Quebec must listen to Nunavik mayors’ TB plea
Tuberculosis crisis in northern Quebec needs action; local leaders are closest to the situation
Tuberculosis is an infectious bacterial disease that primarily affects the respiratory system. (Photo courtesy of the Centers for Disease Control/Dr. George Kubic)
Imagine how hard it must be to get 14 mayors to agree on anything. So when Nunavik’s municipal leaders stood united in calling for a public health emergency to deal with tuberculosis, the Quebec government should have taken notice.
The mayors of all the villages in Quebec’s Nunavik region signed a joint letter Monday to provincial Health Minister Christian Dubé, demanding the province declare a public health emergency over what they called an “escalating tuberculosis crisis” in the region of approximately 14,000 people.
In addition to declaring a public health emergency, the mayors’ letter included eight other calls to action. They want emergency resources deployed to Nunavik, sufficient resources so Inuit don’t need to leave their communities for TB screening, and to reverse budget cuts slated for the Inuulitsivik and Ungava Tulattavik health centres.
When Nunatsiaq News asked Dubé’s office about the letter, the answer was a less-than-comforting email from the minister’s spokesperson that “we are taking this situation very seriously.”
Taking tuberculosis very seriously. Very reassuring.
The fact that we’re talking about tuberculosis at all in Canada in 2025 should be seen as a crisis.
But tuberculosis — a contagious airborne disease that mainly affects the lungs — has always been different in Indigenous communities.
Social and economic factors such as overcrowded housing, poverty, lack of food and inaccessible health services contribute to TB’s higher prevalence in Indigenous communities.
The mayors pointed to the 40 TB cases Nunavik has seen in 2025. That’s on pace with the 94 cases recorded in 2024, the highest number ever reported in the region.
They also cited the astonishing figure that Nunavik’s TB rate is 1,000 times higher than the rate for non-Indigenous, Canadian-born residents of Quebec.
In 2023, the Public Health Agency of Canada reported Canada’s TB rate as being 5.5 cases per 100,000 people, while the rate among Inuit was 204.2 per 100,000 people.
The mayors predictably did what leaders of small communities do. They compared their situation to the big city of Montreal, where naturally, TB is far less prevalent but where the province reacted to outbreaks with what the mayors called “swift and comprehensive responses” to stop the spread.
So Quebec’s provincial government has shown its ability to tailor its public health responses to the needs of its people.
Dubé’s office said the minister is working with the Nunavik Regional Board of Health and Social Services to respond to the situation.
“We will continue to follow the recommendations of public health experts on this subject,” spokesperson Audrey Noiseux told a Nunatsiaq News reporter in a written statement in French.
That’s meant to sound good, but working with local officials should be any ministry of health’s default setting.
The municipal government is the closest level of government to the people.
Any time local leaders — especially 14 of them — sound the alarm about an escalating crisis in their communities, they deserve to be taken seriously.
The Quebec government needs to do more to respond to the mayors’ concerns. And it needs to do it quickly.
I do agree with your editorial. Always listen to the combination of leadership, at least listen, before assuming. Back in the day my family was exposed to TB on the Hudson’s coast. There were 114 people from along the east coast right up to salluit. I was one of them , called to the church, and given instructions on what to do. We had to take pills every day for one year. As a family we complied. But I can remember it was a continuous job on a daily bases for the nurses at the nursing station to keep people taking their pills. As far as I know some people went to the nursing station daily. Just to ensure compliance. But people not taking their pills was a big problem. On the end of the year, there were so many pills left over from the people who not took them. The leaders must go further than the speech to the government, they must speak to the people as well. Full collaboration is the way to go, get the message to the people as well, about taking the medicine, but I know what you point out too, the overcrowded living must be addressed.