As you can see by the slide that's in front of you, that's the James Bay coast. The area I'm from is the Moosonee and Moose Factory area, which is in the bottom left. As you can see by the map, that's the area I'm most concerned about, although the issues we're to speak to today are very much common to most, if not all, of northern Canada.
First, the history of the James Bay ice road. In the 1940s an ice road was established to support the mid-Canada radar sites. Subsequently it served the local communities of Moose Factory, Moosonee, Fort Albany, Kashechewan, and Attawapiskat from the 1950s to the 1990s. The original ice road was abandoned in favour of a parallel ice road situated closer to the James Bay shoreline. With the discovery of diamonds on the Attawapiskat River watershed, the ice road status expanded from the local to serve the industrial environment, specifically the Victor Mine, operated by De Beers Canada.
There are transportation gaps. Access to the region starts by driving to Cochrane, then by rail to Moosonee, then back on a truck by ice road from Mosoonee to Attawapiskat. The De Beers Victor Mine is connected to Attawapiskat by an ice road along the south side of the Attawapiskat River. During the non-ice-road period, the remote communities and the mine are accessible only by light aircraft. I should qualify that. Depending upon the circumstances of the season and the situation, there are also barges. There are between 15 and 20 of those on an annual basis, but they're very much subject to weather.
The maps that you see in front of you are the two roads. The left picture shows the south road from Attawapiskat to the De Beers Victor Mine. As you can see, that's 103 kilometres, and the James Bay road from Moosonee to Attawapiskat is approximately 301 kilometres.
The ice road season construction begins in December, weather permitting. Of course we haven't had that luxury in the last several years. The commercial opening is usually around the first week of February. Traditionally, the commercial access is about 30 days and the community access is about 60 days. Unfortunately, this year the commercial side of things was about 25 days and the community access I don't think was more than 35 days. With all that's going on, it was a substantially reduced season this year.
As you can see by the picture here, the road is built to an ice thickness of 43 inches; however, depending on the cargo needs, it can be built up to 60 inches in thickness. The reason for that is the 43 inches gives us the capacity to move approximately 100,000 pounds of material in a given truck. As you can see here, a 43-inch road will support 106,000 pounds.
Now, if you notice this particular picture, the trees are still fairly tall here. However, I would suggest to you that even though they seem very tall, this is the southern portion of the road. These trees can be upwards of 300 years of age. Even though they don't appear to be that tall, relatively speaking they are tall.
This is the Long Creek crossing. Commercial activity to the mine is between 400 and 450 loads. De Beers takes delivery of between seven million and ten million litres of fuel annually.
One of the challenges we're faced with, of course, is spring thaw. With spring thaw, the challenge of the road is that it results in significant flooding. Further to that, of course, the cost of the ice road is around $5 million. That's just the cost of the ice road itself. The entire program for De Beers is approximately $12 million annually. The federal contribution towards this is just under $1 million. As you can tell, it is very expensive. Those are annual costs I was referring to. You can see by this picture that this is typical of the ice jams that occur.
Depending upon the coldness of the season, there are a number of dangers to the environment. One is that the fish are impacted and the harvesting is impacted because the complete dam doesn't allow for the fish to actually go underneath the ice. We have a lot of environmental issues to deal with, which in turn result in impact to the harvesters.
This is an annual event. The White Swan Creek area is probably the worst. We annually do an environmental impact study. Our current one should be out very shortly. As you can see by this aerial view, it has a significant impact on the whole area. Not only is the road there—it's hard to tell by this picture—but there is also the power line that goes through that feeds the northern communities.
This is the North Bluff Creek Crossin. As you can see, it looks like you have a bend in the river there. That's not a bend in the river. That's actually the river and the road, and you can see the water on the road, which is the line that goes across vertically. The ice roads have a significant negative impact on harvesters and wildlife as a result of what goes on there.
This is the south ice road by Attawapiskat. The shorter lifespans of ice roads because of the climate change is making life more difficult for the people in the north. This particular picture is closer to Attawapiskat and is the actual start of the south road going to Victor Mine. You can see the trees are significantly shorter. And of course it's all muskeg, and it's very difficult to work and build in this particular area.
I'll turn to economic disparity. For approximately 305 days a year the communities are fly-in only. Fresh food must come in on a plane, which adds significantly to the cost. The cost to live in the communities due to transportation can be between 100% and 300% higher. The costs for a return airfare, as an example, from Moosonee to Timmins is approximately $900. If you're a resident of Moosonee and Moose Factory, you also have access to the train, which is a little bit less expensive, but as you know by what's going on, we don't know the future of the rail going to Moosonee. A return ticket to Attawapiskat is about $1,380. Of course that's a significant and very difficult cost to those up north. Typically they do not have the resources to do this very often.
The slide here shows the prices in one particular example. This is actually an example from Manitoba, but it does illustrate the situation there. You can see that the basket at St. Theresa Point is about $65.54 for those various items, whereas in Winnipeg it's $27.49. I would suggest to you that in Ontario the price would be closer to $80 in Attawapiskat.
The challenges that are faced include bad diets, bad housing, and bad outcomes. You can see by these pictures that diet is an issue, access to resources is always going to be a challenge, and whenever there's need for specialty things, of course, you must come out of the community. There is significant cost to moving people from the communities to larger centres to get the services necessary.
The crisis is ongoing. Like too many remote communities, Attawapiskat has serious schooling and housing issues. Even if money were readily available, the logistics of a response are limited by the window of opportunity to bring in bulk supplies for construction. Add the exceedingly high cost to bring in bulk materials, and a difficult problem has only expensive solutions.
Our motivation for speaking with you today is that we see airships as the game changer that could have many positive benefits for northern Canada, not only to the James Bay area, where I'm from.