Buy Canadian? Bring it on

What’s good for Canada is often good for Nunavut and Nunavik. So, as the federal government pushes its Buy Canadian policy to use Canadian-made materials in the construction of new public works projects, it creates a new opportunity for the North.

Federal Public Works and Procurement Minister Joël Lightbound announced Tuesday the government had picked Inuit-owned Arctic Fresh Projects Inc. to build a $35.6-million, 23-unit apartment building in Iqaluit. It will provide housing for some of the approximately 200 federal government employees in the city.

It’s also one of the first government contracts awarded under the new Buy Canadian policy, a government news release said. Its construction will use predominantly Canadian steel, aluminum, and lumber.

“We’ve been very focused on what we can do to shore up the Canadian economy,” Lightbound said.

Talk about good timing. The news came the day after U.S. President Donald Trump announced a whopping 50-per-cent tariff on a host of Canadian products — including hockey sticks, of all things —beginning in mid-August.

The Buy Canadian policy came into effect in December, spelling out rules to prioritize Canadian suppliers and Canadian-made materials when the government builds new projects. One of the policy’s goals is to help Canadian industries respond to a decline in their traditional U.S. markets.

In the past year and a half, Prime Minister Mark Carney has shown an eagerness to build big things as one way to strengthen the Canadian economy, especially in these uncertain economic times caused by the Trump administration’s unpredictable trade policies.

There are countless public works projects that need to be built across Nunavut and Nunavik — airport runways, harbours, ports, electricity generators. All of them could use federal financial support.

Health care is another area where Nunavut needs more help building facilities closer to home, a point Premier John Main made Wednesday at a conference of Canadian premiers in Charlottetown.

“We want to build care closer to home. And we need a strong partnership from the federal government that recognizes our increased spend,” Main said at the conference.

Since Ottawa sees the construction of public projects — using Canadian materials — as a way to bolster the Canadian economy, Nunavut and Nunavik should lean into that.

The recipe is simple: Ottawa wants to build more public infrastructure projects to boost the economy in uncertain times. It wants to use Canadian-made materials in their construction. Nunavut and Nunavik need many more infrastructure projects that are going to need federal financial support.

If Ottawa is aggressively promoting the use of Canadian construction materials, the North is an ideal market for those products that, once upon a time, were traditionally bound for the U.S.