Nakurmiik. It's an honour to address you here as a national Inuit leader on this very important topic of food policy for Canada.
As Inuit, we often are seen as very exotic, whether it's where we live in Inuit Nunangat, the Canadian Arctic, or the foods that we eat: beluga, narwhal, bowhead whale, Arctic char. These capture the imaginations of Canadians and the world. Unfortunately, in the last generation, the last 20 and 30 years, we've had a number of challenges in continuing to eat our traditional foods, our country foods, and have huge inequity when it comes to food insecurity in our communities.
We have a whole host of different, sometimes conflicting sets of research findings around our food insecurity rates. Depending upon the type of study and where it happened and the different populations, it can range anywhere from 24% in Nunavik in northern Quebec, based on specific questions and different methodologies, to 70% in Nunavut, which is the Inuit health survey, children's survey. Broadly, for 2012 APS data, it's about 52% of Inuit in Canada who report regular household food insecurity. That is a massive difference in relation to food insecurity for non-Inuit Canadians.
Among the numbers that drive that are our median income gap. Our median income gap in Inuit Nunangat is $60,000, $18,000 for Inuit and $78,000 for non-Inuit who live in Inuit Nunangat, which is the Inuit homeland, the combination of the four settlement areas of our modern treaties or comprehensive land claim agreements.
The challenge that we have just to go to the store and buy food when we have a median income that is below the poverty level is striking. Also, there's the fact that we have a traditional diet that depends upon the environment and depends upon our interaction with the environment in the face of climate change, and also in the face of a changing social environment where we are more dependent now on Ski-Doos and boats, and all of the money that it takes to operate new ways of harvesting. Our traditional ways of living and our traditional links to the environment are being undercut. A Canada food policy doesn't necessarily mean that we're going to change all of that within the policy but I think we need to take the steps in the right direction.
There are billions of dollars of subsidies that happen in this country every year in relation to how food gets on the plate of Canadians, but there hasn't been, to date, a comprehensive discussion about how to ensure that Inuit have food security and that there's a food security that fits within our world view and our lens, and also our realities. We have certain subsidy programs, such as nutrition north Canada, that attempt to drive down some of the market food costs within our communities, but we still have massive infrastructure gaps.
Much of the food that arrives in our communities doesn't come fresh. A lot of the food is partially spoiled or is almost inedible by the time that it reaches our communities because of the staging and the way in which, due to the lack of infrastructure for getting produce from Ottawa to Rankin Inlet or to Pond Inlet, it has to go through multiple stages of airports without refrigeration units. The fact that some of our produce might end up on a komatik or in the back of a flatbed truck at -40°C just isn't something that many other Canadians and many other retailers have to ever deal with.
We also have a strong desire to keep our traditions alive. In the past, even in the present, there are subsidies that provinces and territories in which Inuit live provide for a new way of harvesting our traditional species to ensure that the sustainable resources we have in our lands can be then utilized to the greatest of our abilities.
We have had caribou harvests. We have seal and muskox harvests, and the char fisheries. But they all struggle, and they struggle largely because of the lack of a clear policy around how subsidies can work. It isn't as if we were ever going to have profitable country food markets across Inuit Nunangat considering the size and scope of our land, 3.3 million square kilometres, our small population, 60,000 for all our 53 communities, and the fact that it is very expensive for any operation, maintenance, or bricks and mortar facilities within our communities.
There are community-based solutions, but there also has to be imagination. To operate in Inuit Nunangat, you have to think differently about programs, terms and conditions, the funding and subsidies, and why they're there.
We don't have wheat-producing parts of Inuit Nunangat. We don't have a number of the different key crops that you are going to consider within your work, but we do have a homogenous space that constitutes 33% of our land mass, 50% of its coastline, and one indigenous group of people who are looking for this new path and want food that comes from the south but also want to protect our way of life, our society, and our culture.
Nakurmiik.