The Northern Corridor, Food Insecurity and the Resource Curse for Indigenous Communities in Canada

But what are the links of food security and road access in Indigenous communities to a northern corridor? This paper aims to assess the impact of a notional Canadian northern corridor on food security, considering environmental impacts of the project and whether a probable outcome is road access for Indigenous communities without access roads to service centres with healthier food markets. [...] The School of Public Policy paper series asserts the benefits of the “multi-modal trade corridor” in providing two-way trade both internationally and inter-regionally, and this paper critiques that assertion based on our mapping of the notional corridor route and our findings on the existing resource and utility corridors’ impacts on Indigenous communities in Canada. [...] How is food (in-)security related to the remoteness of communities in Canada’s north and the lack of northern infrastructure development in Northern Canada (e.g., transportation and logistical issues)? The many ways to measure remoteness were identified, considering the lack of northern infrastructure, particularly roads and food infrastructure. [...] The stated objectives of a northern corridor are to establish a right-of-way with sufficient room for road, rail, pipelines and transmission lines (Sulzenko and Fellows 2016), to lower trade costs, increase gross domestic product (Fellows and Tombe 2018), and optimize and increase the export of resources and agricultural goods (Fellows and Tombe 2018, Tombe, Munzur, and Fellows 2021). [...] The notional route travels through the potash and uranium mines in Saskatchewan, greenstone belts and lithium deposits in the Ring of Fire, Yukon and Manitoba, as well as to oil/mineral deposits in Alberta and the Yukon.