JSGS 806

Final Paper
December 19, 2014
Lisa Jane de Gara

(Mal)Nutrition North:
A Failure in Policy Formulation by the Canadian Government in
Nunavut
Abstract
To account for massively higher food costs in the territories, particularly
Nunavut, the Canadian government has been partially subsidizing food costs
to individual residents since 1961 through a program called Food Mail.
However, in 2007 the federal government cancelled Food Mail, and by 2011
opted to subsidize food retailers instead under a program called Nutrition
North, presuming that the businesses would pass the savings on to their
consumers. Since 2011, food insecurity and food costs have risen
dramatically. This paper examines how the assumptions implicit in the design
of Nutrition North set the program up for failure.
Key Words
North, Food Insecurity, Nunavut, Economics

Introduction
Among provinces and territories in Canada, Nunavut (previously the Eastern
Northwest Territories) has always faced a unique set of challenges: its
significant lack of roads and infrastructure, inhospitable climate conditions,
and small, diffuse communities have often acted as a stumbling block to
effective policy design and implementation. Despite covering an area of
more than two million square kilometers, the territory has only one full-sized
hospital1 and one post-secondary institution.2 Efforts to develop more
infrastructure in either health or education have been slow, ineffectively and
painstaking, despite the territory having the lowest life expectancy and the
lowest average years of education.3 Yet neither the lack of sufficient medical
care nor education is considered to be the most significant crisis in Nunavut.
Arguably, the biggest issue in the territory is food insecurity. 70% of
children under five in the territory are considered to live in moderately to
1. Health Facilities, Nunavut Nurses: Government of Nunavut. Retrieved December
12, 2014. http://www.nunavutnurses.ca/english/jobs/health_facilities.shtml
2. Arctic College, Arctic College: Government of Nunavut. Retrieved December 12,
2014. http://www.arcticcollege.ca/
3. Helen Branswell, Inuit Life Expectancy Lags as Rest of Canada Living Longer.
Toronto Star, December 13, 2013. Retrieved December 12, 2014.
http://www.thestar.com/news/canada/2013/12/18/inuit_life_expectancy_lags_as_rest
_of_canada_living_longer.html

JSGS 806
Final Paper
December 19, 2014
Lisa Jane de Gara

severely food insecure homes4; on average, these children do not have

sufficient food to eat three days out of seven. Food insecurity among older
children and adults is marginally less acute but still distressingly highin
2012, 35% of people in the territory were considered to be moderately to
severely food insecure.5 Most distressing of all: this trend is relatively recent,
and is at least partially attributable to a failure of policy.
Policy Issue
Food insecurity in the territory a two-pronged problem.
It is partially a result of geography (because plants cannot grow and
livestock cannot graze on tundra, all food must be hunted from the wild or
flown in from elsewhere.) There are 25 communities in Nunavut, most of
which are hundreds of kilometers away from the next nearest community.
Transporting food, especially perishable food, is costly and cannot benefit
from economies of scale because of the tiny populations of these
communities. Many of the most isolated of these communitiesincluding
Grise Fjord and Resolute Bay, located at 74 and 76 degrees north
respectivelydid not develop organically, but were the result of a policy of
forced High Arctic Relocation during the 1950s.6 These communities were
placed to act as human flagpoles against Soviet attack without much
regard for the logistics. The Canadian government forcibly created these
communities but did not establish how their residents might feed
themselves. Food insecurity in Nunavut, in other words, is not an accident of
traditional culture but a result of 20th century policy miscalculation, inviting a
degree of culpability and responsibility for the federal government which
does not apply to food insecurity in southern Canada or elsewhere in the
territories.
Food insecurity is also partially a result of the selection of food subsidy
policies. Food Mail, a program from the Great Society era, paid northerners
an income to offset the high cost of shipping food to their communities.
While had many significant failingsnamely inefficiency, poor variety and its
4. Egeland, Grace M. et al. Food Insecurity Among Inuit Preschoolers: Nunavut Inuit
Child Health Survey, 20072008. CMAJ: Canadian Medical Association
Journal 182.3 (2010): 243248. PMC. Retrieved November 27, 2014.
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2826465/
5. Ibid.
6. Rene Dussault and George Erasmus, The High Arctic Relocation: a Report on the
1953-1955 Relocation (Ottawa: Canadian Government Publishing, 1994.)

