Mayors from Canada’s northern capitals plan to sign a memorandum of understanding later this month to ensure their cities gain from upcoming military investments in the North.
“We’re not being an afterthought at this point, but it’s making sure that we’re doing our job to make sure that doesn’t change either,” stated Yellowknife Mayor Ben Hendriksen.
Collaborative Advocacy on Infrastructure
The agreement commits Yellowknife, Iqaluit, and Whitehorse to joint efforts in pushing for new infrastructure while enhancing Arctic security and defence readiness.
“A lot of it ties into things that we’re already advocating for,” Hendriksen added. “It’s the nuts and bolts of how a city operates, things like water and sewer infrastructure, transportation infrastructure, making sure that we have the land.”
Under Prime Minister Mark Carney’s administration, emphasis has grown on dual-use infrastructure serving both civilian and military needs, leading to productive discussions.
Preparing for Shared Investments
Yellowknife City Manager Stephen Van Dine noted that federal officials are providing guidance to assess needs, including water and sewer capacity. New dual-use projects introduce budgeting challenges since “shared use means shared cost.”
Van Dine anticipates that the city and territorial government will cover portions of these expenses, necessitating aligned expectations. “Combined and shared-use facilities does put options on the table that didn’t exist before for us,” he explained.
Potential priorities include redeveloping the city’s aging garage with federal support, modernizing fire facilities, extending water and sewer services to underserved areas, and boosting power generation to prevent outages like the recent incident.
Anticipating Federal Strategy
The federal government postponed its Defence Industrial Strategy announcement this week due to a mass shooting in Tumbler Ridge, B.C. Hendriksen indicated ongoing monitoring: “We’re interested to see what that looks like and what the impacts are for Yellowknife specifically, of course, but also the North more broadly, in the Arctic region more broadly.”
Broad Support and Unity
Iqaluit and Whitehorse city councils have unanimously approved the memorandum, with Yellowknife’s council set to vote next week.
Iqaluit Deputy Mayor Kimberly Smith described it as “a step in the right direction.” “At this point in the world, I think it’s really important that the North show that we are together in all this, in one united front,” she said.
Smith seeks funding for infrastructure to support a planned northern hub in Iqaluit for military operations. “That all comes with an infrastructure cost right? There’s sewer upgrades, there’s water upgrades, there’s power requirements. And these are things we can’t necessarily do alone to support a federal government initiative,” she noted. “We are going to need the investment to make it better for everyone. If we are going to do these operations in the Arctic, there needs to be benefits to residents as well.”
The three-year pact promotes stronger federal ties with northern cities to bolster Arctic sovereignty and defence, including early involvement in Canadian Armed Forces and NORAD activities. The mayors will sign it at the Arctic Summit in Whitehorse from February 23 to 25.
