Quebec ministers check out Nunavik’s airports, hospitals and clinics

Kuujjuaraapik has a recently-built airport passenger terminal, but many other communities in Nunavik need to see their aging terminals renovated or replaced, (PHOTO BY JANE GEORGE)

(updated at 4:20 p.m.)

Quebec government ministers visited Nunavik airports and health care centres this week, during a three-day tour of the region that wrapped up Aug. 23.

Makivik Corp. and the Kativik Regional Government hosted Quebec health minister Yves Bolduc, transport minister Norman MacMillan, and native affairs minister Geoff Kelley for community tours and meetings on the province’s 25-year Plan Nord program to develop northern Quebec.

“As [Quebec premier Jean Charest] announced, Plan Nord will be carried out with people who live here, and visiting is one of the ways that allow us to carry out this approach,” said Kelley in an Aug. 23 news release. “The areas of health and transport are indeed two important aspects of socio-economic development under the plan.”

The officials stopped in Kuujjuaq, Salluit, Puvirnituq and Kuujjuaraapik between Aug. 21 and 23 to get a first-hand look at these communities’ airport and marine infrastructures.

Transport minister MacMillan said the tour helped him to see the effects of climate change on the region’s transportation system, pledging support to upgrade Nunavik’s airports.

“By 2016, the department of transportation will invest up to $111 million to upgrade 15 northern airports,” MacMillan said in the news release. “Transportation infrastructure is a key element to support the Plan Nord and promote the implementation of this gigantic project.”

Over the next five years, Plan Nord will sink a total of $1.2 billion into infrastructure across Quebec’s north, including studies to determine the feasibility of road links to the South and a deepwater port.

By 2015, Makivik, along with the KRG, and its regional airlines want to see:

• major renovation projects on aging air terminal buildings;
• the extension of Kuujjuaraapik’s runway to 6,500 feet;
• automatic weather observation systems in Puvirnituq, Salluit, Quaqtaq and Tasiujaq; and,
• CATSA to provide passengers screening services in Puvirnituq;

By 2035, officials say they want to see paved airport runways in Kuujjuaraapik and Puvirnituq, to maintain jet service there when the Boeing 737-200 series will be replaced by newer aircraft not approved to land on gravel strips.

Makivik wants to see the construction of deep sea ports in Kuujjuaq and Kuujjuaraapik by 2035.

Alasie Argnak, chair of the Nunavik Regional Board of Health and Social Services, also took the ministers into health centres in the four communities.

In 2010, Quebec signed an agreement with Nunavik in which the province will pay out $300 million to expand health care facilities and equipment in the region’s 14 communities over a seven-year period.

While in Nunavik, health minister Bolduc announced the $33 million would go towards the construction of housing units for staff of the regional health board.

And more than $33 million will pay for a duplex for Aupaluk and 17 fourplexes to be distributed among other communities.

The average size of each staff unit will be 81 square metres, said a government of Quebec news release.