'The children are eating less now': Nunavummiut protest end of food voucher program

Even in the midst of Nunavut Quest celebrations, residents in Igloolik gathered on Thursday to protest the end to funding for hamlet food vouchers for Inuit children. 

"The children are eating less now, " Stephen Qrunnut said in Inuktitut, as he held a placard decrying the cost of living in the North. 

According to advocacy group Campaign 2000, Nunavut has the highest child poverty rates in Canada, at 42 per cent. Nearly all of the hamlets in the territory rolled out a food voucher program last year.

In the past, that was funded by the Inuit Child First Initiative (ICFI), which was given a one year extension last month.

But Indigenous Services Canada (ISC) says the ICFI is meant for temporary relief to address immediate risk factors to children.

"It is not intended nor structured to displace government income assistance through 'universal' programs such as food vouchers," ISC said in a statement. 

Going forward, any group requests for food will be based on each individual child, and they must show how an Inuk child has been rejected or experienced gaps and delays in accessing government services. 

As a result, at least nine Nunavut hamlets have publicly confirmed the end of the voucher program. Some Inuit organizations, like Ilitaqsiniq and Tungasuvvingat Inuit in Ontario, are also winding down some of their early years programming.

Pleas for help already

From April 1 to April 10, 2025, 98 requests for products, services and support were approved under the ICFI – mostly for travel, health services and economic support. 

Sixteen were related to food, but no large-scale food requests were approved. 

Igloolik's ICFI co-ordinator, Carolyn Tapardjuk, says she's already noticed the impact of the food voucher program ending in her community on March 31, 2025. That was when the previous round of funding expired. 

"Some of the people are requesting food from family, on Facebook, and through the local radio station," she said.

Right now, she has 30 expectant mothers in a community of more than 2,000 people. 

While some hamlets are still waiting for an official decision on their outcome, Sanirajak has received a rejection notice for its application.

The program lasted 10 months in Sanirajak. Its community economic development officer, Roger Beaudry, says he saw improvements in school attendance and mental health. 

"Even when people were sick, they were fed. They were able to go to the nursing station and see a doctor … they weren't incapacitated," he said. 

Accessibility of individual requests

Beaudry has helped make individual requests for children in Sanirajak in the past. Last summer, they had families living in shacks and needed support. 

They managed to get subsidies for fuel and water – but they were the lucky ones. 

"When I did some individual requests, about 50 per cent of them got refused," he said. 

He said there is a lot of paperwork involved and small communities like his don't have access to the services needed to get that documentation.

Sindu Govindapillai, as director of Qupanaq – an organization that administers ICFI funding – has helped many Nunavummiut with their individual applications, including before the hamlet voucher programs were introduced. 

She observed numerous barriers, including the need for a support letter from a health professional about an individual's needs, the challenges of communicating that for unilingual Inuktitut speakers, and internet access.

"And probably the most humiliating, honestly, is having to justify at an individual level why your child uniquely needs food," she said.

ISC's operational bulletin says the changes are to ensure the long-term sustainability of the ICFI by remaining focused "on its core mission: providing funding to Inuit children who face barriers to accessing products, services and supports."

Statistics Canada sets Canada's official poverty line using the market basket measure. It defines how much a family of four would have to earn to afford a basic standard of living, by calculating the cost of a basket of goods and services including food, clothing, shelter and transportation.

According to that measure, a family of four in the Qikiqtaaluk (Baffin) region, outside of Iqaluit, would have to make $116,368 to stay above the poverty line. 

"Even with hamlet food voucher programs, we are only getting families 41 per cent of the way to that market basket measure poverty line," Govindapillai said. 

"We have to look at what the situation is writ large in Nunavut and ask ourselves, is this something that we would accept in the rest of Canada?"

A long-term model that's Inuit specific

ISC says it's continuing to develop an Inuit specific model, alongside Inuit partners, for the ICFI for the long term, which they will transition to once it's approved. 

Govindapillai says Ottawa should not be ending the hamlet voucher program without finding a suitable alternative. 

She also wants to see ICFI be granted the same legal protections as Jordan's Principle, which is a legal principle for the Government of Canada to address gaps and discrimination with accessing government-funded services.

"We never want to be in a world where, with the next election cycle, a critical program that fills in gaps in health, education and social services for any children in Nunavut can be eradicated based on whichever party comes into power," she said. 

With no clear path forward, Igloolik's Carolyn Tapardjuk says she'll continue to protest and petition for the food voucher program to continue. 

"We're going to use the consent forms [from the petition] to appeal."