Ottawa needs to move on to Plan B for Nutrition North review

It’s time for the federal government to go to Plan B for reviewing the effectiveness of Nutrition North.

Aluki Kotierk’s long-awaited external review of the grocery subsidy program is almost a month overdue, the government’s hand-picked representative leading the review hasn’t been in touch in weeks, and there are too many questions the government can’t or won’t answer.

The deadline was March 31.

As of Wednesday, there was still no sign of that report.

Meanwhile, Nunavut and Nunavik families continue to struggle with the high cost of putting food on the table.

In October 2024, Dan Vandal, then the minister of northern affairs, responded to criticism of Nutrition North by announcing an external review of the 15-year-old program that subsidizes the prices of healthy foods in 124 northern communities across Canada.

Critics said the $145 million a year the government spends on the program wasn’t having the desired effect, that it was just padding the bottom lines of grocery store chains.

In February 2025, Gary Anandasangaree, who succeeded Vandal, picked Kotierk, whose term as president of Nunavut Tunngavik Inc. had recently ended, to be his ministerial special representative to evaluate Nutrition North’s effectiveness.

She was tasked with meeting national and regional Indigenous organizations, retailers, transportation providers and federal government organizations.

This week, Ottawa continued to wait for the review while Kotierk was in New York. She’s the chairperson of the United Nations Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues, which was in session.

For the Liberal government, the failure of its representative to deliver her report should be an embarrassment.

The government has three options. It can stand behind Kotierk and hope she eventually delivers. It could cut its losses on Kotierk’s review, find a new ministerial special representative and go back to Square 1. Or it could abandon the review altogether and come up with some other way to evaluate Nutrition North’s effectiveness.

Since news broke that the review’s March 31 deadline had passed, it has been harder than it should be to get answers from the government about simple things, such as how much is the review’s budget?

Reporter Jorge Antunes has asked Northern Affairs staff, as well as Northern Affairs Minister Rebecca Chartrand herself, what the budget is for the external review.

The best answer he got from a department spokesperson was, “The budget will depend on the costs incurred during the review.”

Most Canadians, however, likely understand a budget to be the amount of money you set aside to spend on a project before it begins.

It’s not just that the deadline has passed that’s disappointing; government projects fall behind schedule all the time. It’s the lack of any public explanation — either from Kotierk or Chartrand — about what went wrong and what comes next that’s such a headscratcher.

Ottawa should cut its losses on the Kotierk-led review of Nutrition North, go back to the drawing board and come up with a new plan that will lead to a real evaluation of the program’s effectiveness.