Iqaluit mayor 'disappointed' by Ottawa's port pick

Iqaluit Mayor Elisapee Sheutiapik said she is glad the Nunavut hamlet of Pangnirtung is getting a commercial port as part of Tuesday's federal budget, but added she wishes the budget also had good news for her city.

Officials in Nunavut's capital have tried for years to position the city as the logical choice for a port, but it was overlooked twice in the past year by Prime Minister Stephen Harper.

"Believe you me, in the two times he's come through our great city, I've tried to have him meet the council [for] at least a meet-and-greet to start opening some hopes of open dialogue," Sheutiapik told CBC News on Wednesday.

"That has not happened, so I'm really disappointed."

In Pangnirtung, where Ottawa plans to spend $8 million over two years to build the commercial fishing harbour, Mayor Moses Qarpik said he was delighted with the news.

Speaking in Inuktitut, Qarpik said the new infrastructure will help boost employment and tourism in the community, as well as help hunters who used to have wait into the night for high tide.

In August 2007, Harper announced that the government will refurbish a deep-sea port at a former mining site in Nanisivik, near the community of Arctic Bay.

Sheutiapik has argued that Iqaluit was the better choice for the deep-sea port. Despite the setbacks, she said she isn't giving up: a recent goal-setting exercise done among city councillors revealed that getting a port is still council's top priority.

"Top of the list was a deep-sea port, so it's a matter of pulling together everyone and [saying], 'Okay, if we're still very serious and we want this, how can we work together to make it happen?'" she said.

The city's feasibility study on a port is now out of date and has to be done again, she added. In the meantime, she will continue lobbying for Harper's attention on the issue, she said.