National Defence committee  Some of the synergy we can actually identify is having a better understanding and realization of our capacity as Inuit development corporations. As I mentioned before, there are seven development corporations. We invest in and own either equity ownership pieces or wholly owned companies, hundreds of these companies, and we employ thousands of Inuit.

National Defence committee  I'm sorry; do you mean for the ongoing projects on the military side?

National Defence committee  Again, we help to maintain and operate the North Warning System contract. As I said earlier, I think there's a great opportunity for us to see what we can do to utilize renewable energy for some of these sites, to see if there are any learnings that can happen with communities. I think a better utilization of some of our business through different procurement processes would actually help significantly.

National Defence committee  For me, as I said, it's trying to utilize renewable energy. I think what we can do to strengthen the Arctic is to try to identify the Arctic as a great place for investment for the private sector. My colleague talked about some of these companies that come in and just stay for a short period of time.

National Defence committee  We see that that there's a tremendous opportunity around NORAD modernization. This is going to be a generational impact. Obviously we're in the early stages right now, and we're trying to position ourselves to demonstrate that we have the ability, the capacity, and the financial capacity as well, to be able to participate.

National Defence committee  They were very good, very positive, and they are very preliminary at this stage. It's being able to demonstrate and send the message that Inuit businesses are not just looking at our traditional kind of activity that you see in the north, but that we're willing to go beyond that to see what we could do to take advantage of that.

National Defence committee  Certainly my colleague can talk about that as well. Everybody is looking for good people, right? That's the biggest challenge. The Government of Nunavut has a staffing challenge. All of the Inuit organizations have a staffing challenge. For any major business that wants to go up, the first thing they talk about is that they need to find people in the Arctic.

National Defence committee  Just very quickly, we invest in a company called Nunavut Construction Corp. When it does planning, it has to take into account the impact of climate change. We're trying to make our houses much more energy-efficient so that we're not wasting any energy. Something that I think is really interesting, though, is that of 53 Inuit communities, 52 are on diesel.

National Defence committee  It's a great question. I think it's actually starting to happen now. I represent an indigenous business. I'm not here representing a political body, a political entity, so I don't know exactly what is happening in that regard, but we certainly had some touchpoints with the Department of National Defence.

National Defence committee  Thank you for the question. We just received the North Warning System contract recently. It was at the beginning of the year. The contract start date was in April. We've had to significantly ramp up staff, particularly at headquarters here in Ottawa, as well as ensure that we have training and development and the right support to ensure that we have a higher representation of Inuit workers and employees in those particular sites.

National Defence committee  First of all, the North Warning System contract is one of the first federal contracts that was developed in compliance with the requirements under the Nunavut agreement with respect to federal procurement in the territory. The Inuit benefits piece had a significant amount of waiting when we went through the RFP process.

National Defence committee  I'm sorry. I got the last part: “What priority would the government have in upgrading infrastructure within the region?” There has been a commitment on the part of the Government of Canada in the most recent budget with respect to infrastructure as a part of the indigenous community infrastructure fund.

National Defence committee  Thank you, Mr. Chair and members of the committee. It's an honour to be here to have a conversation about a topic as important as Arctic security. Nunasi is a Nunavut Inuit birthright corporation owned by two regional Inuit associations, QIA and Kivalliq Inuit Association, and one regional Inuit development corporation.

Indigenous and Northern Affairs committee  I completely agree with Dawn's assessment that we are at a disadvantage, although I said in my comments that indigenous businesses look very differently now compared to how they did just 20 years ago. We've built remarkable capacity, as Dawn referenced a number of times in some of her answers, and having institutions that are very focused on indigenous communities and will help to build that level of capacity is important.

Indigenous and Northern Affairs committee  No. In terms of the recommendations I provided, I wasn't necessarily talking about grant funding. I was talking about—