Poised to bring housing to Nunavut, NCC Development this year’s Newsmaker of the Year
Company tasked to provide majority of Nunavut 3000 builds
Clarence Synard, president and CEO of NCC Investment Group Inc., speaks at a panel discussion on Nunavut 3000 at the Nunavut Trade Show and Conference in Iqaluit in September. (Photo by Arty Sarkisian)
What could you do with (roughly) a billion dollars?
Could you manage the construction of 2,000 housing units across Nunavut’s 25 communities over 10 years?
This is what NCC Development Ltd. has been tasked to do as part of Nunavut 3000, the territorial government’s ambitious $2.6-billion goal to build 3,000 units across the territory by 2030.
The lion’s share of the work — two-thirds of it, to be exact — rests squarely on the shoulders of NCC Development.
Nunavut 3000 was unveiled in 2022 and NCC Development has been given $240 million to date to go toward a total, so far, of 316 units, as part of a 10-year partnership with the Nunavut Housing Corp.
Every year, the two parties agree NCC Development will deliver a certain number of units for a certain amount of money. In 2023, it was 150 units for $105.3 million. In 2024, it was 166 units for $134.7 million. A third contract should be coming in early 2025.
While we’re not sure what the final tally will be, it’s easy to extrapolate that for NCC Development to deliver 2,000 units at the rates we are seeing so far, the total bill will top a billion dollars.
Premier P.J. Akeeagok’s government has made a big promise with Nunavut 3000, backed by an enormous amount of money — $1.5 billion of it public funding.
If executed successfully, Nunavut 3000 could improve the quality of life for people across every Nunavut community for generations to come and secure Akeeagok’s place in the history books. There’s also the possibility that cost overruns and delays could lead to a disappointing outcome many Nunavummiut have become accustomed to.
With almost a quarter-billion dollars in hand so far, NCC Development now has the money and the mandate to mass-produce public housing across Nunavut, and that is why Nunatsiaq News has chosen it to be our newsmaker of the year for 2024.
Granted, NCC Development is far from alone in the endeavour. Every single new housing project — be it a transitional home, supported housing unit or bed, or public housing unit or market unit — built in the territory since Nunavut 3000 counts towards the government’s 3,000-unit goal.
Heading into Year 3, how is Nunavut 3000 doing?
In a perfect world, the official Nunavut 3000 website would show up-to-date completion rates for every single community.
Instead, what we’ve seen so far is a range of statistics from the GN we’ve struggled to make sense of.
In February, Housing Minister Lorne Kusugak gave a promising update in the legislative assembly when he said: “We’ve got over 500 houses up to now and we’re doing a couple hundred more in 2024 and another couple hundred more in 2025.”
Nunatsiaq News followed up with Nunavut Housing Corp. and learned that number referred to all completed units, as well as those with active building permits — meaning a plot of land with an approved building permit counted toward the same success rate as a plot of land with a structure on it.
Not helpful.
Nunatsiaq News reporter Arty Sarkisian took another stab at getting clear numbers in November.
He received some statistics, including a total of completed units (394) and a number that are under construction (322). The housing corporation did not provide details about which communities these units are located in.
We do know that regarding NCC Development’s status, it celebrated its first Nunavut 3000 build as part of its agreement with Nunavut Housing Corp. — an 18-plex in Iqaluit — this fall.
This may seem modest. But Clarence Synard, president and CEO of NCC Investment Group, says the company is pretty well on schedule.
The housing corporation estimated in January 2024 that construction on the first round of 150 units would be complete within 12 months.
Those units will be finished “by 2025,” Synard said in an email.
(The company has also delivered 56 modular homes since 2023, which count toward Nunavut 3000’s overall tally but are not part of the official delivery for the first two years of this specific partnership agreement. Confusing, I know.)
Materials are in place to start work on the corporation’s second-year contract — 166 units for $134.7 million — with construction set to start in 2025. These builds will bring Nunavut 3000 to every community, Synard said.
All eyes are on NCC Development. As the units on order and money on the table continue to pile up, so too should dozens of new homes for every community. We are excited to follow the progress.
If 3,000 units are added to inventory in Nunavut in the next 5, 10 years the outcome will be a massive population boom. Do we have the infrastructure: schools, hospitals, offices, staff, staff housing, power generation, water and sewer trucks and natural resources, grocery stores, transportation capacity to handle that?
Did we in the late 90’s when we went from 4000 to 9000 ?
Thanks PJ at least you are trying to move forward on one of our most needed issues, to bad some of your MLAs are trying to stop you, keep marching ignore these jealous people, they had their chance to do this.
Not jealous. Just tired of incompetent leadership in Nunavut.
Fold Nunavut and bring it back to YK and the Feds.
NCC is losing millions of dollars- suggest we get rid of the leadership with real business minded people. If not I see NCC going bankrupt.
As a home owner for the past 30 years, hardly ever qualify for any assistants.
If you maintained your home it is likely worth 3 times or more than you paid for it. That’s called equity earned on investment. Why should you get assistance?.
It’s very simple. You can’t get a straight answer on units built because it’s embarrassing. It’s embarrassing for Aaron and NHC, it’s embarrassing for PJ.
That means you’re always going to get inflated numbers.
The real figures are likely low double digits. September marking the first 18 units actually delivered, right from the builders mouth.
NHC will try to pump stats anyway they can’t. Land acquired but not built on. Units that are under construction being counted as ones completed dispite it just being pilings in the ground.
All in all any reasonable person can see nothing’s going well or to plan. The readers actually live in communities and see nothing’s been delivered.
NHC trying to inflate things to protect Aaron and PJ makes me have far less trust in either of them but PJ knows Nu3000 is the only thing keeping a potential second term alive at this point.
This is very true. All you need to do is ask the people from the communities concerned to get the true figures. Dont believe the completion figures from Aaron, NHC or NCC.
It’s well known that NHC has lots of empty units in Iqaluit. Why are they empty?
NHC has lots of empty units in Iqaluit because NHC does not have the tradespeople needed to renovate / repair them.
Nunavut needs houses. But the real shortage is an almost complete lack of construction tradespeople.
Neither Nunavut 3000, nor anything else, will end Nunavut’s housing crisis until Nunavut has construction tradespeople living and working year round in every community in Nunavut.
Homeowners are the ones doing the hard jobs, instead of public units, they should switch homeowners and public units and more focus on homeowners view. It’s like public units are more making decisions on communities safety and public activities, where the public units are paid fully for by the government, I think the government should stop their focus on homeowners livable lifestyle.
There isnt much public safety for homeowners in Nunavut. Public just drives around homeowners homes, even public services water and sewages goes right to homeowners early mornings and just wakes up people sleeping.
Use rake to clean around the houses, and shovel the snow during winters. Just empty all the homes of dirt and snow around homes.