‘The North should not be a place where wealth is carried away’

Affordability challenges in northern Canada are being scrutinized by a federal committee as Ottawa looks to the North for its major projects and defence agenda.

Barriers to affordable housing and fuel were a focal point at the most recent meeting on Thursday.

With the world looking to the North’s “great piggy bank of resources” like critical minerals, the question is what that development leaves behind, said witness Mikey McBryan, general manager of NWT-based Buffalo Airways.

McBryan said promised investment should create northern businesses, northern infrastructure, northern careers and northern wealth.

“The North should not simply be a place where wealth is extracted and carried away,” he said during opening remarks. “It should be a place where wealth is built.” 

MPs on the parliamentary committee on Indigenous and northern affairs are studying affordability in the North, from fuel to housing and food sovereignty.

Five meetings will be dedicated to the study, during which MPs will invite different experts to testify on the issue and then, at the end, create a report based on what they heard. 

Experts on fuel, housing and aviation attended the September 24 meeting to share their thoughts and kick off the committee’s fall work.

Julia Christensen, an associate professor of geography and planning at Queen’s University, told the committee that while most housing in the North is public, the Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation’s market-based model largely focuses on home ownership.

The reality in northern communities is that “home ownership is unattainable and, in many cases, undesirable,” Christensen said.

“Even in communities where territorial governments are providing mortgages through home ownership programs, the cost of heating and repair make home ownership unaffordable and, as a result, default rates are high.”

She championed the need for northerners trained in construction, inspection and repair to build new homes, as well as ensure housing governance is led and administered by northern communities, particularly Indigenous communities, that understand the needs of northern people.

“We need a northern housing economy that is, to the fullest extent possible, based in the North, not one that continues to rely entirely on supply chains and labour markets that are far from the communities that they are intended to serve,” Christensen said.

Fuel costs and climate

Fuel and energy costs were a constant theme.

“Due to the extremely remote locations of some of our communities and the cost of shipping, fuel costs in the NWT are some of the highest in Canada,” said Lorne Browne, the NWT government’s director of fuel services. Climate change is increasingly disrupting the GNWT’s fuel deliveries, he said.

“Events such as wildfires, increased sea ice, low river water events make it difficult to deliver fuel, risking inventory levels and forcing millions of litres of fuel to be delivered by alternative means, including sometimes by air tanker,” Browne explained. Delivery by air can cost upward of $5 per litre compared to between 50 and 70 cents per litre by truck or barge, he said. 

“Low water events in the Mackenzie River, our main water-based transportation route, have also impacted barge operations, forcing costly supply chain rerouting,” Browne said. Every supply chain impediment comes at a cost, and those costs are passed on to residents of the Northwest Territories, he emphasized.

The North suffers from a well-documented infrastructure gap and this also applies to energy systems, said Lynne Couves, the Pembina Institute’s director of renewables in remote communities. 

“Our research has found that energy costs in remote communities can be six to 10 times higher than in southern Canada,” Couves said, adding the figure is that high “even with significant subsidies throughout the diesel supply chain.” 

Federal programs aimed at reducing northern communities’ reliance on diesel – such as the Indigenous Off-Diesel Initiative – are an important part of tackling this problem, Couves said.

Shannon Joseph, chair of the gas lobby group Energy for a Secure Future, advocated for communities to have more access to gas.

Joseph urged the federal government to build rural and Indigenous energy access into its major projects agenda as pipelines and data centres are built.

This was the third meeting dedicated to the affordability study and at least two more will follow.

At previous committee meetings, MPs invited representatives from the Arctic Fresh Group, Qajuqturvik Community Food Centre, Aurora Geosciences and others to testify.