\u201cice road\u201d along<\/a> the frozen river \u2013 both of which have become unreliable due to the climate crisis: water levels get too low, and ice thaws too easily.<\/p>\n\u201cCommunities are just struggling to stay alive,\u201d said Caroline Wawzonek, a Northwest Territories minister.<\/p>\n
The money-making potential of the Mackenzie Valley may not be as immediate as the Grays Bay area\u2019s, she said, but big gas and tungsten reserves lie there untouched.<\/p>\n
For years, the project\u2019s supporters have focused on lobbying for a 300-kilometre stretch of this route, which would extend the existing all-season road to the town of Norman Wells, Northwest Territories. But Carney said this week that the ultimate plan was more ambitious: to build 800 kilometres of roadway all the way to the major hub in the area, the town of Inuvik, where it would connect with another existing northern route.<\/p>\n
The exact funding plans remain unclear, but Carney said last week that construction on the Mackenzie Valley highway could start as early as this summer.<\/p>\n
Experts say that any long-term Arctic plans need to avoid thinking only in terms of north-south roads but also to connect the east and west flanks of Canada\u2019s Arctic with new or upgraded ports.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis is an issue that we\u2019ve been trying to work on for decades,\u201d said Obed.<\/p>\n
A truck travels on the Mackenzie River ice road section of the Dempster highway near Inuvik, Canada. Photograph: James Gabbert\/iStockphoto\/Getty Images<\/p>\n
There are fisheries all along the Arctic coastline, for example, \u201cbut virtually none of the catch goes to Inuit communities,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
He added: \u201cIt\u2019s cheaper to fish for shrimp in the Arctic Ocean and send it to China than it is to send it to a community that\u2019s even two or 300km away.\u201d<\/p>\n
Those local markets are tiny. But more ports could also help Canada lay groundwork for more future shipping in the Northwest Passage, and bolster its claim to the storied waterway, which the US has challenged.<\/p>\n
Currently, there are no deepwater ports between Iqaluit, roughly north of Montreal, to a station in south-western Alaska, farther west than Hawaii. (A port in the town of Tuktoyaktuk, at the end of the only existing road to the northern coast, is too shallow to allow most ships to dock.)<\/p>\n
A Grays Bay deepwater port would break up that stretch. A planned deepwater port in far-eastern Qikiqtarjuaq, across from Greenland, would also be a \u201cgateway\u201d to the Northwest Passage, its proponents say, and this has also received some federal support.<\/p>\n
Ottawa also already said it will put $175m into upgrading the railroad and port in Churchill, on Hudson Bay, which is well south of the Arctic seacoast but is key for supplying towns and also handles some exports.<\/p>\n
Some have maintained that breaking ground right now should not be a priority: Canada should instead maintain existing transport corridors, or spend the money on more pressing problems.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere are actual Arctic security needs, there are actual community needs, today,\u201d said Heather Exner-Pirot of the thinktank the Macdonald-Laurier Institute, so it\u2019s not worth putting \u201cbillions of dollars into something that may be useful in 20 years\u201d.<\/p>\n
The prime minister, Mark Carney, gives opening remarks as Natan Obed, right, president of the Inuit Tapiriit Kanatami, listens during a meeting. Photograph: Canadian Press\/Shutterstock<\/p>\n
That either-or Arctic dilemma \u2013 to spend on crises or invest in long-term progress \u2013 is perennial for the Canadian government. It has usually balked at the cost of major projects for such a small, spread-out population. And when projects have gone ahead, poor site choices or lack of maintenance have often turned them into burdensome white elephants.<\/p>\n
But Obed said transport infrastructure, planned right, should help with the short and long term.<\/p>\n
\u201cNation-building isn\u2019t cheap at any point in time,\u201d he added.<\/p>\n
A polar bear at Hudson Bay. Photograph: Connect Images\/Alamy<\/p>\n
This may be a rare moment when some proposals are not calculated just in terms of costs per capita or per kilometre travelled, said Matti Siemiatycki, an infrastructure expert at the University of Toronto. That can be good \u2013 and risky too, he said.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe United States kind of shook up the snow globe and \u2026 made us refocus on these issues of sovereignty, security and of economic self-sufficiency,\u201d he said. \u201cI think people are seeing this as a moment where Canada starts reinvesting in itself.\u201d<\/p>\n
The hard part, he said, was to make sure any new build \u201cserves the purposes of what we\u2019re trying to achieve\u201d.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Picture an Arctic territory, marginalized by its own country, almost entirely lacking roads, ports and power sources, but…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":335722,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[22],"tags":[273,111,139,69,147],"class_list":{"0":"post-335721","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-environment","8":"tag-environment","9":"tag-new-zealand","10":"tag-newzealand","11":"tag-nz","12":"tag-science"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/335721","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=335721"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/335721\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/335722"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=335721"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=335721"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=335721"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}