JSGS 806
Final Paper
December 19, 2014
Lisa Jane de Gara

costit managed to keep food insecurity at a stable rate for decades.7 As

Canada Posts operating costs grew, and the Conservative government
wanted to distance themselves from both the postal service and welfare
state strategies, Food Mail was phased out and replaced by Nutrition North,
a retailer-subsidizing program. The formulation of policy is vitally important
to the nature of this issue, because during the brief tenure of Nutrition North,
food insecurity in the territory has significantly spiked.8
Critical Assessment
Nutrition North is federally managed by Aboriginal Affairs and Northern
Development Canada (AANDC.) Its stated purpose is to provide Northerners
in isolated communities with improved access to perishable nutritious food. 9
The method by which it aims to facilitate this provision is through a
government-to-retailer subsidy program: the government provides a list of
foods eligible for partial subsidy. Retailers calculate the number of kilograms
of food and the rate of subsidy, submit a receipt to AANDC, and receive a
rebate on the eligible foods. In theory, the retailer would then pass the
rebate savings on to the customerif NorthMart receives an $800 rebate for
1000 apples, they could reduce the purchase price of an apple by up to
$1.24 and still earn a profit. Essentially, the policy is an extrapolation of the
Reagan/Thatcher notion of trickle-down economics: provide cuts to
businesses and the wealth will ultimately be shared among the people.
Unfortunately, during policy formulation, several significant miscalculations
were made. The policy operates on the assumption that businesses would
necessarily pass the rebate savings on to the consumer. Additionally, no
audit structure was put in place to examine the behaviour of individual
businesses; the policy was not formulated to include regular and stringent
assessments. (This could also be considered a failure during the evaluative
portion of the policy cycle, but the lack of oversight is also a failure to fully
formulate the policy.) A business owner could conceivably pocket the entire
7. Food Mail Program, AADNC-AANDC. Retrieved December 11, 2014.
http://www.aadnc-aandc.gc.ca/eng/1100100015876/1100100015877
8. Statistics Canada. Table 105-0545, Household Food Insecurity Measures, by
Living Arrangement, Canada, provinces and territories, CANSIM. Last edited 2012.
Retrieved December 11, 2014. http://www5.statcan.gc.ca/cansim/pick-choisir?
lang=eng&p2=33&id=1050545
9. Nutrition North Canada, Government of Canada. Retrieved December 13, 2014.
http://www.nutritionnorthcanada.gc.ca/eng/1415385762263/1415385790537

JSGS 806
Final Paper
December 19, 2014
Lisa Jane de Gara

subsidy, pass no savings on to consumers, and not be penalized in any way.

After Nutrition Norths inception, the purchase price of foods in Nunavut
actually increased, rising by $15.11 in weekly expenditures from 2011 to
2013 in certain communities.10 Even without an extensive and specific
examination, the fact that a program designed to decrease food costs
actually coincided with an increase in food costs suggests a significant
failure.
Strategic Implications
As Ingram and Schneider mention, public policy is designed to enable
people to do things they might not have been able to do otherwise11in this
case, purchase affordable and healthy food for their families. That is the
stated aim of Nutrition North, but the policy formulation appears to have
side-stepped the intention of the program and delved into political ideology
instead. It was always possible for private businesses in the North to turn a
profit selling food, and subsidizing their businesses neither enables a
previously impossible behaviour nor encourages a previously undesirable
behaviour.12 The policy has identified a problem (hunger in the North, an
inability to afford sufficient nutritious food) but has formulated a solution
which does not address the root cause (cost of food to individual families, not
businesses.) Consequently the policy has created perverse incentives (price
gouging and eating the subsidy for businesses.)
Conclusion
Despite having been in place for several years, Nutrition North has so far
failed in its aim to make healthy food more affordable for the citizens of
Nunavut. This failure is largely attributable to poor policy formulation:
insufficient efforts were made to identify and isolate the problem prior to
policy writing, which has resulted in perverse incentives. Beyond that, it has
10. Cost of the Revised Northern Food Basket, Nutrition North Canada:
Government of Canada. Retrieved December 15, 2014.
http://www.nutritionnorthcanada.gc.ca/eng/1369313792863/1369313809684
11. Helen Ingram and Anne Schneider, Behavioral Assumptions of Policy Tools, in
Journal of Politics (1990), 513. Retrieved December 10, 2014.
http://www.jstor.org/stable/2131904
12. Helen Ingram and Anne Schneider, Behavioral Assumptions of Policy Tools, in
Journal of Politics (1990), 513. Retrieved December 10, 2014.
http://www.jstor.org/stable/2131904

JSGS 806
Final Paper
December 19, 2014
Lisa Jane de Gara

increased starvation in the territorythe worst possible outcome for a food

subsidy policy.