Nunavut adds huge Grays Bay road-port scheme to its shopping list – by Jim Bell (Nunatsiaq News – February 29, 2016)

http://www.nunatsiaqonline.ca/

Nunavut Resource Corp., GN, would work together on proposed Kitikmeot transport system

As federal Finance Minister Bill Morneau’s budget speech looms March 22, the Government of Nunavut has added another piece of transportation infrastructure to its shopping list: the Grays Bay Road and Port Project.

That project would revive the moribund Izok corridor zinc-lead mining project touted by Chinese-owned MMG Resources Inc. and form the first phase of a long-dreamed-about all-weather road between Yellowknife and the Arctic Coast.

Without a port and road, MMG’s two proposed mines, at High Lake and Izok Lake, are not viable — and the project has been mothballed since April 2013.

Until now, MMG and the project’s long list of previous owners have proposed financing a road and port with their own money — but now they appear to have pried some potential financial help from the government.

The Nunavut Resources Corp. — a wholly-owned subsidiary of the Kitikmeot Inuit Association — would build and own the 350-kilometre road and port in a partnership with the Government of Nunavut.

The KIA, thanks to a change in federal policy last year, is now eligible, potentially, for large amounts of federal infrastructure money through the P3 Canada Fund and the New Building Canada Fund.

The GN submitted its own Grays Bay funding application to the federal government this past fall.

“This nation-building project is close to shovel ready and would require a total commitment of $34 million from Canada over the next four years in order to complete the permitting and engineering process,” Nunavut Senator Dennis Patterson said Feb. 26 in a speech in the Senate that promoted a long list of proposed Nunavut infrastructure projects that require federal funding.

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