Northerners ‘tired of broken promises,’ Conservative critic says

The federal Conservative critic for northern affairs and Arctic sovereignty says the Liberal government has failed to address housing and food security issues in the North.

However, in an interview this week, Bob Zimmer, an MP from B.C., didn’t say how a Conservative government under Pierre Poilievre would tackle those issues.

Zimmer was in Iqaluit to attend the Nunavut Mining Symposium on Wednesday.

“The people in the North are tired of broken promises or no promises at all and we need to support the North, especially around Arctic sovereignty,” Zimmer said.

“We’re supposed to support our residents in northern Canada, and I think they’ve done a poor job over the last nine years.”

Zimmer said that during his visits to Nunavut, the housing crisis is always something he is concerned about.

He said the Government of Nunavut is tackling the issue “head on” through the Nunavut 3000 initiative, which aims to have 3,000 new housing units built by the end of the decade.

The federal government, though, has delivered “very little” to support the territory, Zimmer said.

When asked what a Conservative strategy for housing in the North would look like, he didn’t specify what his party’s plan would be — only that it would get homes built.

“We say we’re going to build the homes, we’re going to build the homes,” Zimmer said.

Zimmer added that Nunavut’s high food prices have gotten “worse” in the last few years.

The Nutrition North food subsidy is having a “small impact” on prices, he said, and it needs to be fixed.

“We haven’t quite come to a conclusion yet, but I’m still talking to a lot of folks about how do we fix it,” Zimmer said.

Nunavut NDP MP Lori Idlout has also been vocal about what she says are the program’s flaws.

Jeff Pelletier, Local Journalism Initiative Reporter, Nunatsiaq News