Nunavut housing crisis ‘solvable,’ federal minister says
Sean Fraser visits Iqaluit for meetings, $27M funding announcement
Federal Housing Minister Sean Fraser makes an announcement in Iqaluit Friday morning. (Photo by Jeff Pelletier)
The federal housing minister says he believes Nunavut’s housing crisis is a “solvable” challenge to take on, and he wants to work better with communities to do just that.
Sean Fraser was scheduled to fly out of Iqaluit Friday evening, wrapping up his first visit to the territory’s capital.
Over two days, Fraser, the minister of housing, infrastructure and communities, held meetings with Government of Nunavut and Iqaluit city representatives and on Friday he announced funding to speed up housing construction in the territory.
He made another infrastructure-related announcement Thursday, a joint plan by the GN and federal government to direct $194 million toward infrastructure projects in six Nunavut communities.
“Despite the enormity of the challenges, they’re solvable and they will only be solved if we work in partnership with those who live with those challenges and understand where the solutions lie,” Fraser said in an interview Friday.
“We have to engage with people who know their unique differences, and this has been a valuable and eye-opening experience for me that’s going to improve my ability to serve Nunavut.”
Fraser took to the podium at the Franco Centre on Friday to announce Nunavut will receive $27 million to support the building of 459 housing units over three years and 3,100 units over 10 years.
Lorne Kusugak, the minister responsible for the Nunavut Housing Corp., said 22 communities will benefit from the funding as the GN continues its project to build 3,000 new homes across the territory by the end of the decade.
“We are on schedule on our Nunavut 3000 plan,” Kusugak said.
Calling his meeting with Fraser on Thursday “significant,” he said “we look forward to more announcements like this to ensure that Nunavummiut have a safe environment [they can] call their home.”
Iqaluit is to receive about one-third of the funding announced Friday, or $8.9 million, to accelerate construction of 160 housing units over three years. City council voted last summer to apply for that federal funding.
Mayor Solomon Awa welcomed the investment, telling reporters the next step will be to use it to get parts of the city ready for development.
“With the funding that we’re receiving, I think it’s the time to start planning, to start location-finding,” Awa said during a news conference.
“We don’t build houses, but we make the roads and we make the lots available… If need be, we may need to create some of the piping.”
In an interview Thursday, Nunavut MP Lori Idlout said she was happy to welcome Fraser to Iqaluit.
She said she hopes Fraser returns to Nunavut to visit other communities where the housing crisis impacts residents differently than in the capital.
Fraser – a Nova Scotia Liberal MP who has only been in the housing portfolio since July 2023 – said he would like to do just that.
Despite only spending time in the capital on this trip, Fraser said he met with representatives from across the territory, who informed him on how his government can support local housing needs.
He said he intends to keep those relationships going from Ottawa.
“It’s been an extraordinary opportunity for me to hear directly from the people who not only know the challenges that their communities are experiencing better than southerners will, but they know there are solutions as well,” he said.
“I’m not going to look you in the eye and tell you that because I’ve shown up in Iqaluit, we suddenly will solve all the problems across the entire territory. But this is a very helpful opening to what I hope will become a long and meaningful relationship with the communities that we have the opportunity to connect with.”
Minister Fraser,
Nunavut needs builing lots in every community, lots of lots.
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Nunavut needs construction tradespeople living and working in every community. Any program that does not lead to Nunavut having 1,000 construction workers living and working in all 25 communities in Nunavut is not part of the solution.
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Nunavut needs at least 1 locally owned, locally managed and locally led construction company in every community in Nunavut.
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Nunavut needs a construction material supply store in every community in Nunavut.
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Nunavut needs the electricity that will be required by all those new homes, as well as the needed water supplies, garbage disposals and waste water treatment facilities.
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In short, Nunavut needs a total new approach to its housing crisis. Shiping up trailers from Quebec and Manitoba will not solve Nunavut’s housing crisis.
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Doing it right will end up costing less than continuing along Nunavut’s current path.
