Work underway on Pangnirtung’s new RCMP station
Pangnirtung’s new RCMP station is being built — or assembled — now that the pieces have arrived by sealift. The current RCMP building can be seen to the left, while Ellis Don employees start putting the new building together on its previously-built foundation to the right. (Photo by David Kilabuk, special to Nunatsiaq News)
A terrible idea. No local employment. All the workers are from the south and staying (and sleeping and eating) in a floating hotel/ship – so no benefits to the local hotel either. This is a federal project. I think federal contractors are obliged to quantify anticipated local benefits when bidding on a project, and to prove they provided benefits when complete. How does this help the local community? There are many good construction workers in Pangnirtung who rely in part on seasonal jobs.
Note they were looking for local help and they didn’t get a whole lot of interest.
The Nunavut Agreement doesn’t say that local contractors automatically win contracts.
EllisDon was awarded the contract in 2018, after being open for bidding which explicitly indicated the provisions of the Agreement would apply (see here: https://buyandsell.gc.ca/procurement-data/award-notice/PW-18-00813568-001). One of the issues with the contract is that they just can’t hire anyone; part of the stipulations for getting the contract required that everyone working on it, from the architects to the workers on site, has to have an RCMP security check done on them.
Yes, it is a very sad situation that our Federal Government under the Liberal Party (with many promises to invest in Indigenous and Northern communities) has allowed this to happen. The need and talks about building a new RCMP station started eight years ago. The Federal Government has done nothing to help our community to develop the capacity and infrastructure to not only build the RCMP station, but also to help our community to build houses with local people. To keep up with our population growth we need approximately 8 housing units in Pangnirtung every year, and we are currently short at least 50 units. The $330 M announced by our Prime Minister for housing in all of Nunavut over the next eight years will not only be totally inadequate, but it will result in increasing overcrowding of homes in Nunavut for years to come. I hope that our politicians are learning from this, and will no longer give us empty promises, but will sit down at the table with our community leaders and plan on how we can work together to not only address our housing shortages, but increase the capacity, employment and well-being of Pangnirtungmiut and Nunavummiut.