Nunavut finance minister set to table budget for the 2023-2024 fiscal year

IQALUIT, Nunavut — Nunavut Finance Minister Lorne Kusugak is set to table the territory’s budget for the 2023-2024 fiscal year on Thursday.

This is to be the second budget the territorial government has released since the October 2021 election.  

The last budget, tabled by Kusugak in May 2022, proposed $2.58 billion in spending with $51.5 million, or nearly 25 per cent of the capital budget, going to the Nunavut Housing Corporation. That included $21 million for new public housing and $6 million for staff housing. 

The Nunavut government initially planned to build 1,000 new housing units over four years. In October 2022, it released a strategy with the aim of building 3,000 new housing units by 2030. 

Housing issues such as overcrowding and mould are a widespread issue across the territory. The 2021 census indicates that about a third of households in Nunavut were in core housing need — meaning residents live in unsuitable, inadequate or unaffordable dwellings — compared to a national average of 10 per cent. 

Other funding commitments in the territory’s last budget focused on the five priority areas in the Nunavut government’s mandate, which was to expand housing, improve health, more education funding and diversifying the economy. That included $19 million to continue construction on a long-term care elder facility in Rankin Inlet, $2.5 million to hire 25 new school counsellors, secretaries and custodians, and $2.1 million to hire 31 medical travel clerks.

The 2022-2023 budget projected the territory would end the fiscal year with a $40 million operating surplus. As of March 31, 2022, the territory’s total debt was $432 million, below the federally imposed borrowing limit of $750 million

This report by The Canadian Press was first published Feb. 23, 2023.

— By Emily Blake in Yellowknife

This story was produced with the financial assistance of the Meta and Canadian Press News Fellowship.

The Canadian Press