EdinburghNLP/nunavut-hansard-plusplus huggingface dataset:
With the Iqaluit airport, it’s one of the busiest and most strategic pieces of public infrastructure we have in Nunavut.
The amount of traffic that goes through the Iqaluit airport is four times the amount of our population in Nunavut. It is a busy hub.
Of course, the operations or the amount of activity that goes through the Iqaluit airport is beyond our capacity. We don’t meet some of these aeronautical zoning regulations and the Canadian Aviation Regulations.
It’s very difficult to be within the regulations or to try and prevent the breaking of any kind of regulations.
Of course, through this P3 process, we’re trying to get the best value for Nunavummiut money and to benefit the whole region and of course, the whole territory with better infrastructure in transportation, such as the Iqaluit airport.
Ms. Ell, do you have any more questions?
This project will take many years to complete with a 30-year project life.
Can the minister clarify exactly how this project will be completed with this timeframe?
I believe the discussions on the air terminal building have been ongoing for quite a while and in 2009, we did complete the master plan for the Iqaluit airport. We’re going through the processes.
We have undertaken a value for money analysis. Of course, Mr. Chairman, we have come up with a cost estimate for a 30-year period. We’re looking at infrastructure that will last approximately 30 years.
With that, Mr. Chairman, I’ll ask my policy director to elaborate a little more on that.
The member is quite right that the project has been in various forms of fits and starts for many years now. The congestion and the overcrowding and that have been well recognized.
The project has really come under a new focus in the last year or less than a year, I think, about eight months, when it got the serious examination of it as a P3 project started underway.
To date, the government undertook the value for money, which determined that this project could be delivered with a good value for money ratio.
Since that time, a technical project team has been hired. This is a consultant engineering firm, but operational people look at the payments, look at the building, and look at the functional requirements. A legal team is being assembled to put together very intricate sort of legal agreements that go into a P3 project.
A financial team is coming together. I think that a contract is in award or very close to it to also look at the financial requirements.
This is an ongoing, long-term contractual arrangement that the government would have to enter if the project goes forward and there are very complex arrangements.
I can say that there has never been that kind of push behind the project that there is now.
It is developing. All the parameters of it are coming together very quickly on a very condensed timeframe. Many people from many departments in the government are working very hard on this project.
For those of us who have been involved in trying to see the project go forward, it’s quite an exciting time.
Do you have any further questions? Ms. Ell.
Ms. Ell (interpretation): Thank you for the information.
Are we facing a safety issue?
Sometimes that airport is over capacity and it is hard to tell how long the planning process will be.
Hopefully you can understand what I’m saying.
Chairman: Mr. Hawkins.
The initial start to this project is about safety. There are a lot of aircraft operating in that very confined space.
There are a lot of people operating through that. There are a lot of vehicles. It’s a bit of a mix and it’s certainly too much happening in one place.
About a year and a half ago, the turboprop operations were spread out from the main terminal to give substantially more room to aircraft operating in the area.
It has worked. It’s quite an intensive management process to keep all that operating and there are additional costs to it.
It should all be consolidated back into a larger area and that’s one of the aims of the project.
Ms. Ell: Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
If the Chair will allow, I’m going to ask a different question but on this topic as well of the capital.
In June of 2009, the Legislative Assembly approved $925,000 in capital funding for the planning and design of an Iqaluit regional marine facility to meet the needs of a marine resupply, as well as local boat owners and operators. In June 2010, the Legislative Assembly approved a $532,000 capital carryover for this project.
As of today, what is the status of the Iqaluit Regional Marine Facility, and why is there no funding in your department’s draft 2012-13 capital estimates for this project?
Again I mentioned that earlier on marine infrastructure. The design is complete and at this point, we just need the funding for the construction part of the project.
I see that we have a new Chairman.
Can someone enlighten me? I apologize.
Mr. Chairman, to be serious, has the study been made public to date and, if so, is it possible to get a copy?
We’re still, at times, talking with our partners and stakeholders. For a smaller marine facility which has no real advantage for local boaters or harvesters, it’s around $25 million.
At this time, Mr. Chairman, I can surely make the report available to all members that request it.
Ms. Ell has concluded her questions.
Mr. Oshutapik.
I have a question for the minister on the relocation of the airport and the money that has been identified.
Are they allotted just for climate study purposes?
Are there going to be any additional funds for other projects afterwards? I’m sure that this money is not going to be for construction. Usually you have to do a feasibility study or some other type of study before going ahead with a project.
That money is for determining the design and to develop estimates for the construction of the airport terminal runway at the new location. The site selection is complete.
The weather data collection over the last several of years has been completed.
One of the things we’re going to use the money allotted for that is for design and costing out the estimate for construction.
I have another question. What was brought up in the opening comments by the Chairman is that for the 2012-13 capital estimates, there would be $100,000 set aside for visitor centres.