– Nunavut needs high school graduates
– Nunavut needs graduates from trade schools, Colleges and Universities
– Nunavut need birth control
– Nunavummiut need to be hold accountable
– Nunavut don’t need free resources, buy, or build it yourself
Nunavummiut need to get their live under control, stop blaming the history and move on. There are so many opportunities, grab it and succeed
What an absolutely rude and uneducated thing to say. Check your privilege at the door son, you are living in someone elses house and I wasn’t raised to disrespect my hosts. I know one thing that the people of Nunavut don;t need, another ignorant person simplifying the complex societal issues of their homeland to “just get over it.” Give your head a shake.
I’m not going to check anything. I have no time to check anything if I wanted to because the office is half empty again today.
But you have time to comment on NN while at work? Funny how that works…
Ya. I’m not actually doing anyone else’s work. The office is indeed half empty but I’m not doing any extra. I don’t care about this place and I’m not going to pick up their slack at regular rate. I can do it, I’m really good at this (hence the free-time) but I’m not giving Nunavut any more free work.
Make people want to stay or impotently watch the work not get done. This will include me as soon as I have down payment money.
What Nunavut needs and what can be currently achieved are two very different things. The people that are required for our needs have years of education and experience. The fact that 1/3 of the Nunavut population is under 19 and only 1/3 of the adult population has a GED or better. You are delusional if you think that the remaining population will bust their hump working in the elements building houses when there are plenty of warm dry cushy government jobs available.
The fully stocked construction material supply store in every community in Nunavut will not happen either, we can barely achieve stocking our stores with food and many communities fall short numerous times.
Education and accountability are the only ways out of this mess.
Education is critical, but you miss a big point – to what end? If every person in Nunavut was educated, is it realistic to think there is going to be full opportunity for them where they live? No. People are going to have to move to gain opportunity. And if they move, suddenly they do not need a house where they once lived.
Then the only question is to where? To another place that has a government induced half-economy where everything is still on the public dime, or out of the Inuit homeland, or somewhere else?
Whitehorse started from Mining. Yellowknife started from Mining. Rankin started from Mining. These are the places now in Canada’s north that are the focus of prosperity, economic activity and the uplift of indigenous populations. Decades of natural resource extraction with job experience and wealth creation has resulted in economic diversification.
Nunavut needs a new approach. Stop building things in Iqaluit. Start building public infrastructure out at Mary River.
And have a Nansivik #2 where when the mine ran out of ore the entire town was torn down? Thats not the answer. The answer is like others have been saying. Locals have to get educated and disciplined to be able to take over ALL of the jobs. And to be able to maintain what is here.
An option to social assistance recipients of actually working or a $10,000 cheque and a one way plane ticket to Ottawa will be cheaper and faster. 85% of Nunavut housing is social housing, which is your main problem for housing in Nunavut..
I have a great deal of skepticism on this topic. okay, say suddenly that tomorrow there were enough educated experienced Inuit to fill all of the GN jobs. Everything, Nurses, pshysicians, dentists, lawyers, and whatever else. what about the other 29,000 inuit? on top of it there is no sustainable economy here. there is nothing. maybe you will see the occassion mine open up. but thats it.
Dear Nunavut,
If this is the attitude that the population of Nunavut has towards those in specific occupations, what makes you think those people would want to live there to work for people who lack hope or even a desire for a better Nunavut?
You can’t have that level of economic growth without a change in thinking or attitudes. Just my two cents.
Sincerely,
A former resident of Nunavut
Over the last three years or so I’ve noticed a marked increase in the apparent expectation that people should be coming here to work for every reason but the money. Our Directors are all fooling themselves and hamstringing the territory because they’re bitter about the fact that no one is willing to work here without the old incentives.
I would bet that 7 out of 10 qualified professionals would turn down a job in Nunavut EXPLICITLY because they’re qualified professionals.
Housing crises will not be getting any meaningful help from the lieberal/NDP coalition. Sometimes you have to pull up your socks and help yourself.
Exactly!!!
This is “Stop blaming Qallunaaq month and take responsibility for your own actions. Hug💖a Qabloonaaq 🥰today.”
A long ago I was hired by the GN. it became quickly apparent that the primary reason I was hired was to support the Inuit in there quest for independence. It also shows how co-dependent Inuit are on non-inuit. This in an ongoing toxic relationship that is not going to end any time soon. Inuit complain about non-inuit taking their jobs but are apparently unwilling to do the hard work necessary to become educated. Yet everything in the system is geared towards their success, Inuit complain about not having housing yet are more than willing to accept 2 billion dollars federal transfer payments from southern taxpayers as if this was their ‘due’. well its not. face it. the whole system and this place is mucked up.
