Thank you for that question.
As you know, Inuit have the highest rate of unemployment and the highest cost of living, which is three to seven times that of southern Canada. When the seal market crashed from $100 to $10, then the ability of the hunter to provide his free food, nutritious food, to the community.... It was catastrophic. It made it so that we had to live on less food. The ability of the hunter to provide for the community became very harsh. It meant that the hunter had to work five days a week just in order to be able to afford to buy gas and go out hunting so that he could share his food.
We are still practising the sharing of the food. As a non-hunter myself, we still expect our hunters to provide for us, which is really unfair. I think we should support the hunters so that they can keep providing this healthy food to the communities and create food security.
It's a tragedy. It's devastating. There's a term for it that I can't think of right now. We should look at it as a human rights issue right now that we don't have access. Seven children out of 10 go to school hungry. In Canada, one of the richest countries in the world, we are accepting that this is happening, but it's really not acceptable. We have to do our part to secure that people have access to food—seal.