Pond Inlet hosts birth of three national parks

IQALUIT — Three new national parks, encompassing vast tracts of land in Nunavut, were to be signed into being this week at a gathering in Pond Inlet Thursday.

The signing of an Inuit impact and benefits agreement between the federal government and the Qikiqtani Inuit Association will formally establish areas that had been hanging in a sort of national park limbo as national park reserves.

Under the Nunavut land claims agreement, national parks could not be established until the government of Canada negotiated with the QIA over Inuit participation in planning, operating and managing the parks and related economic opportunities.

Scheduled to attend the meeting were Heritage Minister Sheila Copps, Nunavut Sustainable Development Minister Peter Kilabuk and QIA President Pauloosie Keyootak.

During the signing ceremony at Pond Inlet’s Nasivik High School, a poster marking the IIBA was to be unveiled, and Copps, on behalf of the federal government, was to present Keyootak with a cheque for the QIA for an undisclosed amount.

The three parks will occupy close to 80,000 square kilometres in total. Two of them, Ayuittuq and Quttinirpaaq (formerly Ellesmere Island national Park Reserve) had already been set aside by the federal government as national park reserves in the 70s and 80s.

Sirmilik on north Baffin was only studied as a possible national park site because Inuit only chose to consider the area as a possible national park during the land claims process.