Inuit-owned companies seek private capital in Toronto
GN, NTI host networking event to bring investors to the table
Inuit, territorial, business and investment leaders gather at a luncheon in Toronto to discuss the territory’s major infrastructure projects, on Monday. Organized by the Government of Nunavut and Nunavut Tunngavik Inc., the event coincided with the inaugural Canada Investment Summit. (Photo courtesy of Trevor Godinho)
Billions of dollars for infrastructure were on the menu at a Toronto luncheon hosted by the Government of Nunavut and Nunavut Tunngavik Inc. on Monday.
They organized the 90-minute event to coincide with the federal government’s inaugural Canada Investment Summit. The initiative brought together Inuit, territorial, private and federal investment leaders to huddle over the territory’s major infrastructure projects that need financial backers.
The two-day summit, hosted by Prime Minister Mark Carney, is billed as one step in a five-year plan to attract $1 trillion in investment over the next five years.
“Our message is pretty clear right across all of these projects,” said West Kitikmeot Resources Corp. CEO Brendan Bell, in a phone interview on Monday. “We’re going to need private capital to step up if these projects are going to become a reality.”
The Inuit-owned company Bell represents is looking for funders for its proposed $1-billion Gray’s Bay Port and Road project, which features a proposed 230-kilometre all-season road and Arctic deepsea port.
In March, that project was referred to the federal government’s new Major Projects Office, a special operating agency supported by the Privy Council Office with the goal of advancing nation-building projects.
“If not now, never,” he said of the project’s funding timeline. “It’s about to get very serious.”
Inuit organizations and their networks cannot go it alone, he said.
Bell and other Arctic industry leaders remain optimistic, in part due to the rising profile of the Arctic on the global stage.
“The attention is very palpable on the Arctic,” said Nukik Corp. CEO Anne-Raphaëlle Audouin. “That is progress because for many years we would have to really fight our way into those discussions, and sometimes to no avail. That has changed.”
The Inuit-owned company Audouin leads is heading another $1 billion infrastructure venture in its Kivalliq Hydro-Fibre project, scheduled to break ground in 2028, with final commissioning in 2032.
That project is part of the federal government’s Transmission InterConnect Investment Strategy.
The program seeks to meet the country’s growing electricity demand, estimated to double by 2050, while embracing Canada’s future net-zero emissions goal.
That national program, including the Kivalliq project, came online as part of the Major Projects Office in May.
For Nunavut Nukkiksautiit Corp. project director Keith Drover, this week’s networking opportunities have offered a chance to shore up existing relationships.
“So far it’s been revisiting strong connections within Canada,” he said. “We’ve had strong discussions with different groups.”
Drover is seeking support for Nunavut Nukkiksautiit Corp.’s proposed 15-30 megawatt hydropower plant along the Kuugaluk River, about 60 kilometres northeast of Iqaluit. The $750-million plant is expected to replace an estimated 15 million litres of diesel that’s burned to generate electricity each year.
It was added to the major projects list in November 2025.
Arctic Economic Development Corp. vice-president of partnerships Jeffrey Ungalaq Maurice met with representatives from RBC and CIBC during the luncheon.
He pitched investment in the $350 million Qikiqtarjuaq Deep Sea Port.
Minister of Crown-Indigenous Relations Rebecca Alty, the premiers of Northwest Territories and Yukon, and hosts Premier John Main and Nunavut Tunngavik Inc. vice-president Paul Irngaut also attended.
Outside capital is the last thing these businesses need. Nunavut’s Inuit organizations are sitting on huge piles of capital that they don’t know how to utilize. The Aqsarniit Hotel was probably the best thing they’ve come up with so far.
What is needed is an ability to recognize a market and to build a business that will meet that market need in a sustainable and profitable way.
Bring in outside capital and outside expertise, but do it in such a way that you learn to do the next one without the outside help.
Doing business is hard. So far, all I’m seeing is a desire to get rich quick with minimal effort. A few people skim a little off the top, but the big money is continuing to go to the outsiders.
