Evidence of meeting #39 for Indigenous and Northern Affairs in the 45th Parliament, 1st session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was north.
A recording is available from Parliament.
Conservative
The Vice-Chair Conservative Jamie Schmale
Good morning. I call this meeting to order.
I'm the new and improved Terry Sheehan for the time being.
Conservative
The Vice-Chair Conservative Jamie Schmale
This is meeting number 39. I hope everyone had a great summer. It's good to see everyone back. Everyone's smiling and we are ready to continue our study of affordability challenges in northern Canada.
Everyone here knows the rules on how to use the microphone and that kind of thing.
I'll remind our witnesses, especially those online, that I'll acknowledge you and then you can take it from there. If you're on Zoom, don't forget there's a language button at the bottom of your screen. You can select English or French. For those in the room, of course, you have your earpieces.
Everyone knows the rest. There are about two pages here, but I think we're good to go.
All right. I guess we'll start in person, since Mikey's across from me.
Do you want to kick it off for five minutes?
Conservative
General Manager, Buffalo Airways Ltd.
Thanks for having me.
Good morning, Chair, and members of the committee. My name is Mikey McBryan. I'm the general manager of Buffalo Airways in Yellowknife, Northwest Territories.
My father, Joe McBryan, was born in Yellowknife. He's Métis, and Buffalo Airways is 100% aboriginal-owned. He started Buffalo in 1970, so for 56 years we've been moving people, freight and supplies across the north. His history shows what can happen when a northerner gets the opportunity to build in the north, creating jobs, training and reinvesting in the place he came from.
The main point I want to make today is simple: Affordability in the north is not only about what things cost. It's about who controls the northern dollar and where that dollar goes.
Almost everything we use has transportation built into it. Groceries, lumber, hockey sticks and aircraft parts from all over the world have to travel a long way to get to the north. Transportation runs on fuel. Fuel is Buffalo's biggest expense. When policy makes fuel more expensive through taxes, fees and regulation, the cost does not stop with the airline. It moves into freight, groceries, construction and, ultimately, the cost of living.
Someone living downtown here in Ottawa may have lots of transportation choices, but in many northern communities, there's no other option. Airplanes still have to fly, trucks still have to move and groceries still have to arrive. Northern realities have to be considered before policies are designed to increase the price of energy.
I also have to question the idea of collecting more money and then returning it through rebates in government programs. Even when revenues return, it's not the same as leaving the decision with northerners in the first place. Once the money leaves your pockets, someone else decides how it comes back and what it should support.
The north does not grow through greater dependency on programs designed to compensate for the higher costs. It grows through sustainable, independent economic growth: northern businesses, northern workers, northern investment and northerners deciding what northerners need. Not every Buffalo employee lives permanently in the north. We have people who rotate in, but we prioritize hiring local because we want to build northern careers, not simply fill jobs in the north.
The same principle should apply to government spending. The lowest invoice is not always the whole economic story. We should ask how much of the money remains in the north and what capacity it leaves behind. The question becomes even more important when we look at natural resources.
Before there was a highway, before there was a runway and before there was a modern mine, people were already living in the north. Indigenous people have lived on these lands since time immemorial. Modern infrastructure did not make the north a home; it was already home. My own family has been connected to northern mining for generations. My great-grandfather was in Yellowknife looking for gold more than a century ago. I'm now the fourth generation of a northern mining family, so I'm not opposed to development. Resource development is part of my family's history, but roads, airports and transportation corridors not only give northerners access to the rest of Canada. They give Canada and the world access to the north.
For generations, the north has been one of the world's great piggy banks of resources. Today, the world is again looking north for the resources needed for the next generation of technology and industry.
The world may need what is beneath the northern ground, but need does not mean entitlement. There is power in having something the world needs, and the power is deciding how, when and whether it is developed. When development happens, the question should be this: What does it leave behind? It's northern businesses, northern infrastructure, northern careers and northern wealth. The north should not simply be a place where wealth is extracted and carried away. It should be a place where wealth is built.
If there's one thing I would ask the committee to do, it's to follow the dollar. When the fuel costs rise, when government buys northern transportation and when the northern resources are developed, where does that dollar go? The long-term answer to northern affordability is not simply finding new ways to send money north. It is creating an economy where more northern money has a reason to stay in the north in the first place.
Thank you for inviting me. I'm happy to answer your questions.
Was that under five minutes?
Conservative
The Vice-Chair Conservative Jamie Schmale
Wow. You have 43 seconds remaining. Well done. I wish Air Canada was more like your airline—coming in early.
