Op-ed | Children can’t eat government promises
A looming food security crisis in Nunavut requires urgent federal action
The Supporting Food Security in Qikiqtaaluk, Nunavut research team is calling on the federal government to immediately extend funding for the Inuit Child First Initiative hamlet food voucher programs to ensure children don’t go hungry. (File photo)
Vandna Sinhu
On March 21, Indigenous Services Minister Patty Hajdu announced the federal government would extend the Inuit Child First Initiative through March 2026.
As researchers working to understand the impact of the Inuit Child First Initiative-funded hamlet food voucher programs, which help families in Nunavut afford food for Inuit children, we were overjoyed. We thought this promise meant the hamlet food voucher programs would continue.
We were wrong: funding for the hamlet food programs was not automatically extended, and the first re-application for funding was just denied.
This denial signals a federal government move toward terminating the hamlet food voucher programs. Some programs have shut down already and staff have been let go.
Families are not getting the money they need to feed their children, and a food security crisis is imminent. The federal government can prevent this crisis by fast-tracking and continuing Inuit Child First Initiative funding for the hamlet food voucher programs until an Inuit-led plan for addressing food security is in place.
The high cost of food in Nunavut makes food security initiatives like the hamlet food voucher programs necessary. In 2022, 79 per cent of Inuit children in Nunavut experienced food insecurity. Grocery prices have risen dramatically since then — 24 per cent in the Qikiqtaaluk region in 2022 and 2023.
In recent consultations and interviews, people spoke of devastating consequences if the hamlet food programs ended. Mothers told us that before the food voucher program, they used to go hungry for two or three days at a time so their children had food; they feared going back to that situation. We heard food banks’ concerns that they would be unable to meet community needs, and social workers’ worries that children would “starve.”
The denial of funding for a hamlet food voucher program means these fears may soon be realized.
The hamlet food voucher programs are imperfect, but they have succeeded where other approaches failed. They do not combat retail price inflation, but they do help families manage high prices and access the nutritious foods children need to grow strong and healthy.
Before the hamlet food voucher programs started, individual families had to apply to Inuit Child First Initiative for grocery support. The federal government was overwhelmed by requests, the backlog of cases grew, and families waited weeks or even months for needed support.
Ending the hamlet food voucher programs now, without another community-level solution in place, means defaulting to that failed, individual request system.
The federal government has an ethical and legal responsibility to prevent this.
Inuit Child First Initiative, which shares an administrative framework with Jordan’s Principle, exists to ensure Inuit children have timely access to needed services. In a November 2024 decision on Jordan’s Principle, the Canadian Human Rights Tribunal affirmed that “a child with no access to food or other basic necessities is considered an urgent case requiring action within 12 hours.”
Children can’t eat government promises, and they can’t hold on for the weeks or months it may take to access support without the hamlet food voucher programs. We call on Minister Hajdu to immediately extend funding for the hamlet food voucher program in Nunavut, and to transfer funding within 12 hours so that Inuit children do not go hungry.
Inuit children deserve nothing less.
I agree that food initiative should be restated.. But the program need serious changes. In how it is implemented. There must be guidelines in place to determine. Which families are allowed to access the programs.
Oversight needs be initiated to monitor any abuse. And when abuser are found out. They should removed from the program.
Waste and abuse have been identified. In way the program is being run currently.
If this behavior was controlled or even eliminated. There would probably more
government support. To fund the program.
Here you go liberals/NDP coalition, more untruths spun by the liberals / NDP promises
No one, including me, wants to live in a society whose basis is a lie. Nonetheless, in many places, all sociopolitical policy is based on lies. One might argue that not all politic and policy in China is based on deception; just some or most. But if most of the governance and bureaucracy is deception, dishonest, dogma, disinformation, then everything else is tainted, and therefore, a lie
It is the same in Canada
Ever consider having children in the first place, in areas of the worst weather and food is wishful thinking is a bad idea?
What ever happened to parents being the caregivers and providers to their young? My parents never ever depended on anyone to feed us let alone jp. Us elders we feed our grandchildren and rear them and we get nothing from jp.
Now they are working hard to give vouchers. Everytime people who were trying to complain and these kind of work they do, vouchers and gift card and government are saying there is carbon tax benefits and GST benefits will be given to all Canadians and we are Canadians too and follow the rules of Canada and still we can’t receive and promises they make. There should be an investigation on financial workers and health workers. There is always delay to do there work while they did it early and finally started to say about these.
Programs like the ICF are band-aid solutions that do nothing to address why food is unaffordable in Nunavut to begin with. The real drivers are well known: sky-high air freight, outrageous power rates, wage premiums due to fly-in labour, limited retail competition, and poor infrastructure. If we’re serious about food security, we need to fix the inputs — invest in reliable airport infrastructure, reduce electricity costs through energy investments, and build a local workforce to staff essential services like grocery stores.
What’s equally troubling is the offloading of delivery of the ICF program onto municipalities — the level of government with the least capacity and funding. Where are the regional Inuit orgs, or NTI, to deliver and oversee this program? Municipalities didn’t create this crisis, why are they being forced to deliver this program.