Ottawa working on Nutrition North reforms, minister says

Federal officials are examining the external review of the Nutrition North food subsidy program prepared by former Nunavut Tunngavik Inc. president Aluki Kotierk and intends to use it to help reform the program, the federal northern affairs minister says.

“We have received a number of other reports, both external and internal, and we are going through all the information, collectively, including Kotierk’s work,” Northern and Arctic Affairs Minister Rebecca Chartrand said in an interview on Monday. “So there are no conclusions at this time.”

Chartrand’s department is responsible for the federal program that subsidizes the high cost of healthy food and other essentials in 124 northern communities.

The external review of Nutrition North was announced by the federal government in October 2024, after years of complaints. Kotierk was chosen as the minister’s special representative to oversee the project in February 2025. It was submitted two months after its March 31 deadline.

Chartrand said her department has also gathered information from community consultations, which she led herself.

She said the “unprecedented” national food sovereignty summit on March 26 “allowed us to bring representatives from Nutrition North communities together to discuss what needs to happen.

“It’s really important for me that we take the lead from the communities that are most impacted by the Nutrition North subsidy and by food insecurity to help define what those solutions should look like.”

The NDP’s northern affairs critic MP Leah Gazan recently sent a letter to Chartrand calling out what she called a lack of transparency and unexplained delays in the external review.

Gazan told Nunatsiaq News on Tuesday she had not received a response to her letter.

“To be honest, it is simply unacceptable that it took so long to review Nutrition North,” she said. “The right to healthy food is an urgent issue in Nunavut.”

Gazan suggested the federal government has more than enough resources to tour the country on other issues, but “when it comes to ensuring that people in northern communities have healthy food, it seems to be stall, after stall, after stall.”

Previously, Gazan had suggested the federal government was more interested in infrastructure projects.

Gazan said she wants the findings of the external review to be published as soon as possible.

Kotierk could not be reached Tuesday for a comment on her report.