I don’t see it here. Is it just an information item?
The $100,000 is for maintenance work on existing visitor centres and there is money for planning for the new visitor centre in Rankin Inlet as well in the budget.
Mr. Oshutapik no longer has questions.
The department’s draft 2012-13 capital estimates includes $11.4 million in funding for major airport projects in Iqaluit, Rankin Inlet, Cambridge Bay, Taloyoak, Pangnirtung, and Hall Beach.
Your department’s substantiation sheets for these projects indicate that the total cost of these projects over the next several years will be in the tens of millions of dollars.
Will the projects in Pangnirtung, Hall Beach, and Taloyoak be eligible for federal funding?
Ms. Ugyuk (interpretation): Thank you for your response.
Could the minister indicate which communities are going to be eligible for this funding?
It’s Cambridge Bay and Rankin Inlet at this time for the projects that we intend to do there.
I think it states that $50,000 is set aside for the air terminal building in Taloyoak and there are no additional funds in the 2013-17 Five-Year Capital Plan or prior budgets.
I wonder why that seems to have changed.
Chairman (Mr. Tapardjuk) (interpretation): Thank you, Ms. Ugyuk.
With this fiscal year capital plan, we have $50,000 for the planning and design of the ATB and years going on from there, there are other amounts that are in the substantiation sheets which total $3 million.
Why isn’t it identified in the five-year capital plan?
Can we make changes to it if we’re not happy with it?
The amounts in the following years in the substantiation sheets are what we believe the number will be.
However, because the vote is actually on this year’s capital plan, if we don’t know what that number will be in the substantiation sheet, if we don’t have a firm, fixed idea of what that is, it doesn’t normally show up in the capital estimates.
There are some other projects in the capital estimates that have follow-on years because it’s confirmed. That’s part of the project in the phase that it’s currently in.
How come it’s not itemized here?
It’s a little bit confusing and you have to guess sometimes.
I’ll have my assistant respond to that.
Please specify if your deputy minister or the director of policy and planning is going to answer.
I apologize. Policy and planning.
Chairman (interpretation): Thank you, Minister Taptuna. Mr. Hawkins.
Mr. Hawkins: Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I wish I could give a more full answer, but what I can say is that the numbers that we identify in the substantiation sheets are our estimates.
They’re our best guess of what the project will be worth. When we submit those to the Department of Finance for inclusion into the budget, they put together the detailed capital document, the I-pages. That is their instruction that those numbers do not appear in there, unless they’re in an approved phase of the project.
Do you have any more questions? Ms. Ugyuk.
Ms. Ugyuk (interpretation): Thank you for that clarification. (interpretation ends) In June of this year, the Legislative Assembly approved a number of capital carryover projects related to airports, including projects in Baker Lake, Kimmirut, and Qikiqtarjuaq.
Do you anticipate that any additional new major airport projects will be added to your department’s capital plan in the next two or three years and, if so, which communities are they likely to be in?
I’ll have Mr. Hawkins respond to that question.
We do anticipate that there will be additional airport projects included in that. I don’t know which projects they will be at this time. I know that there are several that are coming up.
The airport staff will be out assessing those projects and prioritizing them this year for inclusion into next year’s capital plan. Typically the regions sit down together with headquarters and bang it out a bit and decide which projects will go forward and which ones are in the most dire need.
In Taloyoak, we don’t have an air terminal, but we do have one that was renovated from a warehouse.
The passengers getting off planes have to go through the very small terminal. Usually we are asked to go into the air terminal for safety.
Will the inadequate capacity of the terminal be addressed as a priority?
I thank the member for that question. There are a number of communities that are in the same situation, including Iqaluit. It’s one of those projects that we’re desperately trying to catch up on because we know for a fact that a lot of these communities are in that same situation.
I have been to Taloyoak. I have seen the air terminal building there. It’s the same as some of the smaller communities that desperately need ATBs.
Do you have any further questions, Ms. Ugyuk?
Again I just wanted to reiterate and go over what’s on I-6 in terms of small craft harbours too. I know quite a few other MLAs have spoken to the fact that their communities do not have any type of infrastructure.
I know Grise Fiord, again, is one that the community itself has been speaking with representatives from ED&T.
As different questions were answered, one of the things that came out was one of the officials had said something about other communities being considered. I know Pond Inlet was mentioned. Pangnirtung is already in the process.
I was wondering if you could elaborate on some of the communities that are being studied. I think there are six in total.
At this time, specifically for Grise Fiord, there have been no studies done.
I’ll take that back to the community because I know they do have questions and concerns. We have been talking about that specific issue.
I was thinking in terms of the six communities that are targeted, which I think are Qikiqtarjuaq, Clyde River, Pond Inlet, Repulse Bay, Chesterfield Inlet, and Kugaaruk.
