Essay On Food Insecurity In Canada

Words: 1530
Pages: 7

In a recent CBC News article, a resident of Iqaluit, Nunavut was interviewed about the outrageously high food prices from Northern Canada circulating social media: The 36-year-old Inuit man shares a small, two-bedroom Iqaluit apartment with his wife and their five kids, his mother, his sister and his young nephew. His is the face of hunger in Nunavut, the bare cupboards and empty fridge emblematic of a long-standing problem that even today's government programs don't address. (Rennie, 2015).
Food insecurity has a direct effect on the mental and physical health of First Nations communities located in remote areas of Canada. High food prices, mostly due to the cost of transporting goods to remote communities, came to the attention of the Canadian public through social media, specifically through a set of parody ads about the inflated costs of basic groceries, such as a litre of orange juice for $14. Food insecurity is still a threat to a
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(MacDonald-Dupuis, 2015). The food insecurity crisis in Northern Canada puts the most strain on the already weak federal infrastructure, and results in a universally poor diet, which is scientifically proven to have notable negative impacts on mental health. As previously mentioned, the Canadian federal government contributes $60 million annually to subsidize high food costs in Northern Canada. However, the stores receiving these subsidies are not required to report their profit margins, so assumptions can be made that the stores are pocketing the profit, without lowering their prices. A proposed solution to this problem could be complete government and retailer transparency, reported quarterly, in order to reveal if the subsidies are actually effective, or if other solutions need to be