Frozen in place: climate and housing in Nunavut

Alex Cook is only five years older than Nunavut, yet he can’t remember a time when the territory was not experiencing a housing crisis. 

An Inuk from Qamani'tuaq [Baker Lake] which means “where the river widens,” he was born in the community in 1995 and says he’s always known about what he calls the “new colonialism.” 

“I can't remember a time when our people were not living in poorly designed houses and that we weren’t living on top of each other – eight or 14 people in a house or people that sleep in shifts.” 

Inuit across their homelands have long experienced challenges with housing on multiple fronts. In Nunavut, an important aspect of this is the state of disrepair in existing housing across the territory. According to a 2022 report by federal housing advocate Marie-Josée Houle, it’s caused in large part because of inadequate construction, lack of resources for repair and maintenance, damage from the environment and heavy use from overcrowding.

Meanwhile, a shortage of 3,800 housing units has also existed in Nunavut for more than a decade due to the lack of new construction, according to the Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation (CMHC).

Other colonial policies for over 150 years have led to the forced removal, relocation, and dispossession of Indigenous Peoples from their traditional territories, creating a one-size-fits-all approach to housing. This has resulted in homes that are energy inefficient, overcrowded, culturally inappropriate, and ill designed for local climate and land conditions. 

Both the state of existing housing and the lack of new builds has created a severe housing shortage and rates of overcrowding unparalleled elsewhere in the country. Around 37 per cent of households across the territory are in need of major repairs, the government of Nunavut’s 2020 report “Angiraqattaaqtiaqtitsiniq: Helping find a good place to call home,” found. Data from Statistics Canada also found that the share of Inuit living in overcrowded housing increased from 2016-2021, with 40 per cent of Nunavut Inuit living in such conditions. 

Another 2023 report by the CMHC has found that 3.5 per cent of the population live in unaffordable housing, 32.2 per cent live in inadequate housing, and 53.1 per cent live in unsuitable housing. 

Colonial legacies     

Long-standing colonial policies across Canada have, over the years, destroyed traditional housing such as igloos, teepees, longhouses, and other styles of Indigenous architecture that were designed strategically for the land and environment in which they were built, as well as in response to the cultural needs of specific communities. 

Other colonial policies for over 150 years have led to the forced removal, relocation, and dispossession of Indigenous Peoples from their traditional territories, creating a one-size-fits-all approach to housing. This has resulted in homes that are energy inefficient, overcrowded, culturally inappropriate, and ill designed for local climate and land conditions. 

For Inuit, who have maintained a close relationship with siku [ice], nuna [land], qilak [sky], and uumajut [wildlife] for centuries, this legacy, alongside rapid change to the environment, is deeply affecting not just social and cultural identity and well-being but also housing. 

In Nunavut, the historic and ongoing loss of traditional architecture and the systemic deprivation of the Inuit and other Indigenous Peoples is exacerbated by the harshness and remoteness of the region. Challenging weather conditions mean that new construction takes place seasonally and with no roads into or out of the territory, all materials need to be shipped up or flown in. Rising inflation rates across the country, high fuel prices, and supply chain delays have also affected costs since the COVID-19 pandemic. 

For Cook, these costs were especially frustrating when he was trying to build his own home. After becoming senior management at Qulliq Energy Corporation (QEC), the territory’s sole power utility, Cook started looking into building his own three-bedroom housing unit in Qamani'tuaq in 2016. 

He reached out to contractors across Nunavut for materials, supplies, and help with construction but almost all of them came back with costs as high as $1.2 million for the basic housing unit — more than three times the cost of building such a unit in Toronto. 

Instead, the homes [Houle] was invited to were ones where “a good wind [would] collapse that entire house on the people that live there. Yet, because of the housing shortage, they had no other place to go.”

The moment reminded Cook of how lucky he was: as a child who had safe and adequate housing, Cook says he was able to access opportunities that most Inuit youth don’t have because of inconsistent, overcrowded, and unsafe housing. He graduated from Iqaluit’s local high school, obtained a business degree at St. Francis Xavier University in Nova Scotia, and returned to the territory to work with the QEC. 

Yet as an adult holding what he knew to be one of the highest paying jobs in Nunavut at the time, Cook says the lack of affordability for his own home bothered him deeply. 

“That I couldn't afford a home was a wake-up call that something needs to be done,” he says.

Meanwhile for Houle, being invited to witness and document housing conditions throughout Nunavut and Nunatsiavut in 2022 was an eye-opener. Alongside the sheer unaffordability, none of the houses had any of the characteristics necessary to be considered “adequate” – units were not accessible, habitable, culturally appropriate, close to schools or daycares, or supplied with safe and clean drinking water.