Fraser, federal minister od housing
” … the challenges, they’re solvable and they will only be solved if we work … with those who live with those challenges and understand where the solutions lie,”
“We have to engage with people who know their unique differences, and this has been a valuable and eye-opening experience for me that’s going to improve my ability to serve Nunavut.”
It’s been an extraordinary opportunity for me to hear directly from the people who not only know the challenges that their communities are experiencing better than southerners will, but they know there are solutions as well.
“[T]his is a very helpful opening to what I hope will become a long and meaningful relationship with the communities that we have the opportunity to connect with.”
WHO writes these lines for the federal ministers; for whose ears are they written? The answers underlie the egregious price of our pseudo-democracy
Let’s see Inuit do it themselves. Y’know…. since Nunavut was created to show Eskimos could do it ty , be independent and self reliant.
“Ajuinnata!! as the Governor General said.
Show us “Canadians”.
Busy your own house.
Ajuinnata? No thank you. How about pick a different line. I don’t want to stay incompetent, that’s what Ajuinnata means.
In Nunavut Housing Local Boards you HAVE to be related to the “right” people.
The Liberals have been in office for 41 of the last 60 years. If they were going to ‘solve’ Nunavut’s housing crisis, they would have done so already.
Temporary solution like building homes does not solve the bigger problems that must be solved from the bottom-up like teenage pregnancies and dropping out of school. This guy is naive to make those remarks.
Great comment. If there is one thing we conclusively know, it is that having a house is not important to humans nor does it have a positive effect on mental health or the ability to find employment and live a sustainably happy life. Well done!
Maybe the solutions are not that far out of reach. Blending what is in place with what is being developed brings about more than one way to do it. The contractors and those who work for them, can continue to build at their pace and quality, and with what sounds like a new HAP program coming soon, Inuit can start building homes like they build their cabins –building expertise that is in every community now, just hasn’t had the chance to be realized …since the last HAP program.
If you look at the building of units by those at the Rankin Trade school, and remember back to the Inuit non-profit housing corp, there is today and used to be different techniques and ways to build that had many Inuit involved and leading.
It would be great to see again Kingaqs, and the use of stone walls and ground (like digging into the ground sewage tanks) to dampen the effect of drifting snow and low temperatures. Better yet, seeing building expertise that takes advantage of the snow to insulate around the houses built on piles (so not all the heat is lost out the bottom) -these are innovative techniques created by ______, that actually work in the North. It would save on overall heating, improve comfort, and maybe start a new type of build like the old stone houses that are still standing in some communities. Plus, imagine if the air for the boiler wasn’t always just taken from the outside (if you could warm it… like have it pass by the exhaust stack, there’s significant fuel savings in the combustion of the boiler there, with warmer oxygen)
Here’s to tomorrow, and more ways to see houses get built in Nunavut.
Did i miss something in the math?
“Nunavut will receive $27 million to support the building of 459 housing units” that is less then $60K for each unit? i thought the GN was estimating closer to $700K per unit? so is that a Nunatsiaq typo 27 million instead of 270 million or is this a Joke?
Your not wrong, however the 27 million was part of the 194 million, the way I read it was that the Feds that pushed 27 of 194 into the pot. Regardless 194 will only pay for half the promised housing in this article if that.
The going rate per unit is just over $1 million per unit or $1,100 per square foot.
With $ 194 million we will be lucky to see 194 new units.
Just re read it so no there is only the 27 million, so that will afford less than 27 units of the 459 needed. So it is worse than I initially thought.
$27M won’t even come close to building more than 400 units. A single 5plex costs about $4M to build. At that rate, the most they can hope for is 34 units.
First, find a Fountain of Youth somewhere in this world. Then you would be able to solve the housing crisis in Nunavut.
ECLS eh? figures…..
We need multiple strategies to address housing needs, and many players. Government is not flexible or nimble and is unable to do things at reasonable costs. And citizens need help. Non profit organizations can help. Some have tried and have had barriers put in their way by the establishment and government organizations/a municipality in particular. We need to be creative and open-minded and leave space for other ways to do things.