Nunavut hunters urge for reassessment as Baffinland eyes 2026 construction of Steensby rail

Baffinland Iron Mines is now looking at 2026 as a start date for its proposed expansion to an iron ore mine in Nunavut, but local hunters are calling for the project to be reassessed before it can go ahead.

The mining company wants to ship iron ore from its existing Mary River mine, by building a railway south to a proposed port at Steensby Inlet. 

It's a plan that was approved by the federal government in 2012. 

For years, it was put on the back burner with Baffinland favouring a railway to be built from the mine north to Milne Inlet — an option it said would be less costly. That was rejected by the federal government in 2022, causing Baffinland to switch back to the Steensby Inlet track.

But Judah Sarpinak, chair of Igloolik's hunters and trappers association, believes environmental conditions, and the climate, have changed a lot since the project was approved in 2012. 

Sarpinak wants a reassessment of the project before construction is allowed to begin. 

"The importance of substance hunting for Inuit has been going on ever since we can remember," Sarpinak said. 

Under federal law, a mining project in Nunavut must be reassessed if it hasn't begun within five years. 

But Eric Head, a spokesperson for Crown-Indigenous Relations and Northern Affairs Canada, said the port and rail project falls under the wider Mary River project — which has commenced.

The federal government can order a reconsideration of an approved project if "the circumstances relating to the project are significantly different from those anticipated at the time the certificate was issued," he said in a written response. 

Sarpinak worries his community could lose precious hunting grounds if the project is allowed to continue. 

The railroad would have to cross permafrost, which he said could affect caribou migrating from their winter feeding grounds to spring calving grounds. 

Between 2014 and 2015, there was a moratorium on the hunting of Baffin Island caribou, which Sarpinak believes has skewed the outdated environmental assessments Baffinland is relying on for its Steensby Project. 

In an email to CBC, Baffinland spokesperson Peter Akman said it's done numerous baseline studies on caribou since 2006, with an aerial survey as recent as March 2023.