Indigenous and Northern Affairs Committee on Sept. 24th, 2026

[Mikey McBryan]

Yes, I can, for sure. Cambridge Bay is a big one. There's Resolute and even Alert, Iqaluit, Pelly, Gjoa, Spence—everybody. It's pretty much everywhere, depending on where people go. We go to Arctic Bay a lot. If it has a runway, we land there.

[Lori Idlout, Liberal, Nunavut, NU]

Have you noticed a difference in infrastructure needs that might exist between the NWT and Nunavut?

The reason I'm asking is that you're well aware that Nunavut communities are all fly-in communities, so the airline industry very much tends to be a lifeline for us.

You mentioned that when we're focusing on the economy, we need to make sure that we figure out ways to keep money in the territories so that it doesn't leave the territories. I wonder if you think that investing in airports and pavement could help keep that money in the territories. Could you share your views on that?

[Mikey McBryan]

I'm going to hurt my neck from nodding so much.

Yes, it's simple. Paving the runway in Cambridge Bay would instantaneously bring the cost of living down the next day. Cambridge Bay is a focal place. I love them there. Mayor Wayne and everybody there are great.

Because it has a gravel strip, it really limits the types of airplanes that can land there. I'm the one who shouldn't talk about it, because we land on gravel all the time. We invested heavily into a Boeing 737-300. It's a more economical freighting aircraft. It can haul 10,000 pounds more and burn 25% less fuel. We would be flying that to Cambridge Bay twice a week. Right now we're flying our Lockheed Electra and our 737-200, which burn about 20% more fuel and haul about 10,000 pounds less.

If you could snap your fingers and pave Cambridge Bay, that area would have 20% savings instantaneously. I don't care if it's military funding, if it's private funding or if it's government funding: Pave it. It'll make everything better.

[Lori Idlout, Liberal, Nunavut, NU]

Thank you so much for that. Paving the Cambridge Bay airport wouldn't benefit only Cambridge Bay but all of the region as well.

[Mikey McBryan]

It would be the whole place.

[Lori Idlout, Liberal, Nunavut, NU]

I also have questions for Julia Christensen.

We've been given great information by the Library of Parliament regarding housing. They collated information from the Auditor General and from the CMHC. They've highlighted that the majority of Nunavut relies on public housing.

There are about 6,000 people. Of those 6,000, 45% are living in overcrowded housing conditions and 40% are in core need, with 97% of those being Inuit. I wonder if you could share with us what kind of impact that has on the well-being of Nunavummiut.

[Julia Christensen]

It has significant impacts for Nunavummiut, in particular with respect to the intersections between housing costs and food costs.

Of course, food insecurity is a lived reality for so many Nunavummiut families. I've heard countless examples of families that are faced with very tough decisions over paying their rent, paying to put food on the table and paying for other household supplies—diapers, cleaning supplies, etc. Those are the kinds of very real challenges that families are facing month to month.

The way that rent is established doesn't leave much wiggle room at all to be able to also provide for culturally expected sharing practices with respect to money and with respect to food, etc. It really impacts the ability to take care of those living within the house and then extended family as well.

We know that overcrowding has very significant health impacts in terms of public health as well as mental health. The health costs are also intersecting with housing costs in Nunavut in particular, and across Inuit Nunangat.

[Lori Idlout, Liberal, Nunavut, NU]

Thank you so much.

I'm sure that it also contributes to people's ability to be economically independent. The CMHC, for example, has said that the private market is not affordable in Nunavut. Less than 20% can purchase their home, and the poverty rate in Nunavut is quite high. It was at 44.5% in 2022, compared to 9.9% in the provinces.

Keeping that in mind, what kinds of programs would you recommend need to be done to improve housing in Nunavut?

[Julia Christensen]

The chronic underfunding of housing is really the first hurdle that needs to be overcome. There simply has not been enough money invested in housing in terms of both increasing housing stock and maintaining and repairing existing housing stock. Those two things need to be happening at the same time.

I think we also really need to come back not to the drawing board but to speaking with Nunavummiut about what home ownership looks like in the context of Nunavut. It might be home ownership more at the community level in the sense of collective ownership, collective accountability and collective buy-in, where those individual units aren't solely the responsibility of individual households. Lorne really underscored this with his testimony. The costs of fuel and fuel transportation are just adding to the cost of maintaining housing.

Home ownership as it exists in southern Canada is simply not a feasible reality. It's really driving so many families into further unaffordability crises, because they're defaulting on mortgages offered through the Nunavut Housing Corporation or Housing NWT.

[The Vice-Chair, Conservative, Jamie Schmale]

Thank you very much, Lori.

