Leaders in Churchill shrug off talk of possible competing Hudson Bay port
Bartley Kives | CBC News | Posted: August 22, 2023 10:00 AM | Last Updated: August 22, 2023
Provincial funding to study feasibility of second Manitoba seaport confusing: mayor
Community leaders in Churchill are shrugging off the Progressive Conservative government's interest in finding out whether some other location along the coast of Hudson Bay would serve Manitoba better in the coming decades as a port.
On Aug. 4 — the final day before the start of a pre-election blackout on government spending announcements — the PC government said Manitoba will contribute $6.7 million to help study the feasibility of building a new rail line or pipeline across the northern reaches of the province to service a new port on Hudson Bay, separate from the existing Port of Churchill.
That proposed corridor, known as NeeStaNan, could be used to ship bitumen, liquefied natural gas, potash and other commodities through the Arctic Ocean, the government said in a press release.
Manitoba Infrastructure Minister Doyle Piwniuk said it's not clear the Port of Churchill is the best place to ship goods into Hudson Bay "for the next 50 to 100 years" and suggested it's worth looking at another location.
The announcement is confusing, said Mike Spence, who serves as the mayor of Churchill as well as the chair of the board for the Arctic Gateway Group, a coalition of northern and Indigenous communities that effectively owns the Hudson Bay Railway and the Port of Churchill.
On Aug. 3, 2022, Manitoba pledged to contribute $73 million toward upgrades to the Hudson Bay Railway, along with $60 million worth of federal help to ensure the the railway and Port of Churchill succeed as an international shipping route.
One year and one day later, Piwniuk said Churchill could serve in the future as a regional as opposed to international port.
"We do have trains going through there. We have a lot of supplies that go up to the north to Churchill and that can still be a distribution centre," Piwniuk said in an interview on Aug. 4.
"This is an opportunity to look at other natural resources that can come to Hudson Bay and this feasibility study is going to be, 'Where is the best place to locate this possible port?'"
Port Nelson possibilities
A video on the NeeStaNan website places the new port at Port Nelson, on the north side of the Nelson River estuary. Port Nelson was the original intended terminus of the Hudson Bay Railway before that location was abandoned in 1918 due to heavy silting on the fast-flowing Nelson as well as labour challenges during the First World War.
The railway was eventually rerouted to Churchill, where the port opened in 1931. Spence said he wasn't pleased by the provincial interest in replacing it.
"Naturally it's disappointing to hear. We weren't happy about that statement," Spence said last week in an interview at Churchill's Seaport Hotel, a business he owns.
Arctic Gateway, he said, is making progress at the precise task the province wants to consider doing elsewhere.
"We're open for business and we'll succeed at it. I don't have time to worry about projects like Port Nelson. I mean, it didn't work in the beginning and it's going to be very difficult to work with that project in the future."
Emerging from tough years
Spence's optimism follows a series of difficult events in Churchill that began in 2016, when the former owner of the Port of Churchill, U.S. company OmniTrax, shuttered the facility and laid off its staff.
Two years later, flooding following a heavy storm washed out a section of the Hudson Bay Railway, effectively severing Churchill's land link with the rest of Manitoba.
The town then tried to refocus its economic development on ecotourism and scientific research, only to have those efforts derailed by the COVID-19 pandemic.
Brendan McEwan, an ecotourism company owner who serves as president of Churchill's chamber of commerce, said the town's economy has become more diverse after this spate of bad luck.
He points to new developments such as the opening of the Polar Bears International House interpretive centre in 2019, the University of Manitoba's nearly complete Churchill Marine Observatory and a new hotel under construction called the Blueberry Inn.
The port itself, McEwan said, is slated to service three ships this season: two supply vessels and one cruise ship. He said Churchill is eager to see far more traffic, even if that means Arctic Gateway has to make a massive investment into retrofitting the 92-year-old port.
"That's a lot less work than dredging Port Nelson," he quipped, poking fun at the NeeStaNan project.
The bitumen question
Yet just like NeeStaNan's proponents, McEwan is eager to see whether bitumen can be safely shipped through the Port of Churchill, adding all the science conducted out of Churchill will aid that effort.
"Increased shipping and industry and increased tourism have to go hand-in-hand with protection for this area," he said.
"Those are two things that might be hard to see together, but if there's a place that can do it, we're set up right now to do that."
The prospect of shipping fossil fuels along the Hudson Bay Railway and the Hudson Bay coast, however, continues to alarm environmental scientists.
"This is such a fragile ecosystem," said Ryan Brook, a University of Saskatchewan professor who is one of the world's leading experts on the ecology of the Hudson Bay lowlands.
"I've been critical of the slow responses of spills in southern Canadian Prairies. Up north, it's going to infinitely be harder and frankly I think almost impossible to really contain any kind of problems."
Brook said the immense tides on Hudson Bay and periodic intense storms make shipping hazardous, even when the bay is ice-free. The railway, meanwhile, was built over discontinuous permafrost and thus shifts as a result of seasonal freeze-thaw cycles, he said.
"As a society we have to make decisions and certainly especially the people of the north: Do we want to really focus on tourism or do we want to develop LNG systems? Do we want to have trains full of bitumen rolling across the tundra?" Brook asked.
"I think at some level we have to realize you can't have both. I think you're going to have to pick one."