The Cree Development Corporation (CDC) is consulting with land users about a proposed railway through the territory that would be Cree owned and operated. With concerns about the Billy Diamond Highway’s deterioration, initial discussions have focused on safety.
“Cree will have the final say on what goes on with the railway,” said CDC president Clarke Shecapio. “It will reduce travel and transportation costs up north 30% to 50%. We’re targeting Cree workers for operations, capacity building 80% to 90% Crees. It will be a huge project maximizing Cree opportunities in construction, lowering the risks of accidents.”
With three new bulk mining operations authorized to open in the territory’s north, alleviating safety issues associated with truck traffic is urgent. When in full operation, the mines are expected to add 282 trucks to the highway each day, accounting for 75% of traffic.
The problem is exacerbated because of the heavy loads involved in moving bulk ore from separated rock, resulting in about 1.7 million tons annually from just these three mines. The highway’s foundation is inadequate to handle this quantity, which would inevitably lead to the deterioration found in areas inundated by forestry trucks.
“Roadbeds are tricky because there’s weight but also frequency, like springs on a suspension system,” explained CDC technical advisor Marc Dunn. “When you have a high frequency of trucks, the ability to bounce back goes down and sooner or later it starts to sink. That’s why we see all these waves in the southern part of the territory.”
The Billy Diamond Highway isn’t held to the same monitoring standards as Quebec’s numbered highways, and Dunn said fixing it would cost more than building a railway. Running parallel to the highway, never more than 1 km away, a railway could potentially take most heavy truck traffic off the road.
Dunn has studied this initiative’s feasibility since the beginning of the Grande Alliance, a controversial understanding signed with Quebec in 2020 to study sustainable infrastructure development. He believes resistance to the process stems from a mistaken impression that it will impose further development on the region.
“It’s not that it will encourage more mining,” Dunn emphasized. “It will bring down the costs of potential mining projects in the future. Lots of barriers, including the JBNQA, still apply. Let’s look at the infrastructure’s alignment and how we can modify it to better co-exist with your land use plans – that’s key to do at the design phase.”
Completed in March 2024, the Grande Alliance’s final report analyzed several initiatives, including a deep-water port in Whapmagoostui, but only the first phase of the railway is currently considered economically viable.
“CDC is looking at upgrading and paving the community access roads – with a railway,” Shecapio added. “We don’t have the final end point just yet. For the business case, we only focused on Matagami to Km 257. We’re exploring potentially to [Km] 381.”
After discussions with land users and experts, the railway’s suggested alignment was moved closer to the Billy Diamond Highway to avoid disturbing caribou. In some areas, it’s set further back to avoid camps, hunting spots, wetlands and protected areas.
Land users expressed interest in a passenger train. The Grande Alliance report proposes stations in Matagami, Waskaganish, Waswanipi and Chapais. Phase two would add Radisson, Wemindji and Eastmain, with Whapmagoostui following in phase three.
“The cost of a passenger train is pretty small compared to a bulk transport train,” said Dunn. “The only problem is once you get off the network in the region you get on the CN network to Montreal and it’s a long ride. But people do this with the bus now.”
In November 2023, the CDC invited Cree post-secondary students for an all-expenses-paid trip on the First Nations-owned Tshiuetin Railway from Schefferville to Emeril Junction to better understand the opportunities and challenges of train travel. These trains have significant automation and safety standards with a much narrower right of way than the highway.
“We had a good mix of youth and land users, who spent a lot of time just looking for tracks, wanting to see if wildlife was still around,” Dunn recalled. “They saw moose tracks, rabbit tracks – that was comforting for them.”
Railway transportation is charged by ton/kilometre, a rate that’s generally 30% to 50% cheaper than alternatives. While a Cree-owned railway would earn income from mining companies, which would still save substantially on truck transport, the Crees would also benefit from cheaper goods heading north.
According to CDC modelling, one train could carry the equivalent of 292 trucks, not only making roads safer but emitting far less pollution. Emerging hybrid models could deliver more economic and environmental savings.
While some of the Grande Alliance’s more ambitious projects aren’t presently considered feasible, the North’s growing geopolitical importance could change things rapidly. For now, the CDC is focused on community engagement and plans to release further updates.
“Our priorities are understanding their concerns and how we can work together in balancing this development with the Cree way of life,” said Shecapio. “Construction would roughly begin in 2030, and operations would begin in 2035. We’re doing things step by step, making sure we don’t disrupt land users’ traditional activities.”