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KRG asks Ottawa to put up funds for local Internet

Federal government forced to choose between funding KRG or FCNQ proposal

JANE GEORGE

KUUJJUAQ — The Kativik Regional Government is asking Ottawa for $1,999,858, so it can include Nunavik communities in a high-speed satellite telecommunications network.

The KRG wants the federal government to match a contribution that Quebec has already promised to get the wireless network up and running.

At a KRG council meeting in June, councillors approved a resolution formally asking Ottawa for the money.

The KRG already has a satellite dish in Kuujjuaq that provides Internet access and video-conferencing on a trial basis.

In addition, Nunavik’s co-operative network, the Fédération des coopératives du Nouveau-Québec, is providing Internet access to interested cable television subscribers in Salluit and Puvirnituq.

The FCNQ also wants financial help from Ottawa to provide Internet service to other communities.

Daniel Ricard, director of Canada Economic Development programs for Northern Quebec, said the federal government plans to provide funding to the group with the most solid business plan.

"There are two proposals on the table that have been submitted to the federal government, one from the KRG and the other from the FCNQ, so that’s where it is," he said.

"Before there was a lot of talk, now it’s formal. We’re trying to look at ways that the two of them can merge and work together. But it has to make business sense."

Ricard said the situation was "very complicated."

"I wish we could solve this thing," he said. "Our aim has always been to have one regional project."

Ricard said some decision would be made by the end of the summer.

In April, the FCNQ and KRG met with government officials to try to agree on how to bring telecommunications to Nunavik.

"As the meeting progressed, it became clearly evident that the two systems were completely different in both technology and philosophy," Gordon Cobain, director of administration at the KRG, told regional councillors at their meeting last month.

Cobain said the KRG would like to be the backbone of a non-profit telecommunications network for Nunavik — and not the region’s Internet Service Provider.

It wants Nunavik’s cooperative network or some other private business to become the ISP for the region, but maintains this ISP should rely on the high-speed, wireless technology that’s being tested in Kuujjuaq.

Cobain said the KRG also has a chance to qualify for free satellite time worth up to $60,000 a month.

This access would come through an advisory group called K-NET, which wants to link up non-profit First Nations and Inuit groups.

Cobain said the KRG would sell access to this bandwidth at minimal cost to a private ISP company in Nunavik.

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