We will now go to the Bloc.

Madame Gill, you have six minutes.

[Marilène Gill, Bloc, Côte-Nord—Kawawachikamach—Nitassinan, QC]

Thank you very much.

I am also happy to be back at the committee as the session resumes.

Thank you to all the witnesses for joining us. Some of the testimony resonates with me as representative of a northern region.

Mr. McBryan, Boeings are not landing in my region, just very small airplanes flown by bush pilots. However, as my colleague Ms. Idlout said, planes are important for our region. In fact, they are a matter of survival. I imagine that, for you, the issue of northern infrastructure, as we've talked about, is extremely important. Not only do we have to build infrastructure, we also have to maintain and preserve it.

You are nodding your approval. I was hoping to hear those comments, because some communities depend on airplanes for supplies, workers, and so on. Economic development depends on airplanes, it's that simple. For the moment, there is nothing else. There are no roads. However, I know that the government may want to abandon this infrastructure, but I'm satisfied to hear that they are necessary for the development of the north.

You also said that it's a matter of who controls the money and where the money goes. That's important for us as well. People want to live in the north, and it's been like that for generations. Mining towns are popping up everywhere. People get there, and after a while, they want to stay there. They work at the mine all their lives. It becomes their home and they no longer want to go “down south“ as we say. They want to stay up north. They want to contribute to the local development. However, it's very difficult for them, because if they don't work at the mine, where do they work? There's nothing else. They'd like to have a house, but there aren't any: they belong to the mine. They'd like to start a business, but it has to be related to the mine.

What could the government or elected officials, like us, do to support community empowerment, which I think communities want, so that they have more power to make decisions?

For example, as Ms. Christensen said, there's the issue of housing, which is totally inadequate. Back home, there's a wall in town facing north to cut the wind. We don't have that in the south. Everyone lives behind that wall, all services are offered behind that wall.

In short, what could we do to have control?

You also talked about fly-in, fly-out operations, what we call in French, “une navelle aérienne.” We have a lot of those back home.

What can we do to ensure that people contribute to the community, develop the community and obviously stay in the community? It is indeed a matter of land use. We want to extract resources, as you said, but we also want that money to come back to us for development. I'll let you speak. I've said a lot, but, as you can see, I agree with you.

[Mikey McBryan]

No, I think that's great. What's funny about the whole thing is that, yes, you have to expand the airports. That in turn creates jobs. You have to be very skilled to take care of the airports. There's Nav Canada and the weather. All that stuff is an opportunity and not just a cost in terms of the infrastructure of everything. Those skills are then worldwide, which is great.

I want to touch on another point. We actually have firefighting aircraft in Val-d'Or, Quebec. We work with SOPFEU. There's a Yellowknife company now. Because of the expertise from having things local, we're able to go and fight fire in Quebec, which is awesome.

Yes, support local infrastructure and support airports—I'm biased—as much as you can. Make them as long, as flat and as paved as possible. That's simply it.

[Marilène Gill, Bloc, Côte-Nord—Kawawachikamach—Nitassinan, QC]

Let's talk about the second part of my question. If we talked, for example, about everything that could be done to ensure the money stays in the north, would you have any ideas on how to do that?

[Mikey McBryan]

It's to make it home. The more a place feels like home, with hunting, fishing and wildlife.... In the north, it's a similar story everywhere.

It's not for everybody. There are nine billion people, and there are 40,000 in the territories. You have to attract the right people and give them reasons to stay. A lot of it is internal. It's the people who like wilderness and stuff. Don't force people who don't want to be there. That's a problem too.

It's a tough question. Just make it accessible for the people who want to stay. The adage is, “I came for two weeks and I stayed for the rest of my life.” That's the common thing we hear every time.

We just have to get people in and show them our best face. Part of that is to make sure the community is nice, safe and secure, which is very important.

[Marilène Gill, Bloc, Côte-Nord—Kawawachikamach—Nitassinan, QC]

Thank you.

I know I only have 20 seconds left, so I'll turn to Ms. Christensen.

I'm interested in the research you do. There is what we would call in French, “un impensé du Nord,” a northern taboo. You talked about housing, which is inappropriate. Since I don't have much time, perhaps you could send us some information about your work.

I know you talked about this a little earlier, but I'd like to have more information on what could be done. You talked about labour, the cost of materials and the supply chain. It's all well and good to have a will, but we need a lot of help to, at the very least, get organized. You talked about local industry. There are indigenous communities of 200 people in my riding, so that's impossible.

What can we do about that? We don't want to impose one-size-fits-all solutions. Each community has its own challenges and advantages.

[Julia Christensen]

Thank you for the question.

