OTTAWA – The construction of a new army refueling station in the Arctic faces other delays more than thirteen years after it was first promised through the federal government, and an analyst raised considerations about other urgent military wishes in the region.
Former Prime Minister Stephen Harper announced his goal of building Nanisivik’s deepwater harbor, Nunavut, as well as up to 8 armed Arctic patrol boats, a holiday in the Far North in 2007.
The port, regarded as one of the crown jewels of the Conservative government’s Arctic strategy, intended to feed patrol boats and other federal vessels while expanding the army’s permanent footprint in the north.
The port on the site of an old mining pier on Baffin Island, approximately 20 kilometres from the Arctic Bay community, was long expected to be in one position when the first of those ships was delivered to the Royal Canadian Navy.
However, while the first Arctic patrol vessel was handed over to the military on Friday after delays and overloads, the Department of National Defense showed that the Nanisivik facility will not be operational until at least 2022.
Defense Department spokeswoman Jessica Lamirande said COVID-19 sank in this year’s structure season, which can only occur between June and September due to weather situations in the north.
“Due to the delays of COVID-19, a small number of contractors are expected to return to August to start the 2020 paint season,” Lamirande said in an email.
“This means that the season will be much shorter than expected and will allow a limited number of paintings to be made.”
COVID-19 is just the newest challenge in the structure of the Nanisivik facility, which was originally scheduled to be operational in 2013 and have an airstrip and be busy year-round.
The year-round runway and service were removed from plans after the project’s initial budget of $100 million more than doubled to $258 million in 2013. The existing value is estimated at $146 million, according to Lamirande.
The federal government also faced environmental barriers due to the desire to leave the old fleet of fuel tanks blank at the site, which housed a port used to send ore from an old zinc mine. There were also structural disorders with the existing dock.
Lamirande said progress had been made in the facility since the first full-structure season in 2015, with almost all of the refueling infrastructure in place.
But the fact that the port is not yet complete, the scope of the allocation has been particularly narrowed, is daunting and troubling, said defense analyst David Perry of the Canadian Institute of Global Affairs.
Canada’s relative difficulty in building a single port with limited amenities in the north contrasts with Russia’s large expansion into the Arctic in recent years, Perry said, and bodes well for the investment of the Canadian army needed in the region.
These come with the update of the series of obsolete radars that shape the backbone of North America’s incoming missile formula and air and water threats, as well as several air and water lasnders in the region to be used through Canada’s new fighter jet.
These projects are expected to begin in the coming years.
“It’s a bit of a disheartening time that it took us to expand undeniable infrastructure into one of the maximum portions available in our Arctic,” Perry said of Nanisivik.
“The time it took us to build doesn’t leave much confidence that the other projects will move forward in a short period of time.”
This report from The Canadian Press was first published on August 3, 2020.