Census numbers portray 'crisis' among Inuit: Simon

A Canadian Inuit leader said she's worried about new statistics that show poor conditions among Canada's Inuit, from crowded houses to fewer people using traditional languages.

"To me, it's a crisis, and we need to deal with it," Mary Simon, president of Inuit Tapiriit Kanatami, said Tuesday in response to the latest aboriginal and Inuit census statistics released by Statistics Canada.

The numbers, based on the 2006 census survey, not only updated Inuit population numbers across Canada, but also asked Inuit about their living conditions. The results were compared to figures from the 1996 census.

The census figures found that 22 per cent of Inuit lived in homes that housed more than one family. In Nunavut, 39 per cent of Inuit lived in crowded homes, compared to just five per cent of non-aboriginal residents.

As well, about 25 per cent of Inuit in Nunavut lived in homes needing major repairs, compared to 13 per cent of non-aboriginal people.

"Inuit live in some of the most crowded conditions in the country," Heather Tait, a data analyst with Statistics Canada, told CBC News on Tuesday.

"About four in 10 Inuit in the territory live in crowded homes."

Crowding rates among Inuit in Nunavut actually went down from 43 per cent in 1996, the census survey found. However, the percentage of Inuit whose homes need repairs went up from 21 per cent in 1996.

"We still need to do a lot more to build good homes for people," Simon said. "This affects Inuit health, it affects education."

Use of Inuit languages declining

Statistics Canada also found that the number of Inuit language speakers has gone down in recent years, even though the use of Inuktitut remains strong in Nunavut.

While 91 per cent of Inuit could speak in Inuktitut in 2006, that figure was down from 94 per cent in 1996.

The number of people who identified Inuktitut as their mother tongue also dropped slightly from 88 per cent in 1996 to 83 per cent in 2006 as well as the percentage of Inuit who used the language in the home.

Simon said she is very worried by these findings and urged everyone to get involved in protecting the Inuit languages.

"The legislation, the education and the community and the homes have to work together to make sure that we're using the language on a day-to-day basis and not leaving it just up to the schools," she said.

"It has to be a community-based initiative supported by government."

Only about 460 Inuit could speak in Inuinnaqtun, which Statistics Canada described as "a dialect of Inuktitut spoken in a few communities in Western Nunavut."

Simon said she will use the new census data to lobby the federal government on behalf of the 50,000 Inuit her organization represents.

Nearly half of Canada's Inuit live in Nunavut, Statistics Canada found.

Inuit also live in the Nunavik region in northern Quebec, the Nunatsiavut region of Labrador and the Inuvialuit settlement region in the Northwest Territories.