Ottawa to invest $2 million to get Nunavik online

ODILE NELSON

The federal government blew a financial snowfall Nunavik’s way March 26 with an agreement investing $2 million in the region’s Internet development.

Canada Economic Development will contribute $1.8 million to the Kativik Regional Government’s Internet project, Guy St-Julien, Liberal MP for Abitibi-Baie James-Nunavik, told delegates last week at Makivik Corp.’s annual general meeting in Puvirnituq.

The money will cover roughly 40 per cent of the region’s $4-million to $5-million project. The provincial government has already committed $900,000 toward the project’s first phase and has promised another $1 million. The KRG is contributing another $900,000.

In an interview with Nunatsiaq News, St-Julien said the money should benefit the entire region.

“This is for the people. The Internet is very important for everybody, kids, children, people, you know? It’s not easy [getting] Internet in the North. It is not easy but I am happy,” he said. “The money is coming back to the North.”

Last year, the KRG set up a central Internet system in Kuujjuaq using $900,000 from the Internet project fund. It also bought satellite equipment and pads for Nunavik’s 14 communities. Two other communities, Tasujiaq and Quaqtaq, are now poised to go online.

But the region’s current Internet capabilities vary significantly from community to community. Some villages continue to rely on slow, telephone dial-ups while the Fédération des coopératives du Nouveau-Québec provides cable Internet access in Puvirnituq, Salluit and Inukjuak.

The federal windfall will help bring every community’s infrastructure up to speed by purchasing electronics, setting up satellite dishes with broadband capabilities and constructing buildings to house the electronics.

Johnny Adams, chairman of the KRG, said getting the funding has taken years of lobbying.

“It’s pretty well been forever. It’s been a long process. We’ve had to go through a lot of hurdles to get to where we are,” he said. “[But] we’re at a point where we can honestly say that we will have Nunavik connected to the Information Highway. I guess we’re slowly getting out of the Dark Ages and catching up to the rest of the world.”

Adams said the KRG’s regional offices would be hooked up to the Internet. But the regional government is negotiating using the FCNQ as the Internet Service Provider for community businesses and private homes.

The KRG also plans to offer publicly accessible computers in every community, Adams said.

For communities accessing the Internet using telephone dial-ups, the anticipated infrastructure should be a good improvement, said Alain Rochefort, a pedagogical counsellor with the Kativik School Board in Kangiqsualujjuaq.

Nunavik’s Internet hook-up may never equal Southern speeds, he said, because the region relies on satellites, and not ground connections. But the promised infrastructure should at least speed up the region’s Internet connections and open up other telecommunication possibilities.

“I think the big thing about the system that the KRG wants to put in the communities, is that, at least infrastructure-wise, they are going for something that will be expandable in the future and that will allow to incorporate things like videoconference and other applications that require a lot of bandwidth,” he said.

Still, he cautioned that establishing infrastructure is only one part of Nunavik’s Internet puzzle.

“If we get that big infrastructure put in place and there’s no funding going to be secured for the cost to use it, that’s going to be a problem,” he said.

The KRG hopes to have all communities online by the fall.