Conservative
The Vice-Chair Conservative Jamie Schmale
That was a great way to start.
We will now go online. I guess we'll choose the one with the best background, so we'll go with Dr. Julia Christensen, associate professor of geography and planning at Queen's University.
You have five minutes.
Julia Christensen Associate Professor, Geography and Planning, Queen's University, As an Individual
Thank you so much.
Good morning, everyone. Thank you for providing me the opportunity to participate as a witness in your study of affordability challenges in northern Canada.
I'm an associate professor in geography and planning at Queen's University. I'm also project director of a pan-northern housing research partnership called “At Home in the North”. Funded through the collaborative housing research network, our partnership brings together indigenous and public governments, NGOs and community-led organizations from across the territorial and provincial norths with northern housing researchers and advocates, all working towards northern-led, sustainable housing solutions.
My research, teaching and advocacy over the whole of my career has focused on northern and indigenous housing and home. Housing and home lie at the cornerstone of northern well-being. By limiting our understanding of home to the material structures and market-oriented policy frameworks, we see the biggest obstacles to northern affordability manifest themselves persistently over time. Without a sustainable, robust and self-determined northern housing ecosystem, challenges to the affordability of northern life perpetuate and contribute to the diminishing social determinants of northern and indigenous health, well-being and prosperity.
Since the first federal northern housing programs were introduced across the territorial norths in the mid-20th century, a northern housing crisis has ensued. That is to say that the present-day northern housing crisis is not a recent phenomenon. Rather, it's a reality that northerners have lived for decades, driven by design and administrative approaches to northern housing that are ill-suited to northern cultures and contexts as well as the chronic underfunding that has characterized northern housing policy since its inception.
Remoteness was in effect manufactured by settlement policy of the day. Northern settlements and their functions were situated at far range from southern-based planning and design, administration, building materials and labour. In recent years, the negative impact that such remoteness has on northern affordability has been made even clearer through the effects of climate change. Wildfires and wildfire evacuations, for example, have shown that it's not only housing infrastructure that's threatened by a warming climate, but it's the entire northern housing ecosystem. Fragile northern housing industry is undermined by highway closures, barge cancellations due to low water levels or unpredictable sea ice patterns, the evacuation of major hubs like Yellowknife during a very narrow construction season, and the destruction of modular housing units and other building supplies held in storage in communities overcome by wildfire.
Most communities across the territorial north are considered non-market, meaning the majority of housing is public or staff housing. Little housing can be bought or sold, yet the housing continuum long promoted by CMHC is market-based and situates home ownership as the end goal of the continuum and the ultimate realization of the Canadian dream. This ideology continues to underpin northern housing policy, despite the reality that home ownership is unattainable and in many cases undesirable, at least in its conventional application, across many northern communities. That's certainly what we've heard through the work of At Home in the North. Even in communities where territorial governments are providing mortgages through home ownership programs, the cost of heating and repair makes home ownership unaffordable. As a result, default rates are high.
Addressing northern affordability challenges requires addressing the failures of the northern housing system. Northern housing is at the foundation of northern well-being and must be at the foundation of northern economies. For too long, we have viewed the north as a frontier for resource extraction, which has led to boom-bust cycles and steep income and geographical inequalities that have driven northern affordability challenges. There are no boom-bust cycles when it comes to housing.
We need housing. We need new builds. We need labour to repair and maintain existing stock. We need building and maintenance supplies that are readily accessible to northerners. We need housing design and technology built for the north. We need northern labour trained in construction, inspection, maintenance and repair. We need housing governance and administration that comes from the north, and in particular from indigenous communities and other community-based housing providers who know best the needs, priorities and innovations of northern peoples. We need a northern housing economy that is, to the fullest extent possible, based in the north, not one that continues to rely entirely on supply chains and labour markets that are far from the communities they are intended to serve.
Thank you so much for this opportunity.
Conservative
The Vice-Chair Conservative Jamie Schmale
Thank you very much, Dr. Christensen, with 18 seconds left. This is a good start to the session. This is great.
Let's go to Shannon Joseph, chair of Energy for a Secure Future. You have five minutes.
Shannon Joseph Chair, Energy For A Secure Future
Thank you, Chair and members of the committee.
My name is Shannon Joseph. I lead Energy for a Secure Future, a non-partisan initiative that brings together labour, business, and indigenous and municipal leaders and organizations to advance Canada's energy future.
