3 Nunavut communities vie for High Arctic research station post

Three Nunavut communities are stepping up this week to impress federal officials that are deciding where Canada's world-class High Arctic research station will be based.

The hamlets of Cambridge Bay, Resolute Bayand Pond Inlet were shortlisted earlier this year as potential host communities for the research facility.

This week, a team from the federal Indian and Northern Affairs Department toured each community for the first time. The team started Tuesday in Cambridge Bay, then went to Resolute Bay on Wednesday. It is wrapping up its tour Thursday in Pond Inlet.

"We greeted the people at the airport and gave them a vigorous community tour and showed them our highlights," Cambridge Bay hamlet Coun. Wilf Wilcox told CBC News on Wednesday.

Wilcox said the western Nunavut hamlet showed officials everything from its recreation facilities to its new health centre.

"But I think more importantly, we started to find out what they need and what we should be asking ourselves for future visits, you know, to come," he said.

Over the next 12 months, Indian and Northern Affairs will visit each of the three communities again, assessing them in terms of their availability of land and existing infrastructure, among other factors.

"Ideally, we don't want to recreate a whole bunch of new infrastructure, like waste and water management and so those sorts of things are really important," said Danielle Labont, director general of the department's northern strategic policy branch.

Federal officials hope to learn more about what residents in each community want, should the research station be based there.

"We want to talk to them about what their science needs would be from their communities' perspective," she said.

"This is a first conversation, so we don't expect to have the answers this time. But we want to plant those seeds with them so that they're thinking about what would be beneficial for the community if they were to be the host of this facility."

The visits are also giving the communities a chance to ask federal officials questions about the research station, said Duncan Walker, senior administrative officer in Resolute.

"We like to know what's coming in and out of our community," Walker said.

"There's been things in the past where you kind of have to be wary of who's coming in to the community and what they're bringing with them."

The government has promised since 2007 to build a world-class research station in Canada's High Arctic.

The community of Pond Inlet is located near the northern tip of Baffin Island in eastern Nunavut. Resolute Bay is in central Nunavut, on the southern coast of Cornwallis Island, while Cambridge Bay is on the southeastern coast of Victoria Island in western Nunavut.

The federal department is not expected to announce which community will host the research centre for at least another year.