Just prior to Aboriginal Awareness Week, UN special envoy Olivier De Schutter was invited to examine hunger and food access in Canada. After an 11 day mission, De Schutter released his findings on May 16:

“What I’ve seen in Canada is a system that presents barriers for the poor to access nutritious diets and that tolerates increased inequalities between rich and poor, and aboriginal and non-aboriginal peoples.”

His report also described the situation in many of Canada’s aboriginal communities as desperate: “A long history of political and economic marginalization has left many indigenous peoples with considerably lower levels of access to adequate food relative to the general population.”

In response to the report, the Federal Government represented by Minister of Citizenship Jason Kenny blasted the report’s findings and said “…the contributions we make to the UN should be used to help starving people in developing countries. Not to give lectures to wealthy and developed countries like Canada.”

(image from aptn.ca)

Today, almost 1 in 10 people in Canada live in poverty. Most of them are children who go hungry every day. We see their mothers every week at Nellie’s in long line ups waiting for the food that will provide them hunger relief.

Aboriginal Awareness Week is a time to reflect on the injustices that Aboriginal people have endured since colonization and that continue to this day, including barriers to access food.

For more information on the United Nations report you can view this video from CBC.

The full report is available here.