In collaboration with the First Nations Power Authority, we conducted research on energy affordability in rural communities and first nations reserves. The resulting report, called “The Other Energy Security: Addressing Energy Poverty in Canada's Indigenous Communities”, identifies a critical issue, which is that while Canada has some of the most affordable natural gas in the world, many first nations and rural communities heat their homes with far more expensive and higher-emitting fuels for lack of natural gas access. This situation is a driver of energy poverty and a barrier to social and economic progress in many communities.
In 2021, Statistics Canada found that 5.6% of Canadian households were energy-poor. On reserve, the figure was more than double that, at 12.9%. A 2025 Earnscliffe survey found that over a third of indigenous respondents fit the definition of “energy poor”, spending more than 10% of their after-tax income on energy. Among respondents, roughly 29% had reduced their energy use to save money and 32% had reduced their spending on essentials to afford energy.
Chief Christine Longjohn of Sturgeon Lake First Nation in Saskatchewan calls this “heat poverty”—families choosing between groceries and a warm home. In some communities reliant on electricity or propane, heating bills approach or exceed $1,000 a month.
Natural gas is the cheapest way to heat a home in Canada. Canada Energy Regulator data from 2022 states that electricity costs roughly two to six times more per gigajoule than natural gas, depending on the province. In the five provinces where we found data, over 300 first nations reserves have no natural gas connection, even when surrounded by natural gas infrastructure. This leaves many of these communities with higher energy bills, acting as a barrier to their economic and social development objectives.
Two barriers keep communities stuck.
The first is provincial. Provincial regulators generally require a utility to recover the cost of infrastructure extensions from the customers it connects to. Even when a community energy project can cover 80% to 90% of its costs, the project can still fail to move forward because the remaining costs cannot be absorbed under the provincial regulatory model.
The second barrier is federal. Many federal programs have excluded projects focused on natural gas distribution. Therefore, even when communities have determined it is their best option to move away from propane, heating oil or diesel, federal funding for community energy has often failed to enable the switch.
Ultimately, many rural and indigenous communities find themselves in a gap between federal resources and provincial regulation.
However, this is fixable, and governments have done it before. In Red Lake, Ontario, $2.7 million in federal support helped that community to access natural gas, saving residential customers 50% to 70% on their heating costs. Ontario's expansion program, funded by a one-dollar monthly charge on existing customers, has connected dozens of communities, including first nations.
More projects are ready. The First Nations Power Authority is advancing a $39.2-million project to bring natural gas to five Saskatchewan first nations. Households would save an average of $1,568 a year, which is about $2.1 million annually across the five of them. The Canadian Gas Association has identified roughly $1.1 billion in similar projects nationally, where the communities are known and the routes are understood.
Therefore, we offer three recommendations.
First, make natural gas distribution extensions eligible under existing federal programs, such as the indigenous community infrastructure fund and the clean energy for rural and remote communities program, or create a dedicated program to support natural gas access in rural and indigenous communities.
Second, provide resources that enhance community energy resilience, including appliance upgrades, community energy audits, local capacity and better housing quality on reserves.
Third, build rural and indigenous energy access into the federal agenda around major projects as pipelines or data centres are built, and leverage tools like the indigenous loan guarantee so that nations near national infrastructure can benefit directly from it.
Above all, this must be the community's choice. Not every northern community or first nation will want natural gas, but when a community does, federal policy should not take away that option.
Guy Lonechild, CEO of the First Nations Power Authority, put it simply: “Natural gas is the new water.” Clean water on reserve is finally getting attention. Affordable, reliable heat should be next.
Thank you, and I look forward to your questions.
Conservative
The Vice-Chair Conservative Jamie Schmale
Next up on the list is Lorne Browne, director with the Department of Infrastructure in the Government of Northwest Territories.
Mr. Browne, you have five minutes.
Lorne Browne Director, Department of Infrastructure (Fuel Services Division), Government of Northwest Territories
Thank you, Mr. Chair.
My name is Lorne Browne. I represent the Government of the Northwest Territories' fuel services division. A few speakers mentioned fuel in their addresses, and I'll talk about fuel a lot more.
The fuel services division's mandate is to purchase, transport, store and sell diesel, gasoline and, in some cases, jet fuel in 16 remote and difficult-to-access communities in the Northwest Territories. These are communities where the private sector does not operate, so the government steps in to provide those services. We also deliver diesel fuel to 20 communities in the NWT for electricity generation as a primary or backup source. The service we provide does not take any profit. It seeks only to break even and provide the service to our residents.
