High Arctic sites still advancing, military says
'Defining what our requirements are'
Last Updated: Wednesday, November 4, 2009 | 5:32 PM CT
CBC News
The Canadian Forces are still going ahead with plans to open a High Arctic training centre and deep-sea military port in Nunavut within the next five years.
Prime Minister Stephen Harper first promised both facilities — a training centre in Resolute Bay and a docking and refuelling port at the former Nanisivik mine site near Arctic Bay — in August 2007, but they still have not been built more than two years later.
Military officials say they hope to open the training centre around 2013 and the port by 2014.
"We are still defining what our requirements are for classroom space, bed space, kitchen; also, marshalling areas and training areas," Brig.-Gen. David Millar, commander of Canadian Forces northern operations, said of the Resolute Bay centre in an interview Tuesday .
Millar said a memorandum of understanding will soon be signed between the military and the federal Department of Natural Resources, which runs the Polar Continental Shelf program base for researchers in Resolute Bay, to use part of the program's facility and build onto it.
"That MOU we're hoping to be signed in December, which will then result in contracts," Millar said. "I expect that we'll be opening the centre in about 2013."
Once built, the training centre could accommodate about 120 soldiers, Millar said.
As for the port at Nanisivik, Millar said contamination at the mine site still needs to be cleaned up.
"The actual fuel tanks, the old fuel tanks, will have to be dismantled and new fuel tanks put in place, so [that's] a very, very long project," he said.
"We're also starting the development of the facilities that we'll need at Nanisivik itself, and the office that we expect to put in Arctic Bay as well."
Millar said the Canadian Forces naval sector is working with the community of Arctic Bay to define exact requirements for the port facility.
