As always, infrastructure is the rate limiting step...
The Q&A: "Canada’s Arctic is the soft underbelly of North American defence"
The Northwest Territories' premier on roads, resources and federalism
PW: What’s the level of private developer interest in these projects and in developing the territory in general?
Simpson: We don’t have the infrastructure to really attract a lot of industry to the territory. That’s our big issue. We have enormous resources — about a third of Canada’s conventional natural gas and a third of its light, marketable crude — but we don’t have the infrastructure to access them. We’re still working on the public infrastructure part, like the Mackenzie Valley Highway. That’s a piece of public infrastructure that will then help spur development.
We have had interest from big conglomerates who want to come in and build it, and they try to make money off the government, not off the resources. When it comes to the Arctic Economic Security Corridor, that’s a very specific economic case. If there’s mineral exploration companies going up there, and mines going up there, there’s opportunities to charge a toll on that road and then bring in some revenue. Once that project advances, I suspect that we’re going to be getting some more interest from private developers or private investors.
PW: But that’s still years away?
Simpson: There’s been a lot of work on that project, but when we came in at the beginning of this government, one First Nation initially said the project was a non-starter. And I said, well, then I guess it’s a non-starter for me too, because the days of just bulldozing projects through against Indigenous opposition are over. Instead, we’ve turned things around completely. That Indigenous government is now one of the two proponents of the project, and so they are going to be working to advance it and determining a route because it goes through a caribou migration area. I can’t over-emphasize the importance of both caribou and water in the Northwest Territories. Those are two things that are the heart of the culture in the territory. With that new proponent in place, and an aggressive timeline, it will advance more quickly. By the time we’re done building on Mackenzie Valley Highway, the other one should be ready to go.
The Northwest Territories' premier on roads, resources and federalism
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