Labrador trip gives Nunavut transport minister wharf envy

The M/V Northern Ranger docks in Hopedale, Labrador in June, 2009. Docking facilities dot the Labrador coast and Nunavut is lobbying the federal government for similar facilities. (PHOTO COURTESY OF GOVERNMENT OF NUNAVUT)

Labrador’s Inuit communities have something Nunavut’s communities desperately want: real docks that aren’t just a pile of rocks dumped in the water.

So when Peter Taptuna, the Minister of Economic Development and Transportation, rose in the assembly this past week to table a report on his June trip to Labrador, he took a swipe at the federal government.

“There is no doubt that the marine facilities we saw contribute to the viability of the Labrador communities,” Taptuna told MLAs Dec. 2.

“There is also no doubt that Nunavummiut are as deserving of federal assistance in getting those facilities constructed as people on the Labrador coast and the rest of Canada were.”

A joint report assembled by the Government of Nunavut and the Fisheries and Oceans Canada in November, 2005, which called on Ottawa to build small craft harbours in seven Nunavut communities has mostly gathered dust.

But one of the communities, Pangnirtung, was the recipient of a $25 million wharf in the 2008 federal budget. Since then, Ottawa has sidestepped calls from the GN and others to build more small craft harbours.

Calls from the City of Iqaluit for a proper container port, as an alternative to the stone-age practice of loading cargo from barges onto a beach, have likewise been ignored by Ottawa.

In previous interviews, Taptuna has openly mused about a dock in Iqaluit someday connecting with the Labrador ferry system, which already goes as far north as Nain, during the open season.

And the GN views small craft harbours as a way to expand the fishing industry beyond southeast Baffin and provide easier transportation for hunters and tourists alike.

But Nunavut’s problem is that the federal government got out of the business of marine infrastructure in the late 1990s as a cost-saving measure, turning over hundreds of wharves to local owners.

In Labrador, wharves, originally built by Transport Canada, are owned and operated by the provincial government, says the tabled report on Taptuna’s Labrador junket.

“The infrastructure in Labrador was constructed by the federal government under programs which no longer exist, but are still needed,” the report states.

Happy Valley-Goose Bay has a full container port that hosts both cargo ships and passenger ferries. Even Hopedale, population 630, and tiny Rigolet, population 230, have wharves that allow for regular ferry service.

But it’s not clear what more Nunavut can do but keep lobbying Ottawa.

“We will continue to make it clear to the federal government that they overlooked Nunavut when they were constructing marine facilities,” Taptuna said.