Iqaluit pool gets federal funds for heating expansion

Carolyn Bennett, Canada’s minister of Crown-Indigenous relations and northern affairs, speaks at Iqaluit’s aquatic centre on Monday, Jan. 15, where she announced that the federal government will pay the costs of hooking up the building up to the city’s district heating system. (PHOTO BY STEVE DUCHARME)

Iqaluit’s aquatic centre will have lower heating bills in the future, after the Government of Canada announced this week it would pay to connect the building to Iqaluit’s district heating system.

Carolyn Bennett, the minister of Crown-Indigenous relations and northern affairs, speaking in Iqaluit on Monday, Jan. 15, announced her government will pay Qulliq Energy Corp. to complete its expansion of the district heating system, which channels excess diesel-generator heat from the Iqaluit power station.

The additional heat is estimated to save the aquatic centre about 157,000 litres of heating fuel annually, translating into greenhouse gas reductions of over 466 tonnes of carbon dioxide a year, according to statistics provided at the news conference.

“This is about a more sustainable environment,” Bennett said during a news conference at the aquatic centre. “It pays off over and over again.”

City officials were unable to say at the event how much money would be saved annually by adding the building to the QEC’s district heating system.

The cost of the district heating expansion also remains unclear for now. Bennett said she couldn’t put a price on the project, given a pending request for proposals by contractors to perform the work.

The cost of the project will be drawn from the Northern REACHE program, which was handed a $53.5 million budget last year to implement renewable energy projects in northern and Indigenous communities over the next decade.

The heating corridor expansion will also allow the aquatic centre to apply for its “Leadership in Energy and Environment Design,” or LEED, certification.

Iqaluit’s $40.6 million aquatic and fitness centre opened one year ago. “I can’t think of a better milestone for the first-year anniversary,” Iqaluit mayor Madeleine Redfern said.

The city’s current district heating system is already connected to the Qikiqtani General Hospital, the Nunavut Court of Justice and the Nunatta campus of the Nunavut Arctic College.

No movement on Nutrition North

Bennett did not offer any timeline for when the much-maligned Nutrition North program will be revised, when asked by Nunatsiaq News.

The Department of Crown-Indigenous Relations and Northern Affairs maintains control over the Nutrition North file following the split of the old Indigenous and Northern Affairs Canada department announced by Ottawa last year.

“We have heard a lot, but we have also heard that people want the whole issue of food security to be perhaps separated into the support for harvesters and fisherman and country food as being an important staple to reduce the amount that needs to be bought at grocery stores,” Bennett said.

“But we also know that there’s lots of innovative other approaches that other people are talking about in terms of some companies wanting to fly things in more inexpensively.”

Bennett added that the Nutrition North revision would be a “complete renovation” of the program, which “worked in some ways,” but “we’ve got to find a holistic solution.”

“People need to be able to feed their families, they used to be able to feed their families and they can’t feed their families now,” she said.