Western Nunavut Inuit org will continue to pitch Grays Bay project

Kitikmeot Inuit Association President Stanley Anablak speaks during the organization’s annual meeting in Cambridge Bay on Tuesday, Oct. 16. (PHOTO BY JANE GEORGE)

CAMBRIDGE BAY—When Stanley Anablak of the Kitikmeot Inuit Association delivered his president’s report this morning to the annual general meeting in Cambridge Bay, he included an encouraging look-ahead for the Grays Bay Road and Port Project.

“Despite the headwinds we’ve faced over the year, there is still hope for the project,” Anablak said.

The KIA lost key Government of Nunavut support for the project in 2017, once the premiership passed from Peter Taptuna, who comes from western Nunavut, Anablak told regional delegates meeting at the Luke Novoligak Community Hall this week.

“Our efforts on this project took an unfortunate turn shortly after last year’s territorial election,” Anablak said, referring in his report to “flawed decision-making” at the GN.

“The openness and cooperation that we had experienced with the Taptuna government evaporated,” he said. “Instead we were getting the cold shoulder and finding it really difficult to have any sort of audience with the Government of Nunavut’s leadership.”

Anablak called this “a strange way” of conducting business for a government that was trying to brand itself as wanting strong partnerships with Inuit organizations.

The Grays Bay project in western Nunavut would involve the construction of a 227-kilometre all-weather road running from the site of the defunct Jericho mine, which is located at the northern end of the Tibbit-Contwoyto winter road, to a deep-sea port at Grays Bay on Coronation Gulf.

Promoters had wanted the GN to commit $138 million to the $500-plus million project, but in March the GN decided not to spend any more money on the project other than the $2 million given last June to help the project’s development.

In May, the Nunavut Impact Review Board put the project on ice.

The cracks in advancing Grays Bay came to a head in early April, Anablak said at the AGM, when the GN said it would no longer be a co-proponent in the project,.

“This was terrible news, Anablak said. “It was made worse by the fact that the decision appeared to be made without any effort to understand the project.”

Since the change in government from Premier Paul Quassa to Joe Savikataaq, Anablak said there’s been “some improvements” in the KIA’s relationship with the GN.

“There seems to be a willingness to re-engage with us.”

Speaking last June in the legislature, Savikataaq said any financial commitment to Grays Bay, like others made by the GN, would have added to the debt load of the government.

“Our share of the project of the $550 million would still have added to our debt cap of the $138 million,” he said. “That could impact of the government’s ability to, for example, pay for the rebuilding of a new school, if required.”

Anablak said the KIA is scheduled to meet the legislature’s full caucus about the project.

Meanwhile, the KIA is still looking for a “federal leader to champion the Grays Bay project,” he said.

“While we continue to work on the missing pieces of the puzzle, we are moving forward with a strategy to secure funding to continue the permitting and design of the project.”

Anablak said he hopes to do this in “a co-ordinated manner” with the GN and the Government of the Northwest Territories.

In August, Anablak also pitched the project to Nunavut Tunngavik Inc., asking for $7.5 million.

Anablak told the AGM he plans to run again this December for a second four-year term as president of the KIA.