Quebec will make good on Plan Nord housing for Nunavik: Charest, minister

(updated June 6 at 4:20 p.m.)

KANGIRSUK — Regional councillors with the Kativik Regional Government, meeting in the Ungava Bay community of Kangirsuk, became alarmed June 2 over a possible delay in the delivery of the new social housing units promised by Quebec’s recently-revealed Plan Nord.

Plan Nord, launched May 9 by Quebec Premier Jean Charest, promised 300 additional social housing units for Nunavik to alleviate the region’s lack of housing, with these new units to be built from 2012 to 2015.

Watson Fournier, the manager of the Kativik Municipal Housing Bureau, told the KRG councillors that the construction contract for the new social housing planned under Plan Nord hasn’t made its way yet from Quebec’s housing corporation, the Société d’habitation du Québec, to Quebec’s cabinet for approval.

Maggie Emudluk, the chair of the KRG, called the delay in the contract’s approval “a disappointment.”

“The housing we thought would see won’t be here,” she said.

The delay could means the contract may not be ready for approval by the time MNAs break for the summer later this month.

The delay also could also mean that the ordering of materials for the 74 additional social housing units to be built next year in Nunavik could be put off.

If the building materials miss being shipped on the last sealifts to Nunavik, these materials would have to flown to the region next spring or shipped up next summer, said Fournier.

But by June 6 the KRG had received information from officials within the SHQ and the office of Nathalie Normandeau, Quebec’s deputy premier and the minister responsible for Plan Nord that the construction of social announced under Plan Nord would begin as planned in 2012 and that building materials would make it on to the 2011 summer sealift.

Pita Aatami, the president of Makivik Corp., also told Nunatsiaq News that Charest told him that on June 7 his cabinet would approve the deal between Quebec and the SHQ which will smooth the way for 2012’s social housing under Plan Nord.

On June 2 KRG councillors went ahead with their distribution of 140 houses among Nunavik’s communities, whose immediate needs were evaluated by the KMHB in 2010 at 995 units.

Of the 141 houses slated to be built in 2012, 74 are to be paid for through Plan Nord, 66 under the existing social housing construction deal with Quebec, and one unit built for Nunavik’s elders association.

After several hours of discussion, the councillors decided that in 2012 16 new units would be built in Kangiqsualujjuaq and Kuujjuaraapik, 38 in Kuujjuaq,42 in Puvirnituq and 14 in Quaqtaq and Umiujaq.