QC built the Aqsarniit Hotel in Iqaluit for $70M.
You would have to add a couple more zeros to that figure to tackle these large Inuit lead infrastructure projects that are today being proposed.
No. Inuit are not sitting on huge piles of capital.
The greatest asset we Nunavut Inuit own is 18% of the land up here.
I guess theoretically this land might be worth billions.
However, if you cared to reference our Nunavut Agreement, you would notice that Inuit (quite rightly) collectively cannot sell (alienate) that land.
” Please Sir , can i have some more ”
Yes! The one honourable, little person bucking the system of exploitation.
Take every opportunity available. That’s business.
It is fascinating to see these CORPS lining up to attempt to lure more money from wherever they can. All the while, significant amounts of money have been loaned, granted, and outright given to them over the last few decades. Meanwhile, Nunavummiut continue to wonder where all that money went and how exactly it has benefited them and their families in facing some of Nunavut’s most crucial challenges.
It’s difficult to not be pessimistic regarding these CORPS seeking additional money. Many Nunavummiut know that something just does not sit right with how these companies have operated. How they seemingly grow like wild vines with tentacles everywhere. Every time there is some new initiative in Nunavut a new umbrella company pops up (created by these CORPS and their owners) and aptly named to take advantage or to seemingly promote the Inuit namesake.
Add to this, the money that ALREADY exists. Sitting with the Inuit Organizations and seemingly working on creating daily monetary interest but not Nunavummiut’s daily needs. Then they reach out, hand extended, each time a new initiative is announced by the Government and tell anyone who will listen that they are the best stewards to manage that money and ensure it enriches Nunavummiut’s.
Well, throughout Nunavut, it is clear there are a FEW who have enriched themselves. That is abundantly clear. Most in Nunavut know exactly who they are. The reality, however, is that most Nunavummiut have not proportionately shared in the riches. All the while, the Politicians at both the Territorial and Federal level know who they are. Yet they just keep looking the other way at the failures to deliver, the lack of accountability and absence of good corporate citizenship. They simple continue to pass out the money.
Now theses COPRS & IOS are down South (again)! Looking for more “Capital Investment” to propel their pipe dream projects and using language like “urgency” and “now or never” to try and insight action that will fact track money. Trying to capitalize on the current geopolitical and market environment to slide under the radar and get that money.
Perhaps, before anyone gives them anymore money, these CORPS and IOS’s; they should be called to task publicly and have to explain to all Nunavummiut and Canadian taxpayers exactly where the money they have already received has gone and how EXACTLY it has benefitted all Nunavummiut.
PSC
Let’s look at the hard numbers before we applaud this luncheon on Bay Street.
Right now, the Nunavut Trust holds over $2.06 billion in net assets, managed out of an office on O’Connor Street in Ottawa.
According to the Trust’s own asset allocation, 0% of that $2 billion is designated for direct investment in Nunavut’s local economies. Instead, Inuit money is deployed into southern public equities, private credit, and global timberland and real estate strictly chasing passive yield and double-digit ROI outside the territory.
The standard defense from the Trust has always been its fiduciary duty: “The Trust’s legal mandate is purely capital preservation and funding annual payouts to NTI ($73.8M distributed in 2024; over $1.5B since inception).”
Fine. But look at where the entire ecosystem directs that wealth. Our regional birthright development corporations happily build office buildings, buy hotels, and partner on joint ventures. Yet here they are in Toronto, asking Bay Street bankers to pony up private capital for over $3.1 billion in mega-projects. $1B for Grays Bay, $1B for Kivalliq Hydro-Fibre, $750M for Iqaluit Nukkiksautiit, and $350M for Qikiqtarjuaq.
Private capital understands underwriting: investors demand skin in the game.
When Bay Street looks north and sees that our own institutions won’t risk their balance sheets on the territory’s foundation, they see massive red flags!
Local Inuit contractors, mechanical shops, trade startups, community supply chains, and housing initiatives cannot get a dime of patient equity or basic lines of credit from the dev corps. If Nunavut’s everyday, recurring economy is treated as too risky or low-margin for our own multi-billion-dollar institutions to back, why would any institutional investor from Toronto take that leap? Outside capital won’t build our foundation if we refuse to invest in our own people first!