Specifically I’m interested in Qikiqtarjuaq mainly because of the tie with my three communities and the Arctic Fisheries Alliance and the business case that they have been presenting over the last couple of years in terms of some type of a small craft harbour to assist with their plans.
I think they have done a feasibility study and were working on a socio-economic impact study.
I was wondering if the minister could update us on where that project is right now.
I’ll have my assistant, Mr. Hawkins, respond to that question.
Qikiqtarjuaq is certainly one of the communities in the initial small craft harbours study. The community itself has done quite a bit of work in solidifying the case for the building of a harbour in that community.
We support the work that they have been doing and we will be looking at studies that we can do that complement the studies of theirs.
With the funding that we have proposed in this budget, we will also be looking at other studies that we can do to enhance the development or to speed along the development of any other harbours in the study.
Mr. Elliott: Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Thank you for that update.
Again, I think Mr. Enook had pointed out some of the studies. There was a senate study that was complete and whatnot.
I remember going to a northern infrastructure meeting.
I think it was two years ago. I was actually expecting to listen to presentations on the need for infrastructure, such as the transportation system using airports and development of different airports.
I was surprised to find out that DND and other organizations were there talking about ports and whatnot.
Is there any indication from the federal government in terms of some of the responses you have given? Obviously with our budget and our reliance on the federal government for funding, is there any hope of further funding?
Again, with all the talk of sovereignty, with the talk of search and rescue, and with the talk of the Northwest Passage opening up, is the federal government thinking more about investing in Nunavut and the north and providing the funding that we need for these ports that we’re talking about?
Obviously we’re talking about five or six communities.
We’re talking well over the $200,000 or the $100,000 that we allocate in capital funding every year.
All I can say is that we’re hoping too that the federal government, through DFO, can fund this marine infrastructure that is direly needed in Nunavut, especially throughout our communities.
I’m talking about all the coastal communities and of course, our communities are all on the coast. We do see some light at the end of the tunnel at times. Our MP indicated that these are going to be looked at through her campaign before elections.
For the most part, Mr. Chairman, I’m working closely with other stakeholders and when I say other stakeholders, I’m talking about the mining companies that will need infrastructure, and I’m hoping that they would become our partner through the infrastructure needs such as that to Nunavummiut.
Can you discuss how your department works with Nav Canada?
Again, I’m going to swing away from ports and move more towards the airports in terms of how your department works with Nav Canada and local communities to identify airport equipment needs, such as beacons and other navigational aids.
In meetings that we’ve had with different officials in terms of bringing down costs, the idea of airlines landing more frequently, GPS, landing instruments, and different types of instruments like that, they’re saying that if our airports had this equipment, more planes would land and that would actually save funds.
So if you could spend some time possibly talking about how the department works towards getting this type of equipment into the communities.
I’m not going to try and assume I know about some of these technicalities, but we do have radars and that’s how planes fly into the communities.
As the member is well aware, a couple of weeks ago when we lost our satellite link, we did lose our radars. So at that time, some aircraft didn’t want to fly.
For the most part, we do work with Nav Canada in weather data collecting. We have our CARS operators that we administer for them. For the most part, the airports in Nunavut are accessible with radars from any location.
So does Nav Canada actually tell us what we need or do we follow different policies that Transport Canada lays out and then we provide the equipment that way?
I’m not a technical person, so I’ll have my assistant, Mr. Hawkins, respond to that.
Mr. Hawkins.  Mr. Hawkins: Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Nav Canada has a statutory obligation under the Air Navigation Services Act to provide a level of service to communities that have aviation.
That level of service was determined prior to Nav Canada becoming enacted and they are not allowed to reduce that level of service without a large-scale consultation. However, they don’t really have to increase that level of service either.
Nav Canada’s clients are the air carriers.
We are not technically one of their clients.
We do work with them on many initiatives and we do provide the observer/communicator program under a contract through Nav Canada.
However, their obligation to provide navigational services is not something that we have much influence on.
They are improving their service overall.
In the course of business and in the course of GPS approaches being easier to design, they are moving away from land-based navigation aids to more and more of these other sort of satellite-based and computer-based. They want to intensively improve somewhere that has a lot of traffic. They won’t intensively or very quickly improve, necessarily, more remote communities beyond the level of service that they committed to when they first came into being.
In the capital estimates for this year, there is no funding allocated to this.
I’m just curious to find out: with the new Arctic Bay Airport being opened and the Nanisivik Airport sitting there, is there going to be money allocated to decommission this airport? Does the Government of Nunavut own it or is it a Transport Canada asset?
Maybe if you could give us an update on what’s happening with that because I don’t actually see any dollars allocated to that, unless it’s under minor capital.
Our intention is there is still some funding left in the Arctic Bay construction that we consider the decommissioning of the Nanisivik project to be an effect of that project.