In most of the communities serviced, an entire year's supply of fuel is delivered in just a few weeks by tug-and-barge operation on our waterways or by tanker truck on our seasonal and winter roads. Due to the extremely remote locations of some of our communities and the cost of shipping, fuel costs in the NWT are some of the highest in Canada. We typically change fuel pricing after annual resupply, so generally speaking, fuel prices are set for the year.
The governments of the Northwest Territories and Nunavut are the only two jurisdictions in Canada to manage fuel for public use on this scale.
Since 2020, fuel prices in the communities we service have escalated quickly and considerably. On average, fuel prices have increased by as much as 50% as of last winter. Market volatility since March 2026 suggests additional and significant increases are forthcoming in many communities in the next price change cycle. Not only is it more expensive to purchase fuel on the wholesale market, but transportation costs have also escalated because, of course, transporting fuel uses fuel.
Climate-related disruptions have negatively affected the supply chains as well and exacerbated fuel costs. Events such as wildfires, increased sea ice and low river water events make it difficult to deliver fuel, risking inventory levels and forcing millions of litres of fuel to be delivered by alternative means, including sometimes by air tanker. For perspective, delivery of fuel by tanker truck or tug-and-barge operation can typically run between 50¢ and 70¢ a litre to some of our communities. By comparison, delivery by air tanker can cost upwards of five dollars per litre. That's just the transportation cost. Other cost components, of course, make up the final selling price.
The Northwest Territories has experienced several intense wildfire seasons over the last three years. One of those fires destroyed a key rail link, which impacts bulk delivery of petroleum products from the south. Now tanker trucks must be used to deliver on that part of the route. Low water events in the Mackenzie River, our main water-based transportation route, have also impacted barge operations, forcing costly supply chain rerouting.
All these supply chain impediments and resulting contingencies come at a cost.
It's important to acknowledge that high fuel costs trickle down to influence the cost of most aspects of modern living. Few things in our lives affect the cost of living like fuel does, especially in the north: the manufacture and transportation of goods, generation of electricity, heating of homes, growing and transporting food, construction activities, resource sector activities, infrastructure maintenance and operating costs, personal travel costs and even traditional activities such as fishing and hunting for food. All these activities are linked to the cost of fuel.
Since fuel is a globally traded commodity, residents of Canada's north have little to no influence on its pricing. At the same time, there is no single driver more impactful to the cost of living than the price of fuel. Some progress is being made on reducing our reliance on liquid petroleum products; however, at least for the foreseeable future, we'll continue to feel the impacts of high fuel costs and the resulting high costs of living in the north.
Thank you.
Conservative
The Vice-Chair Conservative Jamie Schmale
Thank you very much, Mr. Browne.
Next up, we have the Pembina Institute.
Lynne Couves, you're up for five minutes.
Lynne Couves Director, Renewables in Remote Communities, Pembina Institute, Pembina Institute
Thank you so much, Mr. Chair.
Good morning, committee. Thanks for having me.
My name is Lynne Couves. I am the director of the renewables in remote communities program at the Pembina Institute, which is a national non-partisan clean energy think tank. I join you today from the lands that raised me and the lands that are now raising my children, in Treaty No. 7 territory, in Mohkinstsis, also called Calgary.
For more than 30 years the Pembina Institute has studied clean energy systems in remote and northern communities across Canada. Over that time we have seen the consequences of what is often called Canada's infrastructure gap, which is decades of underinvestment that have left remote and northern communities without infrastructure that most Canadians take for granted, including all-season roads, modern electricity systems and reliable high-speed Internet. I'll focus today on one part of that gap, which is energy.
First off, energy reliability in the north is an affordability issue. More than 210 remote communities across Canada produce their electricity independently from the North American electricity grid. Most also rely heavily on imported fossil fuels for heating and for electricity, which means that when local infrastructure fails or fuel cannot reach a community, there are very few energy alternatives. At the same time, much of the infrastructure people depend on is aging and increasingly strained. The consequences of this can be profound, including power outages, fuel shortages, rapidly rising costs and, in severe circumstances, threats to the safety of entire communities, which require evacuation.
The second point I'd like to make is that the cost of this system is already extraordinarily high. Our research has found that energy costs in remote communities can be six to 10 times higher than in southern Canada. These numbers are from a few years ago, which show extremely high costs, even with significant subsidies throughout the diesel supply chain. For households, these numbers aren't abstract. This month, in Yellowknife—where Lorne is, and it's Julia's hometown—local news reported that a resident is expecting to spend about $8,500 on home heating, which is about $3,000 more than last year. Households are already this fall trying to figure out how they can afford their heating costs before winter has even begun.
