How a camp in Cambridge Bay, Nunavut, teaches financial literacy to youth

Juutai McKitrick from Coral Harbour, Nunavut, remembers how hard it was to set up his own bank account when he was younger. 

“My hometown doesn't have street addresses. Like, the streets don't have names, none of the addresses are registered,” he said. “Everyone does their mail through the P.O. box, and a lot of banks just don't accept a P.O. box as a valid address.”

He says he worked around this by putting in a non-registered address.

But McKitrick says that's just one example of the barriers Inuit can face when setting up a bank account.

Last month, he helped teach financial literacy to youth at a three-day camp hosted by the Makigiaqta Inuit Training Corporation in Cambridge Bay.

Financial educator Tupaarnaq Kopeck was also involved. She says she noticed some kids who attended the camp from smaller communities didn’t have their own bank accounts, but were eager to learn more. 

“A lot of the stuff I'm teaching, it would be good for them to actually go back home and use these teachings in real life,” Kopeck said. “But, they were not able to do that because they don't have a bank account.” 

Not having a bank account is called being "unbanked" and in 2015, Prosper Canada estimated that 15 per cent of Indigenous people in Canada were unbanked, compared to two per cent of the total Canadian population. 

In Nunavut, larger cities like Iqaluit have several bank branches, while smaller communities in the territory have one bank or no banks at all. 

McKitrick says it’s important to teach financial literacy because it benefits the entire community, not just the individual. 

“If there's banking services and then someone is able to use those services to open a business within the town, that's extra amenities," he said. "Not just benefit for the person making the money, it's benefit for the people that are visiting their store or their shop."  

McKitrick says he’s been advocating for more accessible banking by pushing municipalities to register street addresses and looking into having banking services available at the post office.

Kathleen Gomes branch manager of the First Nations Bank in Iqaluit, says they opened their Igloolik branch last year to make banking accessible in that community. 

She says even if there is no physical bank in a community, people can still open accounts online.