NUNAVUT
The solution to the ongoing debate over what to do to make healthy, affordable food available to all Nunavummiut is simple: more people harvesting and eating country food.

Joe Hess, manager of Inuit Enterprises that specializes in selling country food. - Laura Busch/NNSL photo

That is the argument being made by a group of Action Canada fellows who released a report on Feb. 7 in Ottawa titled Hunger in Nunavut: Local Food for Healthier Communities.

"Well, sure," said Joe Hess, manager of Iqaluit Enterprises, which specializes in sourcing, processing and selling country foods, when presented with the idea. "I wish more people would get into (buying fish and meat) locally. ... Then again, these guys should be out hunting and fishing, too."

These days, the country food on offer at Iqaluit Enterprises is fish, whale and other seafoods, because caribou and muskox are getting harder and harder to find in the territory.

Hess sources most of his fish from Pangnirtung, Qikiqkarjuaq and Iglulik. He last had caribou on offer in December, when the herd was close enough to Repulse Bay for local hunters to harvest.

"It was a hot commodity. As much as I could get, it would go every day," he said.

The Action Canada Fellowship is a year-long fellowship partially funded by the Government of Canada to give experience to future leaders. The theme of last year's fellowship was broad: the North, so the group of fellows headed to Nunavut to see how to narrow it down.

They travelled through Yellowknife to Kugluktuk, where they hopped on an icebreaker through the Northwest Passage to Resolute.

One of their first impressions is a common one for southerners who venture North.

"When we came across the whole issue of food prices in Nunavut - that really struck us right away," said Brian Kingston, an Action Canada fellow who spearheaded the report's release.

Instead to re-studying an old issue, the Ottawa-based fellows decided they could be most useful by bringing the knowledge of food security that exists in the North down to the nation's capital.

"Because there are many organizations in Nunavut that are doing great work on this, we didn't come at it thinking we would be able to do anything they weren't already doing," he said. "But we thought what we could do was bring that knowledge to Ottawa."

With that in mind, the team created a 14-page report that outlines the realities Nunavummiut know all too well. Seventy per cent of households have trouble accessing affordable healthy food, nearly six times the national average.

"Contrary to popular belief, a diet based on food harvested locally in Nunavut is nutritionally complete and has significant health benefits," reads the report.

The way to get more country food on Nunavut tables is by increasing hunting capacity, food processing and distribution, while also increasing awareness about how to access country foods and its health benefits.

One of the main challenges for Inuit hunters is the extremely high cost of gear and fuel - a problem that is only getting worse since Nutrition North came into effect in 2011.

"Restrictions on subsidized items under Nutrition North have actually increased the importation costs of equipment for Northern hunters," states the report.

Hess wasn't sure what could be done to lower prices at his store to make his country foods more accessible to the majority of Nunavummiut who are living in poverty. The cost of fish at Iqaluit Enterprises is roughly comparable to the NorthMart down the road.

"It's very hard to lower prices when everything else is going up," he said.

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