We’ll renew SINED handout scheme next year, Aglukkaq promises

The building in Iqaluit that houses the Canadian Economic Development Agency’s “headquarters” in Iqaluit. CanNor bureaucrats working here and at the agency’s offices in Yellowknife and Whitehorse are responsible for doling out money from the SINED program. (FILE PHOTO)

As bureaucrats and business managers gathered in Iqaluit for the Nunavut Trade Show this week, Conservative candidate Leona Aglukkaq announced the renewal in 2016 of a federal handout program for the three northern territories that was created in 2004 by Paul Martin’s Liberal government.

Called SINED, short for “Strategic Investments in Northern Economic Development,” the scheme directs federal money into a variety of efforts related to economic development, many of them led by other government and quasi-government agencies.

The renewed version of SINED — if the Conservatives are re-elected — would see federal spending of $100 million over five years divided among the three territories starting in 2016-17, Aglukkaq said in a news release.

That’s the same level of spending that went into the program in 2014-15 and 2015-16, when Ottawa put $40 million over two years into it.

“Creating jobs and supporting northern businesses is the best way to create prosperous northern communities,” Aglukkaq said in the release.

The first version of SINED — created in 2004 by the Liberal Martin government — operated as a standalone program under the Aboriginal Affairs and Northern Development department between 2004 and 2009 and dished out about $90 million in spending over those five years.

But in 2009, SINED was folded into the Canadian Northern Economic Development Agency, within which a renewed version of the SINED scheme handed out another $90 million for another five years.

It was renewed again, but only for two years, starting in 2014-15. The next round of spending would keep it going at the same level until about March 2022.

Most of SINED’s money goes to other government agencies, economic development organizations, Inuit associations, and certain targeted projects, like the proposed Kenojuak Cultural Centre and Print Shop in Cape Dorset and the Nunavut Fisheries and Marine Training Consortium.

Aglukkaq’s news release bragged that major federal transfers to the territories have increased by 76 per cent since 2006.