Here are grocery prices in some remote communities in Canada's north: $10 for a carton of milk, $28 for a cabbage, $65 for a chicken.

Leesee Papatsie, a resident of Iqaluit, the capital city of the vast northern territory of Nunavut, has seen it all — and documented some of the more budget-busting prices on a website.



The 46-year-old Inuit mother of five, with two children still living at home, said that while prices fluctuate, she spends between CAD$500 and $600 (US$450 to $540) on groceries per week.



Papatsie says those living outside Iqaluit can have an even harder time finding healthy food at reasonable prices.



"For us it's OK, because me and my husband both work, but people still do have a hard time up here," said Papatsie, who helped organize a protest movement against the high prices.



"Families are still hungry, kids go hungry daily, parents don't eat so their children can," she said.



Access to nutritious, affordable food has long been a challenge in the Inuit communities of Canada's north, located in some of the most remote and sparsely populated regions in the world. In Nunavut, one of Canada's three northern territories, there are 31,900 people living in an area about the size of Mexico.



The food problem is reaching crisis levels, and the evidence shows it's getting worse, according to a report released Thursday by the Council of Canadian Academies.

Nearly 70 percent of Inuit preschoolers ages 3 to 5 lived in food-insecure households, the study found.

Across Canada's north — an area that includes Nunavut, the Northwest Territories, Yukon and Nunatsiavut (an autonomous area in the province of Newfoundland and Labrador) — the average annual cost of groceries for a family with children was $19,760 in 2007–08, yet 49 percent of Inuit adults earned less than $20,000 (US$18,036).

Nunavut, in particular, has the highest documented rate of food insecurity for any indigenous population living in a developed country.