Roundup Video: Indigenous pact advances Arctic corridor plan

An Indigenous-led partnership seeks to move the Arctic Economic and Security Corridor from a long-running idea into a defined infrastructure project, pitched as both a critical-minerals enabler and a sovereignty play, Northwest Territories Deputy Premier Caroline Wawzonek said.

The corridor is to connect the territory’s all-season road network to an Arctic Ocean port via the Grays Bay Road and Port project in Nunavut, creating a link from global markets to the North. The push is gaining traction as Ottawa seeks to diversify supply chains and improve access to mineral-rich areas that are costly to reach and develop, Wawzonek said.

“In an ideal world, it would be for the federal government to give the signal that this is no longer an if, but a how,” Wawzonek told The Northern Miner’s Western Editor, Henry Lazenby, during a recent industry conference.

For miners, the payoff is year-round access, fewer stand-alone road builds and a better platform for power transmission to cut operating costs across the Slave Geological Province. The shutdown of Rio Tinto’s (ASX, LSE, NYSE: RIO) Diavik diamond mine next month, one of the territory’s three operating diamond mines, sharpens the project’s urgency.

Watch the full interview: