When am I coming home?: Vulnerable Nunavut kids face loneliness, despair as millions spent sending them south [Video]

Iqaluit, Nunavut — Connie MacIntosh was working as a social service worker in Pond Inlet, a tiny hamlet in Nunavut, when her phone rang.

On the line was a representative from a company operating group homes for youth in southern Ontario, more than 3,000 kilometres away.

She said the caller had a request: they wanted kids from Nunavut.

“They would call up and go like, ‘We’ve got three empty beds,’” said MacIntosh, who was a supervisor for Nunavut’s Department of Family Services between 2012 and 2017 and is now retired.

A months-long Global News investigation has found that amid a backdrop of what workers describe as aggressive targeting and recruitment efforts, Nunavut was billed 53 per cent more per day, on average, for a child to live in an Ontario group home compared with what children’s aid societies in Ontario paid.

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