New Nav Canada contract kills airport training, four jobs in Nunavut

Alexander Sammurtok, MLA for Rankin Inlet South, says the Nunavut government could have done more to keep an aviation radio communicator program in the territory. A new contract between Nav Canada and a company called ATS will require Nunavummiut to train in the Northwest Territories instead of Rankin Inlet. (PHOTO BY PETER VARGA)

Nunavut will lose a training program and four jobs when an Ottawa-based company takes over air traffic radio communications in small airports throughout Nunavut by April 1, MLAs warned in the legislative assembly.

First in line with his concerns in the assembly, March 4, was Rankin Inlet. South MLA Alexander Sammurtok.

Sammurtok said his community will lose three of the jobs, as well as a long-running observer-communicator training program at Nunavut Arctic College.

“Nunavut students will have to go to Fort Smith for training,” Sammurtok said in his member’s statement. “Mr. Speaker, I am very concerned at this development.”

Aurora College in Fort Smith also runs an observer-communicator program.

Program trainees learn skills needed to work at Community Aerodrome Radio Stations, which handle communications with civilian aircraft and monitor weather conditions at small airports.

Nunavut has CARS facilities in 22 communities, and Ottawa-based ATS Services Ltd. operates seven of them.

ATS will take over all the facilities by April 1, Nunavut’s minister of economic development and transportation, Monica Ell, said during question period.

Nav Canada, which operates the country’s civil air navigation system, contracted ATS to operate all hamlet aerodrome radio stations as of that date.

The new arrangement replaces a long-running agreement between the Nunavut government and Nav Canada.

Under the current agreement, the government contracted the operation of CARS facilities to municipalities and various private companies, Sammurtok said.

Nav Canada will stop funding the Nunavut Arctic College training program in Rankin Inlet, in favour of training all Nunavut’s CARS operators in Fort Smith, Ell said in the legislative assembly.

The college will lose a program coordinator position when the Arctic College’s training course closes.

Other jobs lost in the changes include two government positions in Rankin Inlet, and one in Kugluktuk.

“My staff is working with those individuals to see whether those positions can be placed elsewhere within the government,” Ell said in the legislative assembly.

The minister also promised that the government is “reviewing” how it can keep the Arctic College’s CARS training program afloat.

“My main concern is that, when Rankin Inlet is set up for the training, with all the equipment that they’ve got, why the change?” Sammurtok told Nunatsiaq News.

“The numbers of graduates that have been going through since it’s been in Rankin has been quite successful,” he said.

Once the Arctic College program is shut down, “Nunavummiut are going to go out of the territory. Are we still going to have that success rate?”

Sammurtok estimated up to 50 graduates work at the territory’s 22 CARS facilities.

When Joe Savikataaq, MLA for Rankin Inlet South, asked what led to the government’s decision not to renew its agreement with Nav Canada, Ell highlighted “airport safety” and financial concerns.

“We believe that Nav Canada wanted to unify its services into one, particularly in Nunavut,” Ell said.

“Their concerns are always about safety, and we believe in what Nav Canada is doing.”