A road to ruin?

Nunavut’s long-suffering residents got a chance last week to learn a useful but alarming lesson about their bumbling territorial government.

And that lesson is this: Government of Nunavut officials are not only incapable of deciding what they want and stating why they want it — they’re incapable of telling the difference between a legitimate need and a psychedelic fantasy.

This lesson is contained, of course, in last week’s embarrassing leak of a report to cabinet that describes a lobbying junket in Ottawa last month, attended by most cabinet members and their hired help.

The incident shows that GN officials still think a road between Iqaluit and Kimmirut is a good idea. What’s worse, it shows that they’re actually saying that to federal government officials.

An Iqaluit-Kimmirut road is, of course, an idea that no thoughtful person could take seriously. Well, that’s unless you’re the kind of person who reads comic books with pictures of Martians on the front and you think the Martians are real. Then you might qualify for a job with the GN’s transportation department.

Any economist, or for that matter, any person with basic knowledge of how the world works, will tell you that the cheapest way to transport stuff from one place to another is by water, on boats. It’s been that way ever since human beings started buying and selling things. Overland transportation, especially over long distances, is and always has been more expensive.

So in the unlikely event that the Iqaluit-Kimmirut road-port scheme is ever built, it’s reasonable to assume that Iqaluit’s goods could actually cost even more than they do now. That’s because those goods would have to be offloaded in Kimmirut, transferred onto trucks, then hauled at least 160 kilometres to Iqaluit along a hideously expensive road — assuming, of course, that the GN keeps such a road in useable condition. In turn, private sealift customers would likely shun the Kimmirut port and stick to landing their goods in Iqaluit.

In any event, there’s no evidence that the GN has ever bothered to get the kind of credible, independent advice that would address such obvious questions. In September of 2002, the GN did hire SNC-Lavalin, one of the 10 largest engineering and construction firms in the world, to do what’s called a “scoping” study on the idea.

But that only creates even more problems, because SNC-Lavalin has a direct financial interest in the outcome of any such study. SNC-Lavalin specializes in the construction of big projects: dams, highways, bridges. For example, it’s the firm that built the multi-billion-dollar James Bay project.

We don’t doubt that SNC-Lavalin is a competent, professional and reasonably honest firm. But any south Baffin port-road study they have done, and are likely to do in the future, would be tainted by a perception of conflict of interest, because SNC-Lavalin is also a leading contender to construct the project, a contract that would likely be worth hundreds of millions.

This week, the City of Iqaluit called on the GN to do an assessment that would, in their words, “determine the most suitable location in south Baffin for a deep water port.” They say such an assessment should use the following criteria to compare the two schemes: total cost, social and economic impact and benefits, environmental impact, available infrastructure, and how much time it would take to develop each of the two projects.

This is a useful idea. If GN officials were to come to their senses and adopt the idea, it could give them a way out of the embarrassing position their stupidity has landed them in. Any competent study would surely show that an Iqaluit port is cheaper and provides more benefits for the money it would cost. But to do that work, the GN must hire an independent consultant who does not have a financial interest in the outcome of the study.

Some people think this issue is just a simple choice between two equally valid priorities. It’s not. It’s a choice between a reasonable, practical proposal, the Iqaluit port, and a wildly preposterous fantasy. But the GN seems addicted to expensive fantasies, as evidenced by their continued lobbying for a billion dollar Manitoba-Kivalliq road, an idea that may be even more fantastical than a mountain road between Iqaluit and Kimmirut.

Sadly, this promises to do immense harm to the GN’s credibility, especially in the eyes of the federal government. The eastern regions of Nunavut need better airports and docks, not highways. But by the time they get around to figuring that out, the GN may have degenerated into Canada’s saddest joke. JB