NEAS touts sealift service record, reliability in western Nunavut hub

Suzanne Paquin, NEAS chief executive officer and president, shown here in the board room of the Kitikmeot Inuit Association building, says she came to Cambridge Bay to meet with Kitikmeot mayors, but, due to the cancellation of their meeting, but, instead, used her time to meet with potential NEAS customers. (PHOTO BY JANE GEORGE)

A row of crates and sealift containers lines the shore in Cambridge Bay in early September when a huge delivery of cargo arrived on the Avataq. (PHOTO BY JANE GEORGE)

CAMBRIDGE BAY— Because of freezing drizzle and thick fog that cloaked the western Nunavut town of Cambridge Bay, well-laid plans for a Kitikmeot mayors meeting crumbled Oct. 7, leading to the Oct. 8 cancellation of the three-day event.

Mayors from Gjoa Haven, Taloyoak and Kugaaruk couldn’t make it to Cambridge Bay, leaving the meeting short of a quorum — and a slew of Nunavut government ministers also turned around and headed back to Iqaluit from Taloyoak, where they had been waiting for the weather to lift, much to the dismay of local organizers.

But the cancellation of the meeting offered Suzanne Paquin, president and CEO of the NEAS group, who was to make a presentation to the mayors, a new opportunity.

With time to spare in Cambridge Bay, where there is growing dissatisfaction with a competing sealift company, Northern Transportation Co. Ltd., over the uncertain arrival of its already-late barge due on Oct. 10, Paquin called on several disgruntled small business owners.

Her message: Nunavut Eastern Arctic Shipping Inc. provides another reliable sealift choice to businesses and people in the region.

“We’re a well-oiled machine,” Paquin said in an Oct. 8 interview in the Kitikmeot Inuit Association building’s boardroom, where the mayors were to have heard her full presentation. “We have it pretty down pat.”

The NEAS group provides a “one-stop shop” for sealift, she said. With its huge facility in Valleyfield, outside Montreal, NEAS can provide “an address” to anyone in the West who wants materials crated or packed in containers for shipping to the Kitikmeot region, she said.

NEAS first started servicing the Kitikmeot in 2009, and since then, the company has tripled its volume from 4,000 to 12,000 cubic metres, she said.

However, she acknowledged that, traditionally, people in the Kitikmeot have turned to the Norterra-owned NTCL, with its links to western Canada and the Northwest Territories, for their annual sealift re-supply.

NEAS, on the other hand, is owned by Makivik Corp. and Transport Nanuk Inc., a joint venture between Logistec Corp. and the North West Co.

Its Nunavut subsidiary, Nunavut Eastern Arctic Shipping Inc., is a registered “Nunavut Business” and “Inuit Firm,” with 51 per cent of its voting shares held by Merkosak Construction Ltd. of Pond Inlet and Ike Haulli of Igloolik, with the remaining 49 per cent held by NEAS Inc.

Geography aside, Paquin said the big issue now for sealift customers appears to be: “does it work?”

NEAS, which she said wants to be known for its “consistency and reliability,” sticks to its cut-off dates and schedule. And she said the company’s trilingual website makes booking easy, with 80 per cent of orders coming in that way.

Not that the NEAS sealift operation always works smoothly — there are always changes to the schedule forced by ice conditions, Paquin said.

For example, there was the time the NEAS vessel, the Avataq, arrived behind schedule in early September into Cambridge Bay after spending six days in Bellot Strait waiting for assistance from a Coast Guard icebreaker.

“To me that is unacceptable,” she said, reflecting the concerns of a recent federal audit that pointed out the limited resources that the Coast Guard deploys to meet the growing needs of Arctic marine traffic.

Sitting in the strait, in heavy ice for six days, was expensive, Paquin said, and the unexpected delay had a ripple effect on NEAS sealift scheduling.

But NEAS ships do get in, she said, citing the advantages that larger vessels have over barges in delivering higher volumes of heavy merchandise.

In her presentation to the mayors, Paquin had also wanted to speak to them about the lack of maritime infrastructure in communities.

This means that cargo is offloaded on to the shore “the same way it was in the day of Sir Martin Frobisher,” who explored the eastern Arctic in 1500s.

Unlike Nunavik, which has basic, federally-financed marine infrastructure in every community, Nunavut lacks secure and safe offloading areas, she said.

Although NEAS has beefed up security and limited access to its marshalling area on the beach in Iqaluit, she said she would like to see mayors call for more improvements and standards in beach operations in every Nunavut community — needs that are not addressed in the recent audit.