Iqaluit, Nunavut, Canada. Source: Flickr, GRID-Arendal, CC BY-NC-SA 2.0
The federal government will partner with Nunavut Housing Corp. to build 700 homes in the territory through the new Build Canada Homes agency—but so far, few details have been released.
“As we await further program details from the Government of Canada, [the housing corporation] stands ready to deliver and is already at work with planning and due diligence, Lorne Kusugak, the minister responsible for Nunavut Housing Corp.,” told the legislative assembly Monday.
The announcement “says a lot about the federal government’s trust and faith in the Nunavut Housing Corp.,” he said in an interview afterward.
In Ottawa on Sunday, September 14, Prime Minister Mark Carney announced Build Canada Homes will be used to “supercharge” home construction across Canada. The newly created federal agency will partner with the private sector to build public housing and affordable housing.
It will help double the pace of housing construction in this country over the next decade, Carney predicted.
The government is providing Build Canada Homes with $13 billion in initial capital to develop federal lands in Dartmouth, N.S., Longueil, Que., Ottawa, Toronto, Winnipeg and Edmonton to deliver 4,000 factory-built homes, in addition to the 700 for Nunavut.
It’s unclear how much of that funding will go toward the Nunavut builds, and whether it will cover ongoing construction or apply only to new builds.
Those details will have to be “ironed out” in the coming weeks, said Eiryn Devereaux, president and CEO of Nunavut Housing Corp..
Devereaux and Kusugak both confirmed the new units will be part of Nunavut 3000, the $2.6-billion plan announced by the Government of Nunavut in 2022 to build 3,000 new residential units by the end of the decade.
“It’s such a drop in the bucket,” Nunavut’s NDP MP Lori Idlout said in a phone interview Monday, reacting to the federal government’s announcement. She said she’s “curious” about how it came up with the “magical number” of 700 units.
“This government is saying how important Arctic security and Arctic sovereignty is—why are they only announcing such a small amount?”
A spokesperson for Housing, Infrastructure and Communities Canada, the department responsible for federal public infrastructure policy, didn’t respond to an inquiry from Nunatsiaq News on Monday afternoon.
Of the 700 homes planned for Nunavut, 210 will be built off-site as factory-built housing. Idlout said she hopes they can be manufactured in Nunavut at Arviat’s modular homes factory, which is set to be completed in April 2026.
More than 60 per cent of Nunavummiut rely on public housing—45 per cent of which is considered overcrowded—and the public housing wait list sits at 3,348 as of March, according to the auditor general’s report published in May.
Nunavik wasn’t mentioned in the initial plans for new builds through Build Canada Home. Neither the Kativik Regional Government nor the Nunavik Housing Bureau were aware of such plans, with both deferring Monday to Makivvik Corp.
Miriam Dewar, a spokesperson for Makivvik, said the corporation has “engaged” with the federal government on how the new agency can support the region, but there has been “no money announced or committed for Nunavik.”
Source: Nunatsiaq News