Thank you so much to the standing committee for the invitation to come before you.
I just want to say, for the record, that I'm also the president of the Nunavut Association of Municipalities and the vice-chair of the northern forum for the Federation of Canadian Municipalities, as well as a board member of the same organization.
I'm very pleased to come before you to speak about the important issue of infrastructure in our north. I'm sure this committee has heard and knows quite well that there is a deficit of infrastructure in our northern region, especially in Nunavut. There hasn't really ever been a comprehensive northern infrastructure strategy in our north until recently.
There's now one for Nunavut on housing and homelessness, but I'd like to state that, while these regional strategies were done by our territorial government, they did not effectively include the municipalities in the development of that process, even though at that point in time the minister responsible had made the commitment to reach out to our municipalities to provide much-needed data for their inclusion. As well, the Nunavut Association of Municipalities, unfortunately, was not reached out to and did not participate, either.
Nonetheless, those reports, interestingly enough, do include recommendations that the municipalities, and the Nunavut Association of Municipalities, be responsible for implementing some of those recommendations. Ideally, that's not the way that we develop strategies.
There is no northern energy strategy and no northern telecommunications strategy. While recently northern transportation corridors were announced, they do not include the eastern Arctic.
Most municipalities, of course, are very pleased with the fact that the federal government has committed billions of dollars to infrastructure for this country. Nunavut did sign our integrated bilateral agreement. It provides our region with $566 million over a period of approximately 10 years. That sounds like a good amount of money, but $566 million is nowhere near what we require.
The integrated bilateral agreement contains the words “fair balance”, which, of course, we tend to interpret at the municipal level as fair share and fair say, we hope, especially as it relates to municipal infrastructure.
You are probably also aware that Canadian municipalities receive approximately 9¢ to 10¢ of the Canadian taxpayer dollar. In the southern portions of Canada, 60% of public infrastructure is in the cities. In Nunavut, this is closer to 100%, because there are no roads, no rail and no transmission lines; therefore, the infrastructure is in our communities.
Iqaluit, the capital of Nunavut, is the only community that receives property taxes, whereas the other 24 communities are 100% dependent on the territorial government for their O and M, as well as their capital projects. Iqaluit has approximately 8,000 residents and 1,000 non-residents, who are not residing or considered residents in our community but are nonetheless there. That's primarily because we have the hospital and all the patients coming from the region for medical travel; we have four correctional institutions; the only courthouse; the RCMP headquarters; the largest of the Nunavut Arctic College campuses, which is about to expand almost 100%; the legislative assembly; the majority of Government of Nunavut jobs; and, even with decentralization, we also have the majority of the federal jobs. Yet we have only 2,000 ratepayers. That is not very many to help the municipality with capital projects to build much-needed infrastructure.
We have a budget of approximately $45 million a year, with 85% coming from property taxes and user fees. Therefore, the Government of Nunavut provides only about 15% grants-in-lieu.
We're very appreciative of the gas tax funding we receive. It's around $12 million over a period of five years. It is the most flexible. They are the easiest infrastructure dollars we have. The eligibility criteria have recently expanded. We also receive a nominal amount of capital block funding from our territorial government.
We use these funds for our infrastructure projects. Recently, we used them for upgrading our waste-water treatment plant. We received approximately $19 million from the federal government, out of a $26-million project. We are receiving $26 million to close down our dump and open up new sorting and recycling and a new landfill. That is approximately a $35-million project.
When we had Minister Sohi visit in May 2017, when he was the minister responsible for community infrastructure, we were just opening up our new airport—a gorgeous facility that cost the territorial government about $300 million. The road to and from that airport was in horrendous condition. Instead of meeting with the minister in my office, I suggested that we do a town tour. In the month of May, I can tell you that the road was in one of the worst conditions ever, so the minister got to experience first-hand how desperately we needed to pave that road, which would have cost only 1% of that $300 million for the airport.
Part of the problem with a lot of these infrastructure projects that are done by our territorial government, even when they're funded with federal funds, is that a requirement to do a municipal infrastructure assessment—let alone a municipal service assessment—of those projects is not included at this point in time. While we are really appreciative that we're getting a deep-sea port, again, the road to and from the port is inadequate; it's unsafe.
The minister said we can put in a funding application. Ideally, it should be part of that whole infrastructure assessment. It means that the road had to wait. I don't like to use political embarrassment as a tool. It shouldn't be the way we convince our federal or territorial politicians to help.
Similarly, when Minister Garneau came to Iqaluit, as part of the territorial-federal government with that deep-sea port, we ensured that every visiting minister went to the site. None of them had realized that it was next to our dump. One rationale for the new port would be that when tourists come off the cruise ships and enter into our beautiful capital, the first sight they see is not a big pile of waste and garbage. I think that probably helped our business case in getting the funding we needed to ensure that the dump is closed and capped and doesn't look like a dump by the time the deep-sea port opens in 2020.
We also received about $4 million for our aquatic centre. That is about 10% of what the aquatic centre cost us, unfortunately. At that time, we weren't able to get more assistance from the federal government. They hadn't yet rolled out the big billions of dollars for infrastructure, and our territorial government was only able to help out with approximately $100,000 of gym equipment. The taxpayers and user fees are paying for that.
I would be remiss if I didn't speak to the fact that climate change is absolutely happening. One of the issues for us is that our pipes are breaking. We've been spending hundreds of thousands of dollars to repair every pipe, and I can tell you that it is a temporary fix. It is nowhere near what is needed, which would be millions of dollars.
Those are my initial comments, but I'm definitely open to lots of questions, I hope.
Thank you.