Instead, the homes she was invited to were ones where “a good wind [would] collapse that entire house on the people that live there. Yet because of the housing shortage, they had no other place to go.”  

“I’ve seen many examples of families of eight or 10 people living in a three-bedroom home that was previously condemned,” Houle adds. “They were put there on an emergency basis and yet, 10 years later, they're still there.” 

Now, Houle says that Nunavummiut seeking a safe and adequate place to live are also faced with another threat that is worsening the housing crisis: climate change. 

Understanding where to build 

When it comes to climate change, data from Environment and Climate Change Canada paints a searing picture of Nunavut: temperatures across the territory have increased by up to 2.7 degrees C between 1948 and 2016. This is compared to an increase of 1.7 degrees C in the rest of Canada during the same time period. The warming trend in Nunavut will likely continue, with the rising temperatures causing massive changes to ice conditions, permafrost, and precipitation. 

Permafrost thaw, in particular, is causing the foundations of Inuit houses in Nunatsiavut and Nunavut to shift, damaging their structural safety. 

An analysis by the Canadian Climate Institute of more than 200,000 commercial and residential buildings across northern Canada found that about 90,000 (45 per cent) are currently in permafrost zones.

In her 2022 observational report, Houle detailed a visit to a house in Rankin Inlet noting that the “walls of the house are cracking, and the floor is dropping. The residents also reported sewer smells."

The process was eye opening, she says, especially when visiting homes that were held together by materials like foam insulation because their foundations shifted when the permafrost they were built on thawed. 

One impact, according to Houle, was that the wiring throughout the homes was stretched and would short-circuit in appliances, meaning that families live without heating or water heaters while knowing full well that “it was just a matter of time before there was a house fire or that the house actually collapsed on the people that lived there.” 

Such effects mean that while the obvious response to the housing shortage in Nunavut may be to build more homes, climate change itself makes it increasingly costly and complex to build houses that can resist, recover, and adapt to its adverse effects or to natural disasters. 

However in Iqaluit, the largest city in Nunavut, director of planning and development Mathew Dodds says building housing that does both — alleviate the shortage and withstand the effects of climate change — is an opportunity not to “be the leader, but we have to be a role model.” 

As the local population grows, Dodds says the city is updating its climate change resiliency plan to include a better understanding of where new construction can take place in the city. 

As well, they are working with the Qikiqtani Inuit Association (QIA) on a new clean energy subdivision which would involve a microgrid and partnering with the QEC to integrate solar panels in the area. 

For Dodds, a significant challenge is looking at things long-term — building infrastructure that won’t just withstand permafrost thaw and other climate change effects today, but for years to come. It has been hard to envision this, he says, because few cities the size of Iqaluit exist this far north. As a result, very little is known about the performance and durability of non-Indigenous construction methods in such environments, with the only other cities to compare being in Greenland and Russia. Russian housing information, however, has been hard for Dodds to access and while Greenland is more accessible, Dodds says construction in its capital city Nuuk is done primarily on bedrock instead of permafrost, making it “difficult to look toward them for best practices on building foundations” in a way that would work for Iqaluit. 

According to Dodds, this is why the next step the city is taking to define where new housing should be built is conducting a comprehensive geological survey. 

“Right now we have a decent idea at the surface level what the bedrock conditions are around town. But we're looking at doing something that's more penetrative, that understands how deep the bedrock gets, how fractured it is, and where it is,” he says. 

“To me, that's climate change resilience in Iqaluit — it’s building foundations.” 

Ramping up renewable energy 

The City of Iqaluit’s partnership on clean energy with QIA and QEC is one attempt at a larger, territory-wide push for renewable energy projects in response to climate change. In the past eight years, Nunavut has also seen the shortlisting of five communities that would have the potential to generate electricity through wind power. The 100-kilowatt rooftop solar installation on the student housing building at the Nunavut Arctic College campus in Iqaluit is expected to save up to 62 per cent of energy use and reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 352 tonnes, and a 500-kilowatt solar panel with storage capacity has been installed at the new Kugluktuk power plant.

Other initiatives include the creation of two utility-scale solar and energy storage projects in the communities of Coral Harbour and Naujaat. In the community of Sanikiluaq, plans are underway to build a lone windmill that's expected to halve the hamlet’s reliance on diesel. 

Nunavut’s territorial government, too, is exploring many other renewable and alternative energy options including geothermal, tidal, and nuclear energy in the long term. But given the territory’s near total dependence on diesel at this time, it’s banking on solar and wind energy in particular as short- and medium-term options to supplement diesel use. 

