Closed-door transport meetings focused on Nunavut infrastructure: MP

Transport Minister Marc Garneau is in Iqaluit today to meet with local stakeholders on Nunavut’s transportation needs and priorities over the next few years. (PHOTO BY STEVE DUCHARME)

“The message is very loud and clear” that infrastructure investment will reduce costs and foster the northern economy, said federal transport minister Marc Garneau after a closed-door meeting with stakeholders in Iqaluit July 7.

Garneau met briefly with Nunatsiaq News following those talks, which were held at the Frobisher Inn.

The minister cited Nunavut’s lack of paved airport runways and the importance of ice-breaking capability in the seaways as the two main issues brought forward during those meetings.

“Those are all very important points being made, and we’re taking note of, as the federal government,” Garneau said.

Garneau added “the opportunities for natural resources and to develop those natural resources” would help foster the local economy and create new avenues for employment.

“There’s a young population here that wants to have a future here and when you have job opportunities, whether its mining or tourism, those kinds of fields, then those young people would be able to stay up here in the North,” he said.

Inuit unemployment, using data collected by Statistics Canada between February and April 2016, stands at 20.1 per cent, up 3.3 per cent over the same time period last year.

That means one in five Inuit are currently without jobs.

The non-Inuit unemployment rate is slightly lower, at 15.4 per cent over the same time period, up 2.5 per cent from last year.

The meetings were closed to the public and the names of participants were not disclosed, but Garneau said he met with “dozens of people involved with air and marine shipping and travel,” as well as Inuit organizations and the Canadian Coast Guard.

“All the main people that have an involvement with the North and can help us to figure out how best to approach transportation in the North,” Garneau said, describing the faces around the table.

In his brief media availability afterward, Garneau did not comment on the codeshare policy adopted by Nunavut’s three main airlines, referred to by Nunavut Premier Peter Taptuna as “a monopoly” in a letter to the airlines tabled at the legislature March 10.

In January, presidents of First Air, Canadian North and Calm Air fielded questions by MLAs in a special televised standing committee hearing addressing the codeshare.

The executives defended the codeshare policy at that hearing, but cited the high costs associated with equipping planes to land on gravel runways.

Garneau said his Iqaluit meetings are part of a larger round of consultations that the federal government is holding over the summer break to inform policy development when the House of Commons reconvenes in mid-September.

“We are doing these consultations for the whole country at the moment, but the fact that we have focused on this particular trip on the North means that the North is important for us,” Garneau said.

“It’s all for us to begin to shape some policy starting this Fall.”

The Liberal government is “not going to spend the next four years talking,” Garneau said. “We’re going to actually do things and we’d like to take the input we received here.”