Nunavut gets $2.8M to ensure essential air service to remote communities
Money comes from federal government’s remote air services program
Government of Nunavut’s deputy minister of executive and intergovernmental affairs, Jimi Onalik, right, speaks alongside parliamentary secretary to the deputy prime minister, Terry Beech. Both announced $2.8 million to help the GN continue essential air services to Nunavut’s communities. (Photo by David Lochead)
The federal government is giving the Government of Nunavut $2.8 million to ensure essential air services to Nunavut’s remote communities continue through this fiscal year.
The funding was announced Friday at Iqaluit’s airport by Terry Beech, parliamentary secretary to the deputy prime minister, on behalf of Minister of Transport Omar Alghabra.
Since the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic, the federal government has given more than $30 million to the GN through its remote air services program.
The GN provides the funds to airlines that serve Nunavut’s remote communities, such as Canadian North and Calm Air, to ensure a baseline level of service is met.
“We’re not talking about non-essential services here, we’re keeping our communities going,” said Jimi Onalik, the territorial government’s deputy minister of the executive and intergovernmental affairs.
To ensure accountability, government spending on essential air services is audited.
An example of an essential air service is flying to and from a remote community more than once a week, even if it does not make economic sense to do so, Onalik said.
That service provides people access to goods, services and medical supplies, as well as for travel.
Without the funding announced Friday, as well as funding throughout the pandemic, the GN would not have been able to carry out air services to the territory’s communities, Onalik said.
“It would have been catastrophic,” he said.
The hope is that by the end of this fiscal year, the GN will no longer need federal funding for essential air services, he said. The federal government’s fiscal year ends next March 31.
Wait, what about Aviation fuel shortages ?
Where did proposed new airport terminal infrastructure for small communities get skunk? Incompetent red tape.
The federal government has been providing more funding for the GN for a few years now, for ports, small craft harbours, housing and other things, like this new funding for air services, problem is having guys like this in the picture running the GN are too incompetent, no matter the amount of extra funding thrown at the GN they figure a way to screw it up.
With such a huge annual budget of over 2 Billion dollars the GN needs to do much better.
They pour 100s of million into our only airline that service us without any real conditions for the airline. Health centres closing, deep sea port cost overruns and delays in opening. Miscalculation in having enough aviation fuel in some communities, housing debacle and wasting a year and hundreds of millions on housing that we badly need.
The list keeps going, the gong show at the GN is embarrassing and it needs to stop! A major review needs to happen in all departments and changes made. Enough is enough.