Is this the end of Nanisivik? Feds won’t say
Ottawa reportedly cutting long-promised $114.6M naval facility
Work to revive the Nanisivik Naval Facility, near Arctic Bay, has been ongoing for years. But recent reports indicate the Department of National Defence is reportedly planning to pull the plug on the project. (File photo)
The federal government is reportedly calling it quits on its troubled $114.6-million Nanisivik Naval Facility project near Arctic Bay.
Nanisivik Naval Facility was built in place of now-demolished mining town. (File photo)
The Globe and Mail first reported the development on May 7, citing two anonymous government sources. Since then, Nunatsiaq News repeatedly asked the Department of National Defence to confirm the Globe and Mail’s reporting but hasn’t received a response.
“I am unsure for when you’ll receive answers, but I doubt it is feasible today. More likely tomorrow,” Maj. Mathieu Dufour, spokesperson for the Defence Department, said Monday in an email.
The department hasn’t responded to multiple follow up requests since.
The plan, according to the Globe and Mail, is to remove all the facility’s infrastructure and conduct environmental remediation.
Ottawa had spent $107.6 million of the total $114.6-million price tag for the facility as of January.
“I think it’s a shocking example of incompetence by successive Conservative and Liberal governments,” said Don Davies, the NDP’s defence critic, in an interview last week.
Officials from the Conservative party didn’t respond to a request for comment and Nunavut’s Liberal MP Lori Idlout wasn’t available for comment in time for publication, but her chief of staff indicated she is aware of the plans.
“I know from Lori’s perspective, she is quite reluctant to speak on this closure before having a chance to speak with the local community,” Benjamin Wiles said Tuesday in an email.
The facility is located on the site of the now-demolished mining town of Nanisivik, about 20 kilometres from Arctic Bay.
The project was first announced in 2007 by then-prime minister Stephen Harper as a way to “significantly strengthen Canada’s sovereignty over the Arctic.”
The government originally planned $100 million for a deepwater port and a jet-capable airstrip at Nanisivik.
But in 2011 the cost ballooned to $258 million. Defence Department officials cut plans for the airstrip, and the facility’s purpose was reduced to a summer docking and refuelling hub for government vessels. This meant the infrastructure would be accessible for about one month per year.
Plans still included a jetty, fuel storage tanks, a site office, a wharf operator’s shelter, a storage building and a helicopter pad.
Initially, the goal was to open Nanisivik in 2015, but construction delays pushed that target to 2018. Then it was expected to open in 2025.
For the past year, the federal government hasn’t provided a new estimated opening date. It calls the facility “complete” but “not yet operational.”
In 2008, the Defence Department saw evidence of corrosion in the steel of the existing jetty, caused by Arctic cold-water bacteria.
“Since 2010, we have been working with consultants to understand the phenomena and develop options to mitigate the problem,” said National Defence spokesperson Cheryl Forrest in an email.
It would cost between $25 to $49 million to fix the jetty, according to the department’s website.
Government officials have acknowledged Nanisivik’s troubles.
“The challenges we have faced at that particular facility have demonstrated that that’s not the way to go forward,” then-defence minister Bill Blair said in March 2025.
As well, Nanisivik has been absent from federal government’s latest Arctic sovereignty push.
The facility is not part of Prime Minister Mark Carney’s planned $2.7-billion Arctic defence network and didn’t get a funding boost from Ottawa’s 2024 $81.1-billion Arctic defence policy.
Former Prime Minister Stephen Harper and Gordon O’Connor, then-minister of national defence, stand on Aug. 10, 2007, at the site of what was planned to become the Nanisivik Naval Facility. (File photo)
After years of delays and downscaling, it makes sense to put the project to rest, said Ryan Dean, network co-ordinator for the North American and Arctic Defence and Security Network.
He said the idea that it’s still necessary to complete the Nanisivik project in the name of Arctic security is a fallacy.
“If they have closed it, then it’s a very responsible decision to make that choice,” Dean said.
Another Harper boondoggle that was poorly thought out.
This hare-brained idea for using Nanisivik should be put to rest now and forever.