We’ve no interest in discussing Quebec-Nunavut boundary, Taptuna says

This map produced by the Quebec natural resources ministry shows the province’s boundary with Nunavut marked with a purple line.

Despite recent efforts by Quebec aimed at raising the issue, Nunavut has no interest in opening talks on the Quebec-Nunavut maritime boundary, Premier Peter Taptuna said Oct. 21.

“At this time, we see no reason to re-open discussions on this issue,” Taptuna said in response to a question from Hudson Bay MLA Alan Rumbolt.

Right now, Nunavut’s maritime boundary with Quebec in Ungava Bay, Hudson Strait, Hudson Bay and James Bay extends to Quebec’s shoreline.

For Quebec, that’s a problem — because the Quebec government’s Plan Nord includes plans for possible deep water ports in Nunavik.

This includes a port at Kuujjuaraapik, a scheme first touted in ex-premier Jean Charest’s version of Plan Nord, which has been replaced by a new one advanced by the government of Phillipe Couillard.

But because Quebec’s northern boundaries stop at its shoreline, any ports built on its northern coast might end up located inside Nunavut.

In April 2011, Antoine Robitaille, an editorialist with Le Devoir, a daily newspaper published in Montreal, mocked the Charest government’s Nunavik port plans.

“In Plan Nord, Jean Charest promises deep water ports in Nunavut!” said a headline above Robitaille’s article.

Robitaille also quoted the renowned Quebec geographer, Henri Dorion, who found that about 80 per cent of Quebec’s boundaries are not clearly demarcated.

And in northern Quebec, it’s not clear whether the Quebec-Nunavut boundary ends at the high tide water mark or the low tide water mark, Dorion found in a study published in the early 1990s.

That problem dates to the 1912 Quebec Boundary Extension Act, when the old Ungava district was transferred from the Northwest Territories to Quebec.

In any case, Couillard included the issue in a letter to federal party leaders this past Aug. 14, at the start of the recent federal election campaign.

And this past September, Jean-Marc Fournier, the Quebec minister responsible for Plan Nord, told CBC News that it’s “urgent” for Quebec to extend its northern maritime boundaries into the water and that he wants the federal government to bring together all parties affected by the issue, including Ontario, Manitoba, Nunavut, along with various Aboriginal peoples.

That’s left the people of Sanikiluaq, which lies in Hudson Bay’s Belcher Islands, wondering about their future.

Like all other islands in Hudson Bay and Hudson Strait, the Belchers now lie within Nunavut.

And for Sanikiluaq, it may not be a simple issue. The people of the Belcher Islands share a similar dialect with the people of Nunavik’s Hudson Bay coast and many Sanikiluaq residents have relatives in communities like Kuujjuarapik.

But the community was part of the Northwest Territories and now Nunavut for many years, receiving health services through the Kivalliq region and other services through the Qikiqtani region.

Rumbolt did not say which jurisdiction the people of Sanikiluaq prefer. But he said repeatedly Oct. 21 that Sanikiluaq must be consulted before any changes are made to the Quebec-Nunavut boundary.

“The people of Sanikiluaq must be consulted,” Rumbolt said, and he asked Taptuna about what the GN will do to make sure that happens.

Taptuna replied, several times, that Nunavut does not intend to start any discussions on the boundary issue.

“There is no interest in Nunavut to open up discussions,” Taptuna said.

Some far-off islands in the southern reaches of James Bay lie within the legal boundaries of the Nunavut territory, but not within the Nunavut Land Claims Agreement settlement area.

In July 2010, Eva Aariak, then the Nunavut premier, signed an agreement with the James Bay Cree of Eeyou Istchee that gave the Cree ownership rights, including subsurface rights, to about 1,050 square kilometres of land on those islands.