We don’t actually know all the things that have to be done to decommission the Nanisivik Airport at this time. So there will be environmental studies and there will be some utilization and facility studies to determine what has to be done there.
We will be undertaking those very shortly, as soon as we can dedicate some people to it.
Again on I-6, under minor capital or small capital, there was talk about some airport equipment that was going to be purchased. The longer we seem to be in our term, we start to learn how different things work. I was just curious: in terms of mobile equipment that’s purchased and used in communities where it’s contracted out by a different contractor other than the Government of Nunavut, how do those types of purchases work in terms of… ?
Obviously, if a company needs a piece of heavy equipment machinery… .
For example, I don’t understand all the workings of what is happening in Chesterfield Inlet. If they get an equipment shelter there, we’re supposed to be getting an equipment shelter in Arctic Bay, and then there is a contractor that will put, I’m assuming, GN assets in there to store them.
I’m just wondering: in terms of maintenance and care of them, is there something written into the contract in terms of how that works?
We do prefer always to own the airport equipment. It’s not always possible or we haven’t always got the airport equipment that we require, but we do prefer to own it.
In the contract, it is the contractor’s responsibility to maintain that equipment for us.
On I-6, it’s referring specifically to the Iqaluit airport being a P3 project.
I know this year, we’re being asked to allocate $3.5 million. I was hoping to flip through and go back to the back of the capital estimates in Appendix II. It’s Appendix A-II-12, Projects by Department, Economic Development and Transportation.
Again, in reviewing all the different aspects of how the government spends its money, it’s of interest to me in terms of being accountable for where we’re assessing and putting dollars.
Under this project… . I’m not sure if you’re there. Are you there yet?
There has been $4 million already allocated to the project. We will be approving $3.5 million and then as you go along, in 2016-17, it looks like we will be, and again this is a future allocation, allocating $135,200,000.
I’m just wondering: what’s the thinking… ?
Again, we’re not approving it today, but that’s way over the amount that we allocate in capital dollars on an annual basis.
I’m just wondering what their thinking is for that.
I’ll try and respond to some of the questions.
There are a number of things that are happening at this time.
We’re trying to secure a P3 and some partners in doing that.
Of course, one of the things that we’re looking at too is the construction phase, so we’re planning further ahead.
I’m going to let my assistant, Mr. Hawkins, supplement my response to the hon. member.
Unfortunately we don’t have the entire capital plan with us; we have our department’s piece of it in our briefing binders.
I’m not quite sure if that is what the member is asking, if that is in future years or if that is in a single year, but I think the plan with the P3 project would be that that would be in future years, I believe. I’m wrong.
For clarification, can we have clarity on the question?
If we could get a clear question on that.
Mr. Elliott, please clarify your question.
Mr. Elliott: Yes, I can. I gave the minister my book.
The question that I was asking, if you look on that page, I understand that the $4 million from previous years would have been for studies and any repairs, and that’s an allocation that we assess, depending on… .
So in previous years, there has been $4 million spend on the Iqaluit airport P3 project.
As you go along, we have our budget 2012-13 and you’re asking us, and it’s highlighted, to approve $3.5 million.
As you continue along to 2013-14, $9.2 million; 2014-15, $10.2 million; 2015-16, $4.9 million.
Now, to me, I understand that those make sense. As we continue to go along, there’s planning and design initiation, and then working out what I believe are fees and whatnot for the P3 project.
In 2016-17, there’s a huge jump and it looks like we will be asked to allocate $139,200,000 in that fiscal year for the commitment to the Iqaluit project.
My concern is that we allocate on any given year $100 million to capital projects, which would be one, over our annual allocation of capital projects, and two, it would leave no money for any other projects across the territory.
I was just asking: what’s the reasoning behind that and what’s the thinking behind it or what is the rationale in terms of where we’re going with this project?
If that’s the case, then we don’t actually have enough money to approve this in future years.
So that’s where I was going with my questioning and I’m sure there’s a reasonable explanation.
I appreciate that question from the member. Mr. Chairman, we’re being quite optimistic. We plan these amounts.
They’re just estimates, as the member stated, to complete the project. In 2016-17, that’s the amount for construction.
Mr. Chairman, the project is going to be under a P3, public-private partnership, so the total amount there is not necessarily reflective of the capital budget we have for the Government of Nunavut.
Through the public-private partnership, we intend to get some money from P3 Canada and the private industry out there.
Again, just so I have it clear in my mind that that allocation of funding is sort of a general estimate and with P3 funding that would come along, it would be shared in terms of GN contribution partially and P3 contribution partially.
Mr. Enook, you may ask your additional questions now.
I’ll just get back to my comments earlier on today. The proposed marine facility for Pond Inlet, which is what I discussed earlier, the $40 million is for the study.