You do realize, that 26 years ago, Nunavut Trust carved out the high risk portion of it’s investment portfolio and used that money to start Atuqtuarvik Corporation, right?
The fantastic idea being, if we are willing to lose money with the hope of gaining big, we might as well do it through Inuit business.
From an initial investment of around $60M, Atuqtuarvik has been providing equity financing to Inuit business in Nunavut all this time, circulating that money in our territorial economy, and the value of their portfolio has grown to $130M today.
Any Inuit business can walk into AC offices or the network of EcDev support services in Nunavut, and get AC financing to implement a sound business idea, and dozens certainly have.
Instead of losing money on failed business, AC has actually increased Inuit collective wealth.
I honestly have come to believe that a big chunk of what Inuit complain about nowadays comes from ignoring or not learning our history, or not knowing how things work… Jeesh!
Great comments, General capital, Getting inline, and now NTI, and Rios, are trying their best to extinguish, and totally non supportive of small Business, and throw in the GNs non support and very soon there will be no small busines, and the Inuit Elite flying around the world with their southern staff, and staying in 800.00 nite hotels and eating at high end restauants, Drinking on Inuit land claim money, while 1/3 of children go to bed hungry, do as i say, not as i do.
Nunavut needs support from more experienced businesses outside of territory. Hiring, community fund, workers, food etc.
Who runs the fuel? Who runs the local housing? Long ago who runs those and made decisions for the future generations.
The North doesn’t need more announcements. It needs one project that actually lands on budget.
This week, Nunavut’s Inuit organizations were on Bay Street in Toronto, part of Prime Minister Carney’s national investment summit, pitching $3.1 billion in territorial infrastructure to private capital: Kivalliq Hydro-Fibre, the Iqaluit Nukkiksautiit hydro project, Grays Bay Road and Port, Qikiqtarjuaq Deep-Sea Port. Premier Main called it “tremendous.” NTI’s VP Paul Irngaut said Inuit have to be “in the forefront” of any investment here.
Meanwhile, sitting quietly in an office on O’Connor Street in Ottawa, is the Nunavut Trust — over $2 billion of Inuit land-claim money. Its own published asset allocation shows exactly $0 of it invested inside Nunavut. It’s in southern public equities, emerging market debt, private credit, global infrastructure, farmland and timberland — everywhere but here.
So which is it? Is the Trust hoarding capital it should be putting to work at home, or is it doing exactly what a fiduciary should when the track record doesn’t support the risk?
I’ve lived up here 25 years. I’ve watched enough projects get announced with fanfare, blow through their budgets, and either limp across the finish line or quietly disappear, that I understand why an institution with a legal duty to preserve capital for future generations doesn’t want its name on the next one. That’s not obstruction. That’s a Trustee doing their job.
And here’s the part nobody said out loud at that Toronto luncheon: investors are greedy, but they’re not stupid. They do the same risk math the Trust does. A room full of executives shaking hands over a $1B road and port doesn’t erase 25 years of overruns with little to show for it. If anything, the Trust’s caution and Bay Street’s caution are the same signal, read by two different institutions that both have money and fiduciary discipline on the line. Real capital, in real volume, isn’t likely to show up until somewhere up here actually finishes a project on time and on budget — and right now, nobody, local or outside, has built that track record yet.
So the people asking outsiders to take on Nunavut risk are the same people whose own $2 billion fund won’t take it on either. That’s worth sitting with before anyone signs a cheque, from Bay Street or otherwise.
Instead of a road and port to absolutely nowhere can we invest in more ports in the communities to reduce the cost of living for Nunavut communities. Oh it won’t make money for the consultants, darn, so it won’t make the cut to these consultant run government and organizations. How about relocating and paving some airports to reduce airfare for Nunavut communities? Darn it won’t make money for the consultants again! Can we see projects for the people of Nunavut before outside interests!