By Darren Campbell -- Build it and they might just come, and stay, in the North. Our infrastructure deficit is our economic albatross.

When I attended the Inuvik Petroleum Show last June one of the presentations that caught my attention was made by Barrie Robb of the Mackenzie Aboriginal Corporation – known as “MAC” up here. The Northwest Territories construction company presented its plans to look into building an all-weather road that would start at the community of Wrigley, where the Mackenzie Highway terminates, and wind 800 kilometres north to Tuktoyaktuk, which is nestled on the shores of the Beaufort Sea.

That there is no all weather road linking the southern NWT with the north might come as a bit of a shock to many Canadians. In the south, the ability to drive from one community to another – no matter how far away it might be or what might be in the way – is taken for granted. But in Canada’s Far North the lack of roads is just one of many constant reminders that, when it comes to infrastructure, we’re lagging far behind the rest of the country.

For Northerners our infrastructure deficit is either a blessing or a curse, depending on your point of view. Some of us revel in the isolation. Others find it annoying. For the North’s businesses, it’s the latter. Our isolation and meagre infrastructure makes it expensive to live up here. Fuel costs more, power costs more and so do goods. But the infrastructure deficit also hurts Northern businesses and the Northern economy. That’s because the things we have that the rest of the world really wants – resources like gold, diamonds, copper, oil and gas – are usually located in places where there are no roads, no power lines, no docking facilities – nothing at all, really.

And that means many mining and oil and gas projects that would automatically go into operation south of 60 are uneconomic here in the North, even at a time of high prices for commodities like oil and gold. When these mines and pipelines don’t get built, our economies lose out. So do our residents. They lose out on jobs, the ones they could have got at the mine or drill site or the ones they could have got procuring contracts to supply services – such as catering, trucking fuel or water.

So how can the North turn this around? End the infrastructure deficit of course. Build it and they (industry) might just come. Take the Mackenzie Aboriginal Corporation’s idea of a year-round, all-weather highway from Wrigley to Tuktoyaktuk. During his presentation, Robb pointed out that the road would improve the economics of resource development projects proposed in the NWT’s Dehcho, Sahtu and Beaufort Delta regions where the road would twist and turn through.

Why? For big companies with an eye on developing a large Northern deposit of copper or a large oil field, the road makes it easier to access the resource. It eliminates the need to fly or ship materials to a previously remote site, something that considerably drives up the cost of Northern resource and exploration projects. The accessibility a road could provide could also increase the time companies can explore on Northern lands – allowing companies to get more work done in a shorter period of time.

But if that’s the solution to the North’s territories reaching their economic potential, the sticking point is who is going to pay for it all? Certainly the public governments of the the Yukon, NWT, and Nunavut, with budgets hovering around $1-billion a year can’t do it alone. No, if we are ever going to see the North’s infrastructure deficit cut into, it’s going to take the federal government’s deep pockets to make a lot of these ports and roads happen.

The North needs the feds to consider building infrastructure up here like it did with the Trans-Canada Highway when construction of this road system we all take for granted now began in 1950 – as an exercise in nation-building. The good news is the time might be right finally for the North’s political and business leaders to push Ottawa on this issue and actually get some results. Stephen Harper’s Conservative Party stressed the importance of Canada asserting its sovereignty over the Arctic in the last Throne Speech. But to do that the federal government will need to put more money and resources into the region than it has been doing over the past two decades.

One way to assert that sovereignty is for big projects to happen in the North – projects that will keep the economies booming for years, which will bring more activity and more people north as they move here to make their fortunes. But in order to do that you need projects that create jobs. And in order for that to happen it’s clear infrastructure will have to be built. The Yukon, Northwest Territories and Nunavut can’t do it by themselves.

Ottawa – it’s your move.

Darren Campbell is the editor of Up Here Business. He’d love to drive from Wrigley to Tuk any time.