Thank you, MP Idlout.
Yes, we have a huge infrastructure deficit here in the city, and not only the city, but in Nunavut.
We're constantly in contact with the federal government about this. We've asked for $184 million to fix our water issue. Probably everybody here at this committee has heard about the Iqaluit water crisis this year, which has left us with no drinkable water for two months, and now we are not even using a treatment centre. We are just using a bypass.
Our infrastructure is from the Cold War when the U.S. military moved here.
Honestly, we need a rethink of the way we do business, especially on reserves in the territories. We are a territory of Canada, and the Government of Canada needs to treat us as a territory, or give us our independence.
It's funding, obviously, but not only funding; there are capacity issues. We need help with our capacity issues, and timelines. A lot of times they have requirements to apply within certain times, and we just can't do it. There's no possibility. We missed out on a lot of the rapid housing funding that was available this year. We did get some, thankfully, but we could have also received more had we had more time to be able to develop those units—that's one of the reasons—but we couldn't develop them within the time required.
We just need a rethink of the way we do business in remote and northern areas.