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16th Jan 2019 – 1st Comment - Merlin - Igloolik - Inuktitut
About
Merlin the Econnomic Devolopment Officer asking about training, and joint ventures and what are the plans for the future environment.
1) He is saying training should already be happening in communities so that Inuit can work on the railway construction, as electricians, etc. Why are we not building capacity in the communities? Always playing catch-up.
Most of the money goes to joint-ventures, and not actually businesses. When a local company tries to get a contract with the company, the company answers that they’re not at the capacity they need it to be, that’s why they ask them to do a joint-venture with a company from outside. Once you do a joint-venture, you lose control: not employing local people anymore, employing people from outside, etc. all of the operating fees then go to whoever is operating the joint-venture, most of the time outside of the community. And then you end up giving away 50-60% of the profits. Capacity-building should be now.
2) Environmental risk: huge. Most of the ships that are going to come are huge, coming from outside, even outside of the country. They will come in empty and leave full. Balance: what is going to happen to that water? What is going to happen to the lakes around, where the trucks are passing through? What are the plans? Will the population be able to say something about this, will the population have access to the plans? Very little people actually come to these meetings, so once you engage the community is when you are going to have a response from the community.
