The Northwest Territories and Alberta have agreed to work together on transportation links and other economic partnerships, in part to “enhance Alberta’s access to the Arctic.”
Ministers also focused on critical minerals as they announced a signed memorandum of understanding on Wednesday.
The deal – the text of which wasn’t immediately available – was said to involve reducing red tape for the commercial trucking industry, a promise to cooperate on road networks and other infrastructure (such as upgrades on Highway 35 leading to the NWT), and a plan to partner on attracting private-sector investment and working with Indigenous communities.
The two jurisdictions will also “jointly advocate to the federal government for nation-building projects along our economic corridors.”
NWT infrastructure minister Caroline Wawzonek called the memo a “significant milestone in the relationship” between the territory and Alberta.
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“This is an opportunity to support the flow of energy, to support transportation, to improve telecommunications as well as other critical infrastructure,” she said in a video released by the Alberta government.
She said the deal’s benefits would stretch from “quick wins,” like making the hiring and training of commercial drivers easier, to ensuring the two sets of ministers back each other up when talking to Ottawa.
“It’s a formal agreement. It comes with an action plan and it really is a pledge to work together toward a common goal,” Wawzonek said.
She said the deal had been drawn up over a four-month period.
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Recognizing Alberta’s role in helping manage the NWT’s evacuations during last year’s wildfire crisis, industry minister Caitlin Cleveland said the memo also “lays the foundation for improved collaboration on other shared interests, including emergency response.”
While the video released by the Alberta government took the form of a press conference, no advance notice of such a conference was provided and it wasn’t clear if any news outlet other than Alberta website The Western Standard was present.
Responding to a question from The Western Standard, Wawzonek elaborated on what the deal might mean in practice.
“We already have a shared railway line, shared highways, shared aviation routes,” she said, “but are we doing enough to actually make sure that some of the regulations that apply to all of those routes are properly harmonized, that we’re maximizing opportunities to deal with labour shortages that we’re both seeing in all of those areas?
“Now we have an action plan and a formal structure that allows governments to have these lines of communication open. The process that we got here was actually setting up some of those communication lines between the right people in the right levels of government who can make these decisions and drives these kinds of changes.”
Alberta minister Devin Dreeshen described a “visionary goal” of boosting Arctic infrastructure through this kind of agreement.
He said an Arctic port “similar to what they have in Alaska and Russia” would be the kind of “nation-building” project the country can ultimately look at.
“Hopefully, people will look back years from now to say this was that starting block of being able to see that level of investment,” said Dreeshen.
