https://nationalpost.com/news/food-insecurity-worsens-in-nunavut-after-ottawa-tries-to-help
Food insecurity worsens in Nunavut after Ottawa tries to help
Since the program was launched in 2011, replacing an earlier mail
subsidy program, rates of food insecurity have increased more than 13
per cent
Joseph Brean
May 20, 2019
Federal government subsidies designed to make food more affordable in
Canada’s Arctic have not only failed, but instead coincided with a
massive increase in food insecurity in northern communities, according
to new research.
Rather than making it easier and cheaper for people to access good
nutrition in Nunavut, where much of the food supply needs to come by
plane, Canada’s scheme of subsidizing northern retailers and southern
suppliers appears to have in fact made it much worse. Since the program
was launched in 2011, replacing an earlier mail subsidy program, rates
of food insecurity have increased more than 13 per cent across the 10
largest communities in Nunavut. Before that, food insecurity had been on
a downward trend.
“Food insecurity is a big problem, and it’s not going away with that
initiative,” said Andrée-Anne Fafard St-Germain of the Department of
Nutritional Sciences at the University of Toronto. Food insecurity
“rates are rising despite the presence of this big program that is
designed to help people afford and access food.”
Her new paper in the Canadian Medical Association Journal calls for an
urgent inquiry “to determine the extent to which similar initiatives
adapted to the needs and realities of northern populations could affect
food insecurity.”
The measure of food security is measured in surveys by Statistics
Canada, and indicates at least one affirmative answer to a series of
questions about, for example, going a full day without eating, worrying
about running out of food, or compromising on food quality or safety.
The damning research comes as the future of the Nutrition North Canada
program looks increasingly uncertain, beset with criticism about
financial transparency and fears that the subsidies are not entirely
passed on to consumers. Even when they are, the resulting prices can
still be impossibly expensive, with a pound of ground beef regularly
selling for $20 and 2 kg of white flour nearing $14.
The annual rates of food insecurity were as low as 33 per cent before
the program launched. That is easily the highest in the country, but the
numbers were on a slight downward trend.
After the NNC program came into force, however, that number went up, and
kept increasing, such that by the time the NNC had been fully
implemented in 2014, rates of food insecurity were at nearly 50 per cent
of households, where they remain today.
Not only had the downward trend been reversed, but it became a major
spike. The rate of food insecurity “after implementation was 43 per cent
higher than the rate expected if the trend before the launch had
continued,” reads the paper in the Canadian Medical Association Journal.
The government has acknowledged some problems, pledged reforms that it
recently delayed, and announced a five-year, $62-million plan to support
harvesters of country food, such as caribou and seal and wild plants,
but not yet delivered details.
In an interview, Fafard St-Germain said her work does not conclusively
prove the program is the cause of the increase in food insecurity. It
also only looked at the 10 largest communities, not the many other
smaller ones served by the same program. But her research did eliminate
other potential causes such as a broader economic shock, and it
controlled for various economic and demographic factors. It also casts a
skeptical eye on some of the justifications and claims of success the
government has put forward.
In 2016, for example, the government reported: “The results are clear —
Nutrition North Canada (NNC) has succeeded in reducing prices of
eligible food in isolated northern communities, and in increasing the
amount of perishable nutritious food available.”
Last December, however, came an about-face: “The Government of Canada
recognizes that the Nutrition North Canada program has not been working
for Northerners and is modernizing and reforming the program to better
address Northerners’ needs.”
It pledged an increase in subsidy rates and changes to the list of
subsidized items, with “a focus on northern staples and family-friendly
items.”
Many federal programs aim to help people with their general needs and
ability to afford life’s necessities; NNC is the only federal program
that aims to improve people’s ability to afford and access food. But as
Fafard St-Germain describes it, until now, the program had never been
evaluated according to this goal.
The government instead has pointed to different measures of success,
such as a reported increase in the volume of food shipped, and a
decrease in the price of the Revised Northern Food Basket, a measure of
an average shopping bill.
On the contrary, those measures might also indicate the program has been
more beneficial to wealthier households, while leaving poorer households
no better off, such that overall food insecurity has actually increased,
Fafard St-Germain said. An increase in the amount of subsidized food
delivered might just as well reflect the NNC program’s stimulation of
demand among people who could already afford perishable, nutritious foods.
The original hope of the NNC program was to harness market forces to
optimize delivery costs, although many of the communities are only
served by one retailer. Prior to the NNC’s creation in 2011, a Food Mail
program applied to a wider array of items, including non-perishable
foods, and also household staples such as diapers, soap, detergent and
other non-food items that are still necessary to feeding a family.
Fafard St-Germain and her co-authors were aware of reports that
non-perishable food and non-food necessities got more expensive after
the launch of NNC, but did not specifically investigate this.
She said there is evidence from other federal programs, such as child
benefits and pension plans, that “income-based interventions” designed
to put more money in people’s pockets, rather than reduce retail prices,
have a more positive effect on food insecurity.
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