Ottawa needs to move on to Plan B for Nutrition North review
Aluki Kotierk’s report overdue with no word on whether it’s still coming
Aluki Kotierk, centre, chairperson of the Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues at the United Nations, speaks to open the 25th session of the gathering on Monday in New York City. (Photo courtesy of United Nations)
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.
Corey, once again your editorial misses the core issue. The real question isn’t “Where is Aluki’s report?”—it’s why someone without the proper qualifications was tasked with conducting an audit in the first place.
If Ottawa actually wants to fix Nutrition North, it needs to stop asking politicians to do an auditor’s job.
The fatal flaw of Nutrition North is its reliance on a near-monopoly retail environment dominated by The North West Company and Arctic Co-operatives Limited. The program subsidizes freight, trusting that these massive logistical machines will faithfully pass the savings onto the consumer.
Instead, public tax dollars vanish into a labyrinth of internal corporate logistics. Without absolute transparency, there is no way to prevent financial games. Subsidies can easily be swallowed by buried operational costs, wholesale markups, internal transfer pricing, and logistical inefficiencies, ultimately serving to pad the corporate bottom line rather than lower the price of milk.
When you funnel $145 million of public money annually into a closed-loop supply chain with virtually zero retail competition, you don’t need a consultation you need an audit!
Evaluating the effectiveness of Nutrition North is not a diplomatic mission; it is a financial extraction. Uncovering the truth behind how The North West Company and Arctic Co-ops structure their pricing models requires a deep, technical understanding of retail corporate finance and supply chain economics. You cannot expect a ministerial representative without a CPA to untangle the deliberate complexities of a multi-million-dollar corporate ledger. The government set this review up to fail by sending a politician to do a forensic accountant’s job!
Ottawa does not need to start over with a new “special representative.” It needs to bring down the hammer on corporate secrecy.
If we are to continue subsidizing retail supply chains, the rules of engagement must change immediately:
• Mandatory Public Ledgers: If The North West Company, Arctic Co-ops, or any other retailer wants to accept a single cent of federal freight subsidies, they must open their books to the public.
• Line-Item Visibility: Transparency cannot mean a summarized annual report. It means line-item visibility demonstrating the exact cost of wholesale procurement, the actual cost of freight, the applied markup, and precisely how the NNC subsidy directly lowers the final shelf price.
• Forensic Auditing: The government must deploy independent forensic auditors to continuously track the flow of NNC funds, specifically looking for “buried costs” that offset the intended consumer savings.
I think it’s become quite clear the Feds never took this exercise seriously or they would have retained someone with some actual tangible and relevant skills.
It’s also become quite clear that many Inuit in our political class don’t really care too much about the issues they pontificate upon.
The problem here is in the south they seem to love Aluki, not really knowing her and they keep appointing her to important roles. Hopefully this will shed some light,
I don’t think it’s that the feds were unserious about the review; they just chose an unserious person to do it. That was indicative of the era. Trudeau too was an unserious person and that was reflected in the decisions made by him and his ‘team’. It was an age of optics, vibes, and feels, all standing in for substance. Aluki was a perfect fit.
The government indeed needs to start over entirely, this time prioritizing proven capacities, something we are barely used to and often uncomfortable with in Nunavut.
Of course, people will moan if whatever visibility criteria they feel must be met is ignored, as if that confers a larger justice and magic power to the process. By now we should see that it doesn’t.
I agree with you that Ottawa must go back to the drawing board. Is Nunatsiaq News or the CBC going to investigate the non-delivery of the report? WIll the related emails, travel records, meeting notes (such as they likely are) be ATIPed?
I’m not the biggest Aluki fan, but the report was due March 31st. It is not like she has billed the government thousands of dollars and produced nothing. Very few reports in Nunavut are submitted on time. A great example would be the NLUP, currently maybe 20 years behind schedule. NN should really look at how much money has been pumped into that mess.
Yeah maybe. But don’t you think she should have said something to us about the status of this much vaunted report given where things are at?? Just sayin…..
Corey, once again your editorial misses the core issue. The real question isn’t “Where is Aluki’s report?”—it’s why someone without the proper qualifications was tasked with conducting an audit in the first place.
If Ottawa actually wants to fix Nutrition North, it needs to stop asking politicians to do an auditor’s job.
The fatal flaw of Nutrition North is its reliance on a near-monopoly retail environment dominated by The North West Company and Arctic Co-operatives Limited. The program subsidizes freight, trusting that these massive logistical machines will faithfully pass the savings onto the consumer.
Instead, public tax dollars vanish into a labyrinth of internal corporate logistics. Without absolute transparency, there is no way to prevent financial games. Subsidies can easily be swallowed by buried operational costs, wholesale markups, internal transfer pricing, and logistical inefficiencies, ultimately serving to pad the corporate bottom line rather than lower the price of milk.
When you funnel $145 million of public money annually into a closed-loop supply chain with virtually zero retail competition, you don’t need a consultation you need an audit!
Evaluating the effectiveness of Nutrition North is not a diplomatic mission; it is a financial extraction. Uncovering the truth behind how The North West Company and Arctic Co-ops structure their pricing models requires a deep, technical understanding of retail corporate finance and supply chain economics. You cannot expect a ministerial representative without a CPA to untangle the deliberate complexities of a multi-million-dollar corporate ledger. The government set this review up to fail by sending a politician to do a forensic accountant’s job!
Ottawa does not need to start over with a new “special representative.” It needs to bring down the hammer on corporate secrecy.
If we are to continue subsidizing retail supply chains, the rules of engagement must change immediately:
• Mandatory Public Ledgers: If The North West Company, Arctic Co-ops, or any other retailer wants to accept a single cent of federal freight subsidies, they must open their books to the public.
• Line-Item Visibility: Transparency cannot mean a summarized annual report. It means line-item visibility demonstrating the exact cost of wholesale procurement, the actual cost of freight, the applied markup, and precisely how the NNC subsidy directly lowers the final shelf price.
• Forensic Auditing: The government must deploy independent forensic auditors to continuously track the flow of NNC funds, specifically looking for “buried costs” that offset the intended consumer savings.
I say all us southern tax pays stop shipping boat loads of money up there until it’s fixed.
Maybe the nutrition north program actually helps? It’s back room deals and monopolies that are what keep costs up.
Aluki needs to provide her report. It is not enough, nor it is acceptable, to say “very few reports in Nunavut are submitted on time”. I, too, am not an Aluki fan, as she was chosen, as Make Iqaluit Great Again commented, as the reviewer with no credentials to back her up. Time for Ottawa to cut its losses with this one.
What really stands out not just the incompetence of this report not handed in on time, the silence of our leadership, the Premier and Ministers, MLAs, I can understand NTI as the same executive staff that was hired under Aluki are still there. The RIA President’s.
I think most of us understand the implications of a review on this important program, our leadership does not seem to care too much. The says a lot for me. The silence is deafening.