Contaminated sites in the spotlight during Nunavut committee hearing

There is no deadline to make a database on contaminated sites in Nunavut publicly available.

That statement was made during recent televised hearings of the Legislative Assembly's standing committee on oversight of government operations and public accounts.

According to Nunavut's devolution agreement with Canada, there are 148 sites in the territory that need remediation. Currently, the sites are the responsibility of the federal government, but as part of the agreement, they will be transferred to the Nunavut government once they are remediated.

When Uqqummiut MLA Mary Killiktee asked for an update on the creation of the database, Jamie Elliott, the government's environmental liabilities project manager said the "back-end" work on "updating the structure of the database" is largely done.

"We are about 80 per cent complete migrating all of the information over to the new format," Elliott continued, adding that the government is forecasting the rest will be transferred by the end of June.

But when Killiktee asked when the database would be publicly accessible, Elliott couldn't give a direct answer, saying they needed to speak with the contractor that's creating the database.

"Earlier this year, we spoke with [the Department of] Transportation and Infrastructure Nunavut and [the Department of] Executive and Intergovernmental Affairs to determine what steps we need to do internally," Elliott said. "The next step now to determine those timelines is working with the contractor, which we plan to do in the coming months."

The Nunavut government's working group on contaminated sites is also expected to create a relationship with the Nunavut Association of Municipalities (NAM) to discuss issues and get the hamlets involved. But the committee heard that the government has yet to officially involve NAM.

"Our initial communication had started at a very high level with the Nunavut Association of Municipalities," said Michele Leblanc-Havard, the government's director of environmental protection. "When we further went back to the working group, we realized that we needed to do a little more work on the responsibility matrix at that time and we wanted to be well prepared before we further engaged the Nunavut Association of Municipalities."

Contaminated sites were previously brought up in the same committee's hearings which were televised in September 2024.

"Communities know where contaminated sites are and don't necessarily differentiate between whose responsibility it is to take action on remediating those sites," said Iqaluit-Sinaa MLA Janet Pitsiulaaq Brewster in September.

"I think it's really important as a transparency issue as well as a really valuable tool for community members to come back to the government of Nunavut and indicate any new or ignored sites."

While the devolution agreement currently has 148 listed sites that need remediation, more sites can potentially be added to the list.

"The Devolution Secretariat is… getting ready to consult with communities and other potential groups to identify more land before the transfer date," said deputy finance minister, Dan Young. "It is much easier to add land to a list prior to transfer than it is to transfer it back after."

Young said the Devolution Secretariat told him there is a process to add land to the list after devolution occurs on April 1, 2027, but it's more difficult.

"So, they're putting a lot of their resources into identifying those lands before the transfer date," Young said. "But there is a process afterwards to review each property that's identified later as to who is responsible for cleanup."