Building is half the battle

It’s been an exciting year for the North.

The region has been a focus for Prime Minister Mark Carney since taking office in March 2025, and he seems to have a plan.

We’re hearing about hubs and nodes and radar systems, but we’re also hearing about water and sewage upgrades, longer airstrips, airports and other infrastructure that’s necessary for military operations but also useful to communities.

The concept of what qualifies as dual use is being reimagined as well. This makes sense, as Canada’s NATO commitment results in a defence budget so large it’s hard to imagine what to even spend it on. The country met a two per cent pledge in 2025 of $81.1 billion. But we are promising to carve out five per cent of our GDP for defence by 2035, which more than doubles last year’s amount. Per year.

Canada and NATO have agreed to split the five per cent pledge so 3.5 per cent goes toward direct defence spending — jets and tanks and radars — while 1.5 per cent can be earmarked for dual-use projects. In 2035, that would work out to an estimated $60 billion per year.

It’s fun to imagine how $60 billion per year on housing, airports, power generation, sewage, water, roads and ports could transform the North.

But money can’t buy everything.

What good is a health centre if a malignant work culture leaves front-line staff traumatized? What good is a new water treatment plant if it’s impossible to recruit trained operators to run them? What good is a fixed water main if the territorial government can’t send staff to do the followup work required to lift a boil water advisory?

Federal leaders have touted their “generational” investment in the North. But this generational investment is only going to go so far without a parallel investment in generations.

Nunavut Premier John Main had a point when he said defence spending shouldn’t “fly in the face” of impoverished communities where education, health care and housing needs continue to fester. He continues to call for federal funding so Nunavummiut can have better access to health-care services — a drum he has beat for years.

In Arctic Bay, administrators are warning families that a lack of teachers could disrupt the upcoming school year. The community isn’t alone with its recruitment problems, according to Justin Matchett, president of the Nunavut Teachers’ Association.

In Naujaat, he said, there have been problems with teacher recruitment because of the housing crisis. Naujaat also happened to see materials for an eight-unit multiplex go up in flames this summer.

Nunavut Education Minister David Akeeagok, who grew up in Grise Fiord, said last year that he’s “one of the proudest Canadian flagpoles that we can be.” His hometown community of 140 people only exists because the Canadian government forced Inuit to relocate there in the 1950s in the name of Arctic sovereignty.

Nunatsiaq News talked to the residents of Grise Fiord ahead of the 2025 federal election. What did they say they wanted in exchange for their assigned flagpole duty?

A better quality of life, where a jar of pickles doesn’t cost $50 and a plane ride to Ottawa doesn’t cost $4,200. These concerns are surely at the heart of hiring and retention issues across the North.

We love to see ambitious spending in the territory. But it’s one thing to build communities. It’s entirely another thing to build them up.