I can send you documents about the research we've already done, if it can help you in your study.

[The Vice-Chair, Conservative, Jamie Schmale]

Thank you very much to our first round.

We now kick off our second round. We'll go to Marc Dalton for five minutes.

[Marc Dalton, Conservative, Pitt Meadows—Maple Ridge, BC]

Thank you very much.

Thank you to the witnesses for being here today. It's fascinating. I'm glad to be a new member of this committee. It's very interesting.

My first question is for Mikey with Buffalo Airways.

Your company has been in operation for 56 years, so your company and your family have had your fingers on the pulse of what's been happening over the years. I'm wondering about the trends over the past decade.

There are passengers and then there's freight. Just with regard to passengers, I'm interested in knowing the percentage of government-related passengers, as opposed to business passengers or tourists. Tell me where that's at right now and how the trend has been over the past number of years.

[Mikey McBryan]

Yes, there are two separate things in that. There's the scheduled passenger service, which we don't do anymore. We do the charter side. A lot of that is with the government. We do a lot of RCMP flying. We basically call it Uber, because they call and they need a SWAT team somewhere. They need everything.

Also, a lot of the communities don't have a full-time plumber or a full-time electrician. When there's a problem, we have airplanes on standby, and there are a lot of government things in place to get the specialized labour to the communities in a very quick time.

On that whole thing about passengers and cargo, we're mostly cargo right now. I want to say 80% of our revenue with Nunavut right now is probably because of the policies in place and the favourable stuff with mining, especially gold. Right now, passengers are a tough thing in the north. Government programs, such as medical travel, are big. I can't speak for other companies, but I can speak about it. The cornerstone to get scheduled passenger service to the small communities is medical travel, which is subsidized by the government.

Also, food is another big thing. There are programs in place, and I wish there were more, because getting food into the communities is a big deal.

[Marc Dalton, Conservative, Pitt Meadows—Maple Ridge, BC]

I'm glad to hear you saying that a lot of your business stays with Nunavut, with the mining industry. I think that's important. It's a good sign because it relates to business, the economy and the fact that rather than just having subsidies or transfers, it's the private sector that is paying for a lot of the business.

Are you saying that's going in a good direction at this point as far as the private sector and the mining industry are concerned? Is that on the upswing, or is it going down, on the whole, for your business—or just shifting around?

[Mikey McBryan]

We're in a boom right now. This is a gold boom right now, which is good.

[Marc Dalton, Conservative, Pitt Meadows—Maple Ridge, BC]

Okay.

[Mikey McBryan]

For example, Buffalo Airways is fully private. We invested in a 737-300, which is expensive. We bought new firefighting airplanes, which are expensive. In a low time, we couldn't do that without some crazy funding. Literally, this is money that we took out of the bank and bought the airplanes with. There are no loans. There's nothing. We've probably spent close to $20 million in the last four years. That's private money helping the north.

When Norman Wells had the issue, we brought in our 737-300. Again, that was efficient. We had a program called “air barge”, and we got the price in Norman Wells down to 60¢ per pound, which is unheard of. I don't think you can do that even from Edmonton to Calgary. We're able to use our airplane to bring down the cost of living for an emergency situation, like the one we had in Norman Wells two years ago now.

[Marc Dalton, Conservative, Pitt Meadows—Maple Ridge, BC]

That's great. Thanks.

I'm going to Shannon Joseph.

You were discussing LNG or natural gas, which, as an MP from British Columbia, is music to my ears. We have a plentiful supply.

What is the hindrance for getting more access to natural gas in the communities? I guess one of the questions is on the cost-benefit. It seems that this would be a real benefit, but from your perspective, should the cost be something that should be manageable and very beneficial?

[Shannon Joseph]

In terms of an energy use perspective in British Columbia, electricity is $40 a gigajoule and natural gas is $19. There's an important price difference. That's why many households in British Columbia heat with gas where the infrastructure is available.

In the north, there's a lot of natural gas infrastructure for transmission to markets and other places. To build it or to build the processing infrastructure so that you can have household natural gas in Blueberry River First Nations or in the Nisga'a costs money, and it's money that cannot be recovered by rates because of the population in those communities and the inability to share that cost across all of the rate base in British Columbia. Ontario has solved that problem with their program of a dollar per ratepayer.

There are federal programs. We identified about $14 billion in federal programs for community energy and these kinds of things that are out there, but they really don't support this kind of project.

I think what we're saying is that at the household level, there's a real benefit to filling this gap. The resource is there. Part of the infrastructure is there. We just need a resource. There are federal programs out there. They just don't really address this to close that infrastructure gap so that these communities can have that affordable energy access. That gives them way more options.