Iqaluit to enter joint push with Yellowknife, Whitehorse for federal money

Iqaluit city council voted Tuesday to push for federal defence funding alongside Whitehorse and Yellowknife.

“I think at this point in the world it’s really important that the North show that we are together in all this in a united front,” Deputy Mayor Kimberly Smith said during the meeting.

The plan is to sign a memorandum of understanding while Iqaluit Mayor Solomon Awa is in Whitehorse on Feb. 24 for a meeting with Yellowknife Mayor Ben Hendriksen and Whitehorse Mayor Kirk Cameron.

The document calls on the federal government to put money into “climate-resilient, dual-use infrastructure” across the three territorial capitals, including municipal water systems, wastewater treatment, landfills, housing, transportation, communications, energy and large community facilities.

These expenditures would ensure northern communities are livable and able to support Canada’s “Arctic sovereignty and national security objectives,” the memorandum said.

Council voted unanimously to have Awa sign the memorandum of understanding.

Nunavut Premier John Main expressed similar sentiment while speaking in Ottawa in January.

“We can’t have state-of-the-art military technology flying in the face of communities that are impoverished and in need of basic infrastructure,” he said, speaking alongside Yukon Premier Currie Dixon and Northwest Territories Premier R.J. Simpson.

Government of Nunavut and Nunavut Tunngavik Inc. have compiled a wish list of major infrastructure for the federal government that includes the Iqaluit hydroelectric project, Kivalliq hydro-fibre link, Qikiqtarjuaq port and Grays Bay road and port.

Proponents of all four projects have touted them as essential to Canada’s national security, with the Iqaluit project named as one of the six “nation-building” projects by Prime Minister Mark Carney.