Nunavut represents Canada’s energy future, Aariak declares

Speaking to an Arctic Oil and Gas Symposium in Calgary, Nunavut Premier Eva Aariak calls on the federal government to come up with a national energy strategy to help unlock the territory’s resource potential. (PHOTO COURTESY OF THE GOVERNMENT OF NUNAVUT)

Nunavut represents the future of the country’s energy sector, Premier Eva Aariak told the Arctic Oil and Gas Symposium in Calgary March 14.

But until people in Nunavut can control their future through their lands and resources, Ottawa still “holds the keys” to the territory’s energy potential, she said.

While estimates show the territory could hold up to 25 per cent of Canada’s oil and gas resources, the vast majority of those resources remain untapped.

Unlocking that potential will first require that Nunavummiut be “full partners” in the territory’s development, Aariak said.

But the rest relies on a national energy plan that could help move those resources to global markets, from a territory with no roads or deep water ports.

“When it comes to energy, we need a more expansive vision that goes beyond new pipelines in the West,” Aariak told the symposium in her March 14 keynote address.

“It is time to turn our eyes north to build an energy exporting network that stretches from sea to sea to sea.”

As it stands, about 80 per cent of any investment in Nunavut’s infrastructure flows to southern Canada, something Aariak said the territory has been ready to change since it proposed negotiations on devolution in 2008.

Provincial control of resources should be at the very core of any Canadian energy strategy, she said.

That strategy should also address renewable energy options in Nunavut, Aariak said, where residents already pay the highest power rates in the country.

“In each of Nunavut’s 25 communities there is an aging diesel-fired plant that is providing all the power,” Aariak told the symposium.

“This leaves some of this country’s poorest communities at the mercy of international oil prices for their electricity generation.”

In its place is the vast potential of the territory’s wind power, endless summer sunshine and an estimated 30,000 megawatts of tidal power that goes uncaptured every day.

Aariak pointed to the Northwest Territories, where the Diavik diamond mine operation is building a 9.2 megawatt wind farm 100 kilometres from Yellowknife.

A road from Manitoba into Nunavut would move goods in and out of the territory, Aariak said, while also setting the stage for large-scale hydro development to power the territory and export through the North American power grid.

Aariak made a similar call for federal support in an op-ed piece published in the Globe and Mail March 14.