Juanie Pudluk, associate deputy minister for the territory’s housing corporation, says this push for renewable energy, especially through energy-efficient housing that incorporates solar panels, is part of new construction taking place through the Igluliuqatigiingniq Nunavut 3000 strategy as well. 

A partnership between the territorial government, the Nunavut Housing Corporation and Nunavut Tunngavik Inc. announced in 2022, Igluliuqatigiingniq Nunavut 3000 is a plan to build 3,000 housing units across the territory by 2030. Estimated to cost $2.6 billion, the construction of 112 of these units across all 25 communities began in 2024. 

At the same time, Pudluk says there are concerns about the immediate effectiveness of incorporating renewable energy into designs for new housing. This is because Arctic conditions determine how much energy can be harnessed and for how long. 

“Inuit and really Indigenous people in general have — in this country, at least — always been energy conscious from the earliest days. Especially with us Inuit, it’s not like we can just go into the forest, cut down some trees and have a nice fire. We had to be very successful with energy in order to stay alive.”

“I've done some reading on solar panels and capacity here in the North because our highest load time or when we need the most energy [is when there’s] not a lot of sun. So during those winter months, we depend on diesel and it's hard to get away from that,” he says. 

“We need to take climate change into consideration when building our units. The land, energy, efficiency, sustainability — I think we're trying to put all those together.” 

Much like Iqaluit’s plan to understand where new housing can be built, Pudluk says the housing corporation’s next step is to use funding obtained from the CMHC for its Land for Homes initiative, which will look at each community’s risk factors that prevent the building of energy-efficient and climate resilient housing, especially when it comes to the capacity of the local power plants to which new housing may be connected. 

“It’s [looking at] what's limiting us from building homes in all these communities and I think part of it too is working with the power corporation to let them know how many units we're going to be building in that community,” he says.

“[The QEC has] a fixed capacity to deliver energy so if we're going to be going up close to their capacity, they're going to have to upgrade their power plant.” 

The individual, the community, and the collective 

Spurred by the lack of systemic support and on a quest to build infrastructure that benefits Nunavummiut today, Cook launched ArchTech, a 100 per cent Inuit-owned and operated firm focused on affordable, efficient, and resilient housing and infrastructure in Qamani'tuaq and beyond. 

With two energy-efficient and environmentally friendly construction projects underway in his own community, he is just one of many Inuit and Nunavummiut looking to make climate-resilient housing – that reuses materials like sea cans, incorporates renewable energy, and is built to withstand changing conditions including permafrost thaw – a reality in the territory. 

Cook sees himself as one of many Indigenous people who are tackling the construction of climate resilient housing in their own communities and on an individual level within Nunavut and beyond, with Qammaq – his idea for a residential construction project that will feature high-performance energy-efficient housing. As well, he is currently working on Iglu, a youth centre that will be constructed with energy-efficiency in mind.

Seeing the support and funding he has received for his ideas, Cook believes his work is proof that “Indigenous people in Canada are leading this charge and it’s something to be proud of.” 

Yet as an Inuk, he doesn’t necessarily see his work as entirely extraordinary. He believes being resourceful and efficient is part of Inuit culture and life in the territory. 

“Inuit and really Indigenous people in general have — in this country, at least — always been energy conscious from the earliest days. Especially with us Inuit, it’s not like we can just go into the forest, cut down some trees and have a nice fire. We had to be very successful with energy in order to stay alive.”

The focus now is scaling up in ways that meet the climate-related challenges facing Nunavut in a larger sense, particularly in a way that improves housing for Nunavummiut. 

“At the end of the day, that’s really a question about integration. Everyone's doing the best that they can do right now. But obviously, as with everything, there's room for improvement.” 

The next step, he says, is ensuring the change moves up the system: that all governmental and intergovernmental departments collaborate with greater effectiveness and share the responsibility for climate resilient housing. The housing corporation and the QEC are a big part of this, he says, as well as city and hamlet councils, regional Inuit associations, and private businesses such as his own that want to tap into renewable energy and affordable housing. 

Houle, who is both an advocate and a watchdog for housing across the country, agrees, noting that building adequate homes that can withstand the effects of climate change “really does boil down to political will,” especially at the federal level. 

“The price tag [of building housing in Nunavut] is shocking, but the cost of doing nothing is even more shocking,” she says. 

“Governments have legal responsibilities, and they need to prioritize them. And when we talk about the human right to housing, it is really about all available resources as soon as possible. That's really what it means.” 

For his part, Cook says he’s excited for how Qammaq and Iglu will contribute to the quality of life for present and future Qamani’tuaq residents, who he hopes will no longer have to sleep in shifts or live in crowded households or choose between food and heating their homes.