The vulnerability goes beyond the price of fuel. Shorter ice-road seasons, low water levels and other disruptions to fragile supply chains can turn an affordability problem into an energy security crisis. Governments and utilities then face the growing pressure to increase subsidies to simply keep household energy bills within a questionable reach. The cycle becomes costly: We spend more and more money managing the consequences of an energy system that is itself becoming less affordable and less reliable.
My third and final message is the most important one, which is that we already know what some of the solutions look like because northern and indigenous communities are building them. For decades, indigenous and northern leaders have advocated for clean energy as a way to reduce diesel dependence, to strengthen energy security and to keep more of the economic benefits of energy development within their communities. That leadership has resulted in hundreds of renewable energy projects, including community-led and community-owned wind, solar, hydro and, in some cases, grid connection partnerships.
Federal programs have played a critical role in enabling this progress. Since 2016, clean energy projects in remote communities have displaced over 142 million litres of diesel and, most recently, we're seeing more than 31 million litres of diesel displaced per year. This is remarkable and critical progress, but it's also very fragile. Some critical federal programs that have supported this progress have already or are at risk of ending—including CERRC, northern REACHE and the indigenous off-diesel initiative—while the demand for electricity and heat continues to grow and communities face increasing economic and climate pressures.
This is not the time to step back. The federal government has an important role in providing the sustained partnership that communities need, including support for early-stage project development, local capacity building and major infrastructure investment.
The good news is that we know that change is possible. Communities across the north are already proving it: The technologies exist, the expertise is growing, and we have seen that these investments can produce lower energy costs, stronger local economies and more resilient communities.
When we talk about affordability in the north, we should not only ask how governments can subsidize today's high costs. We should also ask how we can invest now to reduce costs and the risks behind them for decades to come. If we do that, Canada has an opportunity to fundamentally rewrite the story of energy affordability and reliability in the north.
Thank you.
September 24th, 2026 / 8:40 a.m.
Conservative
The Vice-Chair Conservative Jamie Schmale
Thank you very much to all the witnesses for their great testimony.
We now start the next adventure here at committee, in which the rounds of questioning will begin.
We will kick it off with the Conservatives and Billy Morin for six minutes.
Conservative
Billy Morin Conservative Edmonton Northwest, AB
Thank you, Chair.
Thank you to our guests today. Welcome.
I want to go to Mikey McBryan.
You talked about your family's history. I think you said that for over a century, your family has been in the north. Since time immemorial, indigenous people were there. The history of the north was mining. Then, it was oil and gas, and then diamonds. I think diamonds are on the downturn. There's talk of heavy military investment going into the north, which is great, because we need to defend our north, but at its highest level, it's a government program.
From your perspective, given all those boom and bust cycles, what are some of the lessons you would like to see learned by government, and what is the long-term strategic perspective? What can be done better than going through booms and busts and then these different government programs or high-level military dependency? What do you think is next for the north?
General Manager, Buffalo Airways Ltd.
Thank you for the question.
In fact, the “over a century” reference was just to the Irish side. My family's aboriginal side, of course, has been there forever.
It's a great question. The boom and bust cycle is important in a lot of ways because it drives different things, just like how war increases technology and all that stuff, which is not the nicest thing to say. The boom and bust cycle really throws in a lot of money, and you can see it fairly well in Alberta, where a lot of stuff comes in. My father always uses a saying famous in Alberta: “Please, Lord, give me one more oil boom. I promise not to mess this one up.”
I came onto the scene in the nineties when the gold was coming out, and diamonds just came out of nowhere. When I was in high school and then graduated, all my friends went into the diamond industry. They were graduating from high school, and then a year later, they were making more than the principal was. That was really good for the community.
There was a really good program wherein the people of Hay River, where I'm originally from, got housing. If you worked in the diamond mines and you lived in Hay River, there were programs in place. As soon as they got rid of that, almost everyone moved down to Okotoks and Calgary and those kinds of places.
That's the big thing, and I think that's what everyone is saying too. When these cycles happen, how do you leave something behind? It's the infrastructure and the economics of businesses.
Again, Buffalo Airways was built on a boom and bust cycle in the seventies with oil. We grew during diamonds, and we're growing right now with gold. I think it's an important part of the system.
