CBC News and Current Affairs – October 13, 2005

PETER MANSBRIDGE (HOST) :
- Project of a Lifetime: This northern community has much to gain if a huge pipeline is built here.

MERVIN GRUBEN (RESIDENT OF TUKTOYAKTUK) :
We'll get our oil and then we can look after ourselves.

PETER MANSBRIDE (HOST) :
But what about the downside?

JOHN DICKSON (INUVIK'S HOMELESS SHELTER RESIDENT) :
They move to somewhere else.

PETER MANSBRIDE (HOST) :
Sasa Petricic has a feature report. -

PETER MANSBRIDE (HOST) :
When we come back, we'll have this story...

MERVIN GRUBEN (RESIDENT OF TUKTOYAKTUK) :
There's lots of gas out there, lots of natural gas. There's lots of oil.

PETER MANSBRIDE (HOST) :
High hopes for a northern pipeline some are calling the project of a lifetime.

(Commercial break)

PETER MANSBRIDE (HOST) :
Some are calling it the project of a lifetime. Definitely sounds promising, and if the proposed Mackenzie Valley pipeline does go ahead in the Northwest Territories, it will bring with it a huge boom. So naturally some people are excited, but others are still skeptical, worried about the lasting effects that may hurt their communities more than they help. "The National's" video journalist Sasa Petricic went to Tuktoyaktuk to talk to residents about their hopes and concerns for the future.

SASA PETRICIC (REPORTER) :
If you're driving in to the Canadian Arctic, this is the end of the road. It doesn't go much further north. It doesn't even go this far once the ice melts. The last 200 kilometres are on top of the Mackenzie River and the frozen edge of the Arctic Ocean.

MERVIN GRUBEN (RESIDENT OF TUKTOYAKTUK) :
Copy, Dusty?

DUSTY :
Roger.

SASA PETRICIC (REPORTER) :
Mervin Gruben knows it well, this ice road linking Inuvik and his hometown of Tuktoyaktuk.

MERVIN GRUBEN (RESIDENT OF TUKTOYAKTUK) :
I think in a few years this is where it's going to be out here. There's lots of gas out here, lots of natural gas. There's lots of oil. It's just a matter of a few years I think, Tuk will be booming again.

SASA PETRICIC (REPORTER) :
Every winter, Gruben's family company builds the road and maintains it. Now it's gearing up for the project of a lifetime, one that's taken most of Gruben's lifetime to get going, the Mackenzie pipeline. What do you think the odds are of the pipeline coming?

MERVIN GRUBEN (RESIDENT OF TUKTOYAKTUK) :
Probably about 80.

SASA PETRICIC (REPORTER) :
80%?

MERVIN GRUBEN (RESIDENT OF TUKTOYAKTUK) :
80% to go.

SASA PETRICIC (REPORTER) :
With energy prices soaring, confidence has never been higher. The Grubens are betting millions on new equipment and facilities.

MERVIN GRUBEN (RESIDENT OF TUKTOYAKTUK) :
It's a gamble.

SASA PETRICIC (REPORTER) :
If you don't gamble, what happens then?

MERVIN GRUBEN (RESIDENT OF TUKTOYAKTUK) :
If it happens, then you lose out, right? You know, the construction and everything's only going to be two years' work. That's it.

SASA PETRICIC (REPORTER) :
Only two years of work but lots of it, and for big money. At least that's the feeling among many, including Taylor Bayne.

TAYLOR BAYNE (RESIDENT OF TUKTOYAKTUK) :
Just goes to show you it's never too late to start again.

SASA PETRICIC (REPORTER) :
He dropped out of high school several years ago. Now he's back.

TEACHER :
You need to multiply it by...

SASA PETRICIC (REPORTER) :
Like all those who fill classrooms here again, looking for a piece of the action, a realization of a dream. In Bayne's case...

TEACHER :
You and Taylor could work together.

SASA PETRICIC (REPORTER) :
The dream is to be an airplane mechanic earning much more than he does now as an occasional handyman.

TAYLOR BAYNE (RESIDENT OF TUKTOYAKTUK) :
You want it bad enough, you'll go for it.

SASA PETRICIC (REPORTER) :
How bad do you want it?

TAYLOR BAYNE (RESIDENT OF TUKTOYAKTUK) :
I want it bad.

