No one from Nunavut at Far North CRTC hearings in Whitehorse

A hearing meant to explore ways to improve internet and phone access in Canada's North took place North of 60 this week — but it didn't include anyone from the country's most northern territory. 

The hearing, held by the Canadian Radio-Television and Communications Commission, wrapped up in Whitehorse Friday after five days of testimony. 

No one from Nunavut was scheduled to speak at the hearing, which the CRTC labelled as, "Telecommunications in the Far North."

Madeleine Redfern, the chief operating officer of CanArctic Inuit Networks and a former Iqaluit mayor, said holding a hearing for the North in Whitehorse doesn't make sense for the rest of the territories. 

"It's good that the CRTC has decided to go North," Redfern said. 

"However, as everyone in Nunavut knows, the Yukon is as far away from Iqaluit as Ottawa to Vancouver."  

Redfern said she was contacted by the CRTC about the hearing. She declined, deciding it would be too expensive and time-consuming to attend. 

"I strongly recommended that they consider coming up to Nunavut," she said. 

Former CRTC chair Jean-Pierre Blais visited Nunavut back in 2016.

"The only way to really understand our connectivity issues is to experience them firsthand," Redfern said. "We know that Nunavut suffers the absolute worst level of telecommunications services in this country." 

The hearing in Whitehorse heard form Indigenous organizations, local governments and telecommunications providers from the North, including representatives from the N.W.T. government and the Native Women's Association of the NWT.

But nobody from Nunavut spoke.

For its part, the CRTC said they reached out to 50 Nunavut organizations about the hearing, through email, phone and mail.

"As a follow-up to this outreach, communications staff provided electronic and physical outreach packages that entities in Nunavut could post in common gathering spaces," Patricia Valladao, a CRTC spokesperson, said in an email. 

Valladao said all communication with communities in Nunavut was done in Inuktitut, Inuinnaqtun, French, and English.

She also said the CRTC is in "constant contact with Northern organizations."

Nunavut is the only province or territory without access to fibre-optic internet. 

Nunavut is also the only jurisdiction in Canada in which no household can access broadband speeds higher than 25 Mbps, according to a 2020 report on Nunavut's infrastructure gap by Nunavut Tunngavik Inc.

For small business owners like Kirt Ejesiak, having basic access to high-speed internet is critical. 

Ejesiak is the CEO of Arctic UAV, a drone imagery company in Iqaluit. 

"This is really just a basic right for us as Canadians," he said. 

Like Redfern, Ejesiak also called on the CRTC to come to Nunavut to hear directly from Nunavummiut about their experiences with phone and internet service. 

"It's only fair for us that they come to us to hear our point of view," he said. 

"We need fibre in every community. We need to ensure that there's room to grow so that we have opportunities that most other folks in the connected North have," he said. 

"We're just asking for basic services," he said.