Chartrand hopes to play ‘minister of dual-use’ role in NWT

Mark Carney brought a raft of cabinet members with him to Inuvik. While that’s a level of engagement northern leaders welcome, who’s doing what?

Crown-Indigenous relations minister Rebecca Alty has spent the week speaking about headline issues like Carney’s nation-building Bill C-5, Jordan’s Principle and the Inuit Child First Initiative.

So has Indigenous services minister Mandy Gull-Masty, while Rebecca Chartrand – minister of the newly renamed northern and Arctic affairs portfolio – answered questions on similar topics following Thursday’s meeting with Inuit leaders.

Speaking with Cabin Radio on Saturday, Chartrand sought to outline how she sees her responsibilities to NWT residents differing from those of Alty, who is also the territory’s MP, and other ministers.

She homed in on calls for dual-use infrastructure – the kinds of investment that can be used both by Canada’s military and by the communities hosting the armed forces.

Examples might be better roads, upgraded water treatment plants that supply both a military base and a community, or even shared recreational facilities.

The idea of dual-use infrastructure has been a central selling point of the renewed focus on Arctic sovereignty that the federal government has pursued this year.

Hundreds of millions of dollars are being assigned to initiatives like northern operational support hubs, which will see defence installations in Inuvik and Yellowknife – alongside some other locations in the North – upgraded to provide a higher level of military capability.

Those are supposed to come with benefits to the community, too. Chartrand sees her role as ensuring that happens.

“We’ve been actively looking at the intersections between my ministry and that of other ministers,” Chartrand said on Saturday.

Pointing to national defence minister David McGuinty as an example, Chartrand said she was examining “how we can work collaboratively together to ensure that we’re not only looking at Arctic security and sovereignty, but also human security.”

She said she saw part of her role as “bringing that lens of dual-purpose use or multi-purpose use to ensure that when we’re thinking about building the infrastructure we need to build up the Canadian Armed Forces in the North, for example, we want to make sure we’re discussing housing and infrastructure that’s also going to benefit the people living in the North and the Arctic.”

Asked if that meant being the person in cabinet who asks, “How’s it going to benefit the community that actually lives here,” Chartrand said: “One hundred percent. You hit it on the nail.”

Housing and highways

Inuvik has rarely, if ever, hosted as many ministers as it did this week.

Inuit Tapiriit Kanatami, which co-hosted Thursday’s meeting, said Carney, Chartrand, Alty, Gull-Masty and McGuinty had been joined by finance minister François-Philippe Champagne, housing and infrastructure minister Gregor Robertson, energy and natural resources minister Tim Hodgson and foreign affairs minister Anita Anand, with intergovernmental affairs minister Dominic LeBlanc joining by video from Washington, DC.

Chartrand extended her trip by also spending time in Yellowknife, where she said she met with representatives of the territory’s tourism industry, the Yellowknife Chamber of Commerce, and telecoms provider Northwestel.

She said she had also heard from territorial leaders and Beaufort Delta communities about areas where her voice – and her federal powers – could make a difference.

“We were talking about the Dempster Highway and how there are a number of bridges along that highway that would really limit getting up large trucks with modular supplies to build homes in the Far North,” Chartrand said.

“It was very helpful to go for dinner with some of the local ministers and discuss very specific details like that, and to have the Minister of Finance [Champagne] sitting with us at that dinner was very helpful as well, because we want to ensure that we’re being cost-effective. We want to assure that we’re working towards meeting our targets, which are half a million homes in a year, so these are the types of details that we need to hear about.

“As a result of those discussions, we were able to add to our list of things we need to look at. The bridges are really only single-lane bridges that wouldn’t allow us to bring up large supplies on trucks when we’re thinking about modular homes in the North.”

More broadly, she said she and housing minister Robertson would aim to pursue housing from “a northern perspective.”

She said that meant understanding the short timeframe in which construction can take place, how goods need to get into the North, and all the infrastructure needed to bring in the best supplies for the job – while constantly engaging with Indigenous governments to “ensure that whatever we build is also benefiting those communities.”