An NDP MP wants to know where the external review of Nutrition North is.
The review, commissioned in February 2025, was meant to look into claims that the government’s food subsidies were not having an affect on consumer prices. The federal government appointed Aluki Kotierk to lead the review and set a deadline of March 31.
Now, more than a month past the due date, there has been no sign of the report.
Winnipeg Centre MP Leah Gazan sent a letter Thursday to Northern Affairs Minister Rebecca Chartrand, whose department oversees the program, outlining her concerns.
“Grocery costs are skyrocketing and people living in northern and remote regions of the country cannot afford healthy, nutritious food,” her letter said.
She called on the federal government to take immediate action on Nutrition North, as well as provide an update on the status of the external review.
“Northerners should not be left on the hook waiting for food while your government stalls on tabling findings from the most recent study,” she wrote.
The federal government has spent $1.6 billion on Nutrition North since the program began in 2011, according to the Departments of Crown-Indigenous Relations and Northern Affairs. For the current fiscal year, the government intends to spend $72 million on Nutrition North.
Prime Minister Mark Carney’s government has shown “creativity and imagination,” Gazan said, with its newly announced sovereign wealth fund, intended to drive infrastructure projects with $25 billion in taxpayer dollars and private investment.
“But they don’t have the creativity and imagination to make sure, particularly families and children in Nunavut, aren’t starving at the checkout counter,” she said in an interview. “That is not acceptable.”
Gazan, who is also the NDP critic for Indigenous Affairs, had not spoken to Chartrand about the issue or received a response to her letter as of Tuesday.
Chartrand’s office did not respond to a request for comment.
Kotierk did not respond to a request for comment.