Conservative
Billy Morin Conservative Edmonton Northwest, AB
I appreciate the different perspective. Most people instinctively would say to get rid of the boom and bust cycles, but you're embracing it because it's the reality, and here's a strategic way of learning from it. That's pretty good.
Shannon, you provided three recommendations or solutions, and I want to go to your third one, which is real energy access for the Major Projects Office. It encompasses all three: natural gas, easily accessible programs and appliance upgrades. You also mentioned, which I heard as a common theme, that the real solutions are from northerners themselves.
There has been a renewed focus on oil and gas, for lack of a better word, which has been shunned over the last 10 years. We've now been in this Parliament for the better part of a year and a half. Have you seen any tangible changes in some of the initiatives you suggested over the last year and a half?
Chair, Energy For A Secure Future
There's been a change in that there's been a more positive message around oil and gas, but I don't think there's been a focus when it comes to housing and what this means for building codes. The building code is still kind of unfriendly to natural gas access, and a lot of the federal programs that we looked at that help communities with community energy are still not super friendly to natural gas.
The communities that we worked with in our research have been working on getting access to natural gas for decades, because it's the most affordable. Some of their neighbours benefited from provincial programs that extended that infrastructure, even when they were pretty far away from the major cities, and having that access allowed them to develop their tourism and to have recreational facilities that would be unaffordable to heat with electricity. They're looking at what the mix of energy solutions is that can work for their community so that they can get the things they want, and they want gas to be a part of it.
There's the jurisdictional gap I mentioned. We're exporting gas to the world from the Montney formation, and communities there are on propane. They would like the cheaper natural gas, and there's an infrastructure gap to fill it.
Can we be creative in how we use the federal programs that allow indigenous participation in major projects so that those programs can be a vehicle for those communities in getting that step up on infrastructure that gives communities access to these additional options? That's the important thing for Parliament to consider and for the government to try to close as a gap.
Conservative
Billy Morin Conservative Edmonton Northwest, AB
Thank you for that.
Dr. Julia Christensen, you mentioned that the CMHC market is not exactly working for the north, which is a unique space. You mentioned the boom and bust cycle as well.
Do you have an idea of a low-hanging fruit in terms of systematic change for housing? It kind of reminds me of a typical first nation reserve, where mortgages are not the norm, but you're talking about a whole territory or multiple territories. Do you have any structural changes in mind in terms of market housing, or anything unique in how regulatory regimes can change in terms of home ownership? Maybe that's even the wrong term in itself.
Associate Professor, Geography and Planning, Queen's University, As an Individual
Like some of the other presenters this morning, I think tremendous innovation already exists in the north. There's an opportunity to really celebrate and promote that and to look at how those innovations can be scaled up or made accessible in other parts of the north.
One example that I think of is the K’asho Got’ı̨nę Housing Society in Fort Good Hope, which is a housing society created out of the land claim, out of the self-government. In the community, basically since the Mackenzie Valley Pipeline Inquiry in the 1970s, a desire was expressed to take back community control over housing, decision-making, housing administration and housing construction. They have explored options for building a sawmill in the community to address some of the supply chain issues. They are doing training programs to train local youth in housing construction, maintenance and repair. They're also building a modular housing centre with the aim of becoming a regional hub for the Sahtu, and potentially for the Northwest Territories or even parts of Nunavut as well, as a northern-based centre for housing construction and housing delivery.
In looking at some of those models and thinking about ways to build local housing industries that are based in the north and that start out from this place, let's explore some of the supply chain challenges that we're experiencing. Are there solutions that we can examine that actually limit those challenges? What about training? Are there opportunities here for building on the number of people in the community who are looking for training and employment opportunities and could be working in the housing sector?
One of the—
Conservative
The Vice-Chair Conservative Jamie Schmale
Dr. Christensen, I'm sorry, but I'm going to have to cut you off. We went a couple of minutes over. Unfortunately, I have to stop at some point.
We'll go the Liberals now.
Lori Idlout, you have six minutes.
Liberal
Lori Idlout Liberal Nunavut, NU
[Member spoke in Inuktitut]
[English]
First of all, welcome back to the committee members. It's good to see everyone, and thank you to all of the witnesses for sharing your expertise today.
I would like to highlight that there is a celebrity among us. Mikey, the work that the History Channel did with you in Ice Pilots really helped show just how important air travel is in the north.
You're stationed in the NWT in Yellowknife, but can you share with us if your airline flies into Nunavut as well?