SASA PETRICIC (REPORTER) :
Inspired really, though, by little more than a line on a map. It all begins back here hundreds of kilometres north of the Arctic Circle. The pipeline would be about that big around, and it would run through the tundra and the treeline that way. Going south. It promises to bring enough natural gas to supply all of North America's energy needs for years, and here it promises to bring prosperity. The signs of that promise are everywhere. Inuvik's main street has already been invaded, the town transformed by oil company trucks and crews. Equipment and supplies have piled up. People have poured in. Housing prices have gone through the roof. A trailer home goes for more than $160,000, a house for more than a quarter million dollars. No wonder this town with a population of only about 3,000 has a homeless shelter. And it's full. John Dickson's been here for about a year. He's on a waiting list for a low-cost apartment. It's not an easy thing to find any more.

JOHN DICKSON (INUVIK'S HOMELESS SHELTER RESIDENT) :
You are looking at maybe a year and a half ago, maybe between 800 and $1,000 a month for the same place. Now the same place is costing, like I said, 1,200 to $1,500.

SASA PETRICIC (REPORTER) :
An ad for one of these seems to mock the residents on the shelter's bulletin board. No one here makes enough to afford that, not even Dickson, who has a university degree, and who's had various jobs in Inuvik.

INUVIK'S HOMELESS SHELTER RESIDENT :
I don't know. I don't know how they do it.

JOHN DICKSON (INUVIK'S HOMELESS SHELTER RESIDENT) :
I know they don't.

SASA PETRICIC (REPORTER) :
He worries that profit has become the only priority here and not just for multinational companies.

JOHN DICKSON (INUVIK'S HOMELESS SHELTER RESIDENT) :
You see social problems and the like happening, and these people come in, government included, and, like I say, turn a blind eye to it because they're there for economic development and the almighty dollar. As soon as that research dries up, they move to somewhere else. So what's left at the end of the day for this community? You have a bunch of infrastructure put in for this boom, and what happens to it? Does Inuvik become a ghost town?

SASA PETRICIC (REPORTER) :
Recently the shelter itself lost all its public funding and almost closed. A last-minute reprieve saved it. Tucked behind Inuvik's landmark igloo church, it now survives day to day with no promises from governments or any other agency. In fact, promises have not meant much around here. Hopes have been raised and dashed. Huge exploration camps have been built, filled, and emptied several times. They sit largely unused today. And yet hope remains. Right next to the reindeer, this rig is probing the permafrost for another source of natural gas. Less than a tenth of the gas believed to be somewhere in this region has actually been found. Energy companies like Calgary-based Encana are looking for it.

ALLAN WONG (ENCANA) :
That would be the drilling floor.

SASA PETRICIC (REPORTER) :
Such is their optimism that any question of further delays seems unthinkable to the man in charge here, Allan Wong. What happens if there is no pipeline?

ALLAN WONG (ENCANA) :
I guess if there's no pipeline, the producers anyways will just have to sit on the reserves until the day a pipeline is built.

SASA PETRICIC (REPORTER) :
If and when it is built, Mervin Gruben predicts it will transform his community, Tuktoyaktuk.

MERVIN GRUBEN (RESIDENT OF TUKTOYAKTUK) :
All those kids playing hockey here.

SASA PETRICIC (REPORTER) :
Especially facilities to keep young people out of trouble. Right now there's little to do except play hockey in a beat-up arena...

HOCKEY INSTRUCTOR :
One, two, three, go!

SASA PETRICIC (REPORTER) :
With sponsorship money from oil companies long gone. There are few places to work without leaving town. And not much response for the call for investment from the outside.

MERVIN GRUBEN (RESIDENT OF TUKTOYAKTUK) :
I don't know. The only thing is if we get this pipeline going, then we'll get our royalties and then we can look after ourselves. We're not going to get nothing from the government. That's the way I look at it.

SASA PETRICIC (REPORTER) :
If and when the pipeline is built, Taylor Bayne vows he'll be able to take care of himself as well, first in line for the job he wants just as he aims to be first on the local snowmobile race circuit this season.

TAYLOR BAYNE (RESIDENT OF TUKTOYAKTUK) :
I like the speed and competition. Knowing that I can be up there with everybody else. Keeping up.

SASA PETRICIC (REPORTER) :
At this end of the Canadian road, that's the wish for many, the hope that the long-awaited pipeline may be more than a pipe dream. Sasa Petricic, CBC News, in Tuktoyaktuk.

Sasa Petricic - CBC News