expected the report from the ministerial special representative on March 31, 2026,” Chartrand’s press secretary Erika Lashbrook Knutson said in an email Wednesday.
“However, the department has yet to receive the report from the Ministerial Special Representative. We have inquired as to when we can expect the report to be submitted.”
Former northern affairs minister Gary Anandasangaree announced Kotierk’s appointment to lead the review in February 2025.
The federal Liberal government announced the review in October 2024 in response to criticisms that the subsidies paid to retailers have not been leading to lower food prices at grocery stores.
The external review was intended to give northerners an opportunity to provide input on the program to enable long-term improvements.
Last week, at an unrelated press conference in Ottawa, Chartrand confirmed the March 31 deadline for Kotierk’s report.
In addition to the external review, Chartrand’s office has enacted its own internal review. It held several virtual regional sessions across communities served by the program and hosted the first-ever Food Sovereignty Summit in Ottawa last week.
Indigenous leaders and partners were invited to Ottawa for that summit to “help shape the path forward in a way that is grounded in Northern realities,” Lashbrook Knutson said.
The federal government created Nutrition North in 2011 to make nutritious food more affordable and accessible to 124 northern and remote communities, including all 25 Nunavut municipalities and Nunavik’s 14 northern villages.
Since Chartrand publicly stated the March 31 deadline, Nunatsiaq News has attempted to contact Kotierk several times including by phone, email and social media.
Kotierk could not be reached Wednesday for comment about the email from Chartrand’s office indicating the report had not been received.
Chartrand takes the Nutrition North subsidy program “very seriously,” Lashbrook Knutson said in an interview Wednesday.
For anyone who had the ‘pleasure’ of working with NTI under Kotierk’s leadership, this will come as no surprise. Although they preached collaboration and unity, her and her executive team did everything possible to put up barriers and create hostile environments.
As for the Federal government, has there been no regular progress reports and oversight into this report from the Special Representative (Kotierk)? I assume significant money has been allocated and spent on this report to date, which I think should also be released in full transparency.
Somehow, I’m sure this report has still cost hundreds of thousands in Fairmont Gold rooms and First Class Air Canada seats.
Unfortunately Aluki’s executive staff is still at NTI today continuing her legacy, it’s impossible to work with NTI meaningfully as they keep putting up barriers and still creating hostile environments, it’s so toxic how this teams works, also it’s no wonder with all the hundreds of millions sitting in NTIs bank account that this team cannot or will not get anything meaningful done. All they do is work to separate and look for fights.
This legacy at NTI needs to be changed.
Any examples? I hear from my sister it’s a great place to work and have a lot of support fo wellness.
Aluki Kotierk is a perfect manifestation of the Liberal Party of Canada. By any reasonable metric, in her career as an administrator, as a politician, as a bureaucrat, and as an appointee she left decline in her wake and took more than her share. So too it has been for the Liberal Party of Canada – in toto. Every file it has touched in recent memory – whether health care, education, justice, industry, science, social welfare, trade, economy, or global relations resulted in a worse outcome than before.
So what you’re saying is, the former NTI president didnt do anything?
What did she do exactly at NTI, other then blame all levels of government? She did not unit the territory, but planted the seed to devide it.
Just another in the continuing examples of the nonsense that exists around here. More sadly, is simply tolerated, brushed aside dismissed or accepted. Guess the Premier, Cabinet Members and MLAs are all too busy getting their list prepared of the birthdays and anniversaries to mention in the next LEG sitting to actually speak out about this or do anything to address the crisis. Also, where is the wonderful and newly incarnated LPC Nunavut MP with some commentary about this. I wonder out loud when is someone, anyone, going to stand up and say, “enough is enough?” (Rhetorical question).
We all unfortunately, already know the answer. Meanwhile the food insecurity crisis continues. This is just another failure to add to the garbage heap.
Keep electing the people who sits around getting nothing done, No reports or rush things , Not to be questioned and conflicts shows in some Inuit Organizations,
ALUKI should just say everything hiked up 1 year at 100% increased as each can foods are $10 each and pop at 300% to 700% increases ,
Simple report everyone wants to see …
Inflation in Canada has increased the cost of food 40.47% since 2011, when Nutrition North was first established as a federal program.
The funding for Nutrition North has not increased 40.47% in the intervening years to keep pace with inflation.
Therefore, to answer the question from the public as to why Nutrition North subsidies to retailers has not lead to lower food prices is this – retailers have had to buy food from food wholesalers at ever increasing prices that Nutrition North has not been funded to defray.
There, I just wrote Kotierk’s report. You are welcome.
This feels less like journalism and more like piling on over a minor issue. Readers deserve context and substance, not selective stories that invites ridicule rather than understanding.
You need to check your feelings and use logic and facts instead, how can you support Aluki when she has consistently shown lack of leadership?
Do you support this review process and the lack of actual review done by Aluki?
Tell us why you would support this type of leadership?
She’s one day late and their on her tail! Nunatisaq Bully, more like it
One day late on an important deadline with no communication to the Feds or media. Cannot be reached, has apparently not asked for an extension or even communicated to the Feds that her report will not be ready by the deadline.
That’s inexcusable. Especially when nobody’s heard of any updates or progress reports along the way.
Sounds like you are very familiar with this and providing more details than the article itself. Do tell more
They could have picked from a pool of ex Grocery store employees all qualified that know the system and actually met with Nutrition North committee but they don’t want to hear the truth. I hope we get a voucher whenever she finishes her report.
Exactly, these are the people who really know things. It’s a mystery why the last people that seem to ever to get asked anything are the ones who deal directly with the issues. We see this in government all the time too.
Unfortunately we had to deal with her while she was president at NTI, she did not get anything done, just the usual we are victims speech that became a broken record playing.
When we heard she was appointed for this review most of us knew nothing will come out of it.
Yet some of you will support her saying she has been the greatest advocate for Inuit when that is completely false.
But her track record speaks for itself, here is another great example of that,
My question for this review or lack there of, where is NTI, RIAs and the GN on this review process?
Why are our leaders quiet and silent on this important review that could potentially lead to a program that could work better with changes and lower the cost of food for our people.
Where is our leadership demanding answers to why this review has been silent and no where to be seen?
Why is our leadership allowing Aluki to be incompetent and allowing her to damage our opportunity to lower the cost for our people? What is going on here? Paul at NTI where are you? Presidents at RIAs where are you? Premier and Ministers at GN where are you?
That is my thought too, the incompetence of this review needs to be called out, we need this review.