Canada’s north has an outsized presence on the list of infrastructure proposals referred to the federal major projects office so far, all while Ottawa looks to spend big on bolstering the country’s military presence in the Arctic.

The scale of the work ahead is “enormous,” Prime Minister Mark Carney said at a news conference in Yellowknife in March to announce more than $35 billion on forward operating locations and other military investments in the Northwest Territories, Nunavut and Yukon.

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The work on roads and ports, hydro dams and power lines, military buildings and airstrips is going to take a lot of people-power in a sparsely populated region where skilled labour is already in high demand. It’s doable, but experts and business leaders say it will take big-picture thinking, long-term planning and deep collaboration with local Indigenous communities to pull off.

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Jim Landon, president of ATCO Frontec and a former British army colonel, told the Arctic Energy Resource Symposium earlier this year that the scale of the investment that will be needed in the north “staggers” him. His company, a unit of Calgary-based conglomerate ATCO Ltd., provides workforce accommodation and other services in remote regions.

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The element that worries him most is the lack of people in the skilled trades.

“We find it hard recruiting in the north because a lot of the talented people, the kinds of people we’re looking for, are already in employment. And it is really tough to get people through the training programs that we run. It takes time,” he said.

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Fifteen proposals have been referred to the federal major projects office, set up by Carney’s government last year with the goal of speeding along approvals for projects deemed in Canada’s national interest. One-third are north of the 60th parallel — three in the Northwest Territories and two in Nunavut.

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In Nunavut, the Grays Bay Road and Port also aims to spur military and civilian infrastructure. It involves a 230-kilometre all-season road that, along with the security corridor in the N.W.T., would create the first overland connection from the southern highway network to an Arctic deepwater port. The Grays Bay proposal also envisions a mineral export terminal and an air strip. In Nunavut, a hydroelectric project near Iqaluit has also been referred to the major projects office.

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