29 Nunavut, Nunavik winter games athletes still waiting for passports

Ten Nunavut athletes and 19 from Nunavik are still waiting for their passports to attend the Arctic Winter Games in Alaska next month.

The Games run from March 10 to 16 in Alaska’s Mat-Su Valley, near Anchorage. All Canadian athletes and team staff will need passports to cross the Canada-U.S. border.

As of Sunday, 49 participants from Nunavut are having their passport applications fast-tracked, Community and Government Services spokesperson Hala Duale said in an email to Nunatsiaq News.

Of that group, 39 have had their passports issued and will receive them March 4 at one of the three hubs participants are departing from for the games, Duale said.

Of the 291 participants selected for Team Nunavut, that leaves 10 still without passports.

Duale said those “are being reviewed to determine what assistance can be provided.”

Meanwhile, Team Nunavik is waiting on 19 passports to be issued for its 54 athletes, chef de mission Philippe Chiasson said Monday. Team Nunavik is sending 98 participants to the Games.

Passport Canada staff travelled to Iqaluit in mid-February and brought incomplete applications there so participants could provide the missing information, Duale said. Members who weren’t in Iqaluit sent their information by courier.

The completed applications were then brought back to Ottawa to be processed.

Chiasson said a similar process is underway in Quebec. A Passport Canada worker set up a clinic in Kuujjuaq for participants to provide missing information, and those applications are being processed in Montreal.

Team Nunavik organizers have set a deadline of the end of this week for remaining passports to be issued so there’s enough time to get everything organized before athletes arrive in Kuujjuaq on March 6, Chiasson said.

He said he has heard of other Arctic Winter Games contingents having similar struggles to get passports expedited this year.

“We’re all pretty much in the same situation, we don’t have the service right there in each community,” he said, citing language barriers as another obstacle to getting passport applications completed on time.

Chiasson said, though, that officials with the passport office have been working hard to fast-track the applications and he’s confident all the passports will come through in time for the Games.

Earlier this month, Nunavut MP Lori Idlout raised the issue of Nunavummiut facing difficulties getting passports in time for the Games in the House of Commons.

Idlout said the costs to get the documents on time were adding up for competitors, because Service Canada locations in Nunavut do not process requests for expedited passports.

Meanwhile, Arctic Winter Games organizers extended the deadline to register to Feb. 21.

The Arctic Winter Games will bring together Indigenous youth athletes from Nunavut, Nunavik, the Northwest Territories, Yukon, Alaska, Greenland, northern Alberta and Sápmi, the traditional homeland of the Sámi people in Scandinavia.