Northern construction leaders call for more housing, local trades training
Panelists discuss challenges to Arctic building during Nunavut Trade Show
Birchcliff Development Ltd. chief financial officer Stephanie Li addresses delegates at the Nunavut Trade Show in Iqaluit on Wednesday. (Photo by Daron Letts)
Four big players in Nunavut’s construction industry achieved consensus within moments of the start of the “Builders Behind our Communities” panel Wednesday at the Nunavut Trade Show in Iqaluit.
“Execution without capacity-building is not OK,” is how Arctic Fresh general manager Evan Schellenberg summed it up. He was one of four panelists who discussed how construction companies are involved in the communities where they build.
Schellenberg pointed out that even many of the delegates in the audience slept on couches the night before.
“Every project must be seen as a housing project,” he said. “It can’t be a side note.”
The annual Nunavut Trade Show, which started Monday, gives business leaders a chance to meet and discuss ideas during four days of panel discussions, speeches and workshops.
While eyes across Canada are looking North with Ottawa spending billions to expand the country’s military presence in the Arctic, Nunavut’s housing crisis continues to worsen. Twenty communities have a “critical” housing need, according the Nunavut Housing Corporation’s 2024-25 annual report.
Meanwhile, in Iqaluit, new housing is not keeping up with demand, the Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation said in its Northern Housing Report, released earlier this year. Iqaluit’s vacancy rate is 0.3 per cent, the report found.
Water, sewer, and power infrastructure likewise should not be approached as afterthoughts, added Tower Arctic Ltd. managing director Gordon Paterson, during the panel.
Others expressed a need to train an Inuit workforce at home.
“We need to look at how we can support, train and develop members of the community,” said Carleigh Bell, director of pursuits and pre-construction for EllisDon Corp.
That involves establishing trades training right where people live, without pulling individuals away for apprenticeship programs far from their support networks, she said.
Stephanie Li, chief financial officer for Birchcliff Development Ltd., agreed.
“We are trying hard to train the local Inuit so they can build for their own,” Li said.
The speakers also called on the Government of Nunavut to involve Inuit tradespeople in its tendering process as early as possible.
Doing so would enhance opportunities for them from Day One and furnish companies with local knowledge early in the construction process, the panelists said.
Problem starts with basis education, need that upgraded first then on to the trades, we dont build the houses from the roof down so everyone on this panel is thinking wrong. I understand these communities cause ive lived in all of them for years and raised kids up here, education is a mess. Univerisity wont fix it cause when basis education cant be met locally spending thousands to get to Arviat wont help. Fix the education at the entry level point, make it attractive to new teachers instead of only entry level and foreign teachers, yes now thats an issue. We can send billions to Ukraine but we cant fix housing for way less seems counterintuitive?
You brought up Ukraine, not me.
The majority if Canadian aid to Ukraine have been loans, which Ukraine has to repay over time.
Secondly, that federal money comes out of National Defence or Global Affairs budgets, which was never going to be allocated Nunavut anyway.
100% education first. All the young and not so young Inuit who sees all this construction; ever more so in Iqaluit where they seem to be cropping up like mushrooms after the rain must be motivated enough to enter these trades. Get your kids to go to school and finish school. And until the gov pull out from this “welfare state”, there will always be the mentality of why not just sit home and get paid as oppose to doing the work and get paid. All this Inuit in trades talks have been beaten to death but no action to fix the absymal attendance and graduation in school.
Time is up. Year after year blah blah and nothing done. If we dont have the trades in iqaluit then bring them in from the south before a tent costs us 2000 a month
For years we tried to employ people in the communities in which we had projects. Many although claiming to have completed grade 12 could not read a measuring tape even after spending hours of training. Many could not complete the employee forms could not read labels when asked to pick up parts from the shelves. How do you pass grade 12 and not be able to read or understand simple numbers. Start teaching for real not just to put in the day and push another kid out the door.