Devolution in Nunavut is set to take effect in one year’s time, and although there’s still a lot to do before the deadline, Premier John Main says he’s confident the territory is on track.
The territory signed the devolution agreement with the government of Canada and Nunavut Tunngavik Incorporated in 2024, which outlined how the feds would transfer control of Nunavut’s land and resources to the territorial government.
The agreement included a three-year transition period, with a transfer date set for April 1, 2027. That’s when the Nunavut Act, a federal law, will be amended or repealed and various legislative changes will come into effect.
“It’s going to be a very busy, very active next year for us. But we’re very excited for the challenges ahead,” Main said.
The federal government has gradually transferred responsibility for things like health, education, social services, housing and airports to the three territories since the 1960s. Devolving the responsibility for land and resources in Nunavut, currently held by the federal Department of Crown-Indigenous Relations and Northern Affairs Canada, was the next step.
“When our institutions of public governments such as Nunavut Impact Review Board makes a decision, it always has to go to Ottawa first before a final decision comes up. With this change … that decision is going to be made in Nunavut, not Ottawa,” said Paul Quassa, a former Nunavut premier and land claims negotiator.
But there are many big changes to be worked out before the transfer date. Some federal jobs will be transferred to the Nunavut government, a new department responsible for land and resources will be established, and Ottawa still needs to remediate contaminated sites on federal land before they’re handed over to the territorial government.
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Perhaps the greatest test for the territory is the transfer of human resources.
Approximately 100 federal jobs will be brought over to the Nunavut government, according to the Department of Executive and Intergovernmental Affairs. That hasn’t happened yet, though the department says all affected employees will get a job offer by October 2026.
The devolution agreement recognizes Article 23 of the Nunavut Agreement, which states the number of Inuit working in Nunavut’s public service should be representative of the entire population – that’s roughly 85 per cent.
Nunavut’s Department of Human Resources said as of December 2025, 52 per cent of the territorial government’s workforce are Inuit. As for federal employees, Inuit made up 49 per cent of the workforce in 2023 across all federal departments and agencies within Nunavut, according to former northern affairs minister Dan Vandal.
Over the past few years, the Nunavut government, alongside the government of Canada and Nunavut Tunngavik Inc., have launched several programs like Inunnguqsaivik to try boost Inuit employment, and Main remains hopeful those initiatives will help them achieve their employment targets.
There’ll also be a new territorial department responsible for land and natural resources.
“We know already that there will be important links between the new department and existing ones. It all comes down to careful planning,” Main said.
With all these new jobs, Quassa wants to see some of the benefits spread across Nunavut’s communities – but he isn’t sure if that’ll happen.
“Right now, as it is, it is centralized … I don’t think that would change at all,” he said.
The N.W.T. officially took control of its public lands and resources in 2014, following the Yukon, which was the first territory to go through devolution in 2003.
Yukon Senator Pat Duncan was a MLA at the time, and she served as premier between 2000 and 2002. For her, the restructuring of resources proved to be one of the most challenging tasks.
“Ultimately, it was an election issue that, in part, cost me an election. It’s a difficult process changing the way that government is done, and in a small community, it’s challenging,” she said.
Devolution is necessary for Canada’s territories to become masters of their own land and resources, but it has its imperfections.
Inevitably, Duncan says there will be some drafting or translation errors when territories write new legislation, and good legislative drafters are hard to come by in the North.
She recalls a lot of back and forth with the Yukon’s oil and gas legislation, and still, there were amendments in the years that followed. That’s why she urges patience.
“It takes time to build the right house. It takes time to provide the right framework that’s going to work for all the parties,” she said.
Unlike the provinces, which keep 100 per cent of their resource revenues, the agreement states Nunavut may collect up to $9 million a year in royalties from future projects before Ottawa reduces the size of its transfer payments. The other option is for Nunavut to get 50 per cent of resource revenues up to a certain amount.
In 2026-27, the government of Nunavut will receive $2.4 billion from Ottawa through major transfers.
However, Main doesn’t believe Nunavut will see royalties immediately come April 1, 2027. He says all current mining projects in the territory are on Inuit-owned land, meaning the royalties are going to the landowners – the Inuit and land claims organizations.
“It’s a potential source of revenue in the future, but immediately our expectations are very low,” he said.
Ottawa relinquishing control of Nunavut’s land and resources, however, doesn’t affect a 2016 moratorium on oil and gas drilling in Arctic waters.
At the time, former premier Peter Taptuna said the ban could cripple Nunavut’s future financial independence, and Main says that decision doesn’t sit well with him personally.
Main takes issue with the lack of consultation done at the outset. But he sees devolution as an opportunity to start a conversation.
“Once devolution does happen, April 1, 2027, we would then have the ability to approach our federal partners to start negotiating towards an agreement on offshore oil and gas,” he said.
While the ban on offshore oil and gas licensing in the Arctic is indefinite, the federal government has committed to reviewing that decision every five years. In 2023, Ottawa signed a deal that’s meant to give Northerners more of a say in any development of petroleum resources in the western Arctic.
The federal government must remediate all contaminated federal lands before transferring them to Nunavut. That means cleaning up old abandoned mines, construction sites, military bases, and contaminants that can seep into the ground and water.
A spokesperson for Crown-Indigenous Relations and Northern Affairs Canada says it will not be transferring existing contaminated sites to the Nunavut government on April 1, 2027, but the department did not state how many outstanding sites are still yet to be remediated.
According to the devolution agreement, there are roughly 150 sites in the territory that need remediation. In 2024, Nunavut’s Environmental Liabilities project manager, James Elliott, said it was unlikely all of those sites would be remediated prior to devolution.
