Ottawa doles out more infrastructure cash

Iqaluit Mayor Elisapee Sheutiapik speaks to reporters during a news conference in Iqaluit Sept. 15, as Nunavut MP Leona Aglukkaq looks on. Aglukkaq announced $18 million in infrastructure spending for the territory. (PHOTO BY CHRIS WINDEYER)

Six Nunavut communities will split $18 million in federal-territorial infrastructure money, Nunavut MP Leona Aglukkaq announced Sept. 15.

The money will go to airport improvements in Baker Lake, Whale Cove and Arctic Bay, a water treatment pump house for Baker Lake, and a new community centre for Qikiqtarjuaq.

The Government of Nunavut also gets $1.8 million for capital planning.

“Investments of this nature will allow our communities in Nunavut to continue to grow and to prosper,” Aglukkaq told reporters. The money comes from the provincial-territorial base infrastructure fund.

Kathleen Lausmann, deputy minister of Community and Government Services, singled out the airport improvements as especially important for “social and economic growth.”

The funding, 75 per cent of which will come from Ottawa, includes $5 million for an upgrade to Baker Lake’s aging airport terminal, and $1.6 million to build equipment shelters at the airports in Whale Cove and Arctic Bay.

“Whenever we can enhance our airports, that really strengthens transportation to and from communities, transportation of people and goods both, which are really, really important,” Lausmann said.

Lausmann also said water improvements in Baker Lake are both good for public health and make it easier for the community to handle population growth.

The Sept. 15 announcement was to be followed two others, one for Sept. 16 in Kimmirut and another the next day back in Iqaluit.

The spending announcement also follows the release of a report from the Federation of Canadian Municipalities, which called on Ottawa to create a plan to make massive infrastructure improvements across the North.

Aglukkaq said the report “states what we already know” and said the Conservative government has spent over $140 million on infrastructure improvements.

“We recognize the needs of the North,” Aglukkaq said.