You cannot build the roof of a house before you pour the foundation. Yet, in the Canadian Arctic, policymakers are attempting a feat of structural impossibility.

Capital is being aggressively mobilized for the Inuit Nunangat University (INU), a prestige project slated to open in 2030 in Nunavut. To date, the project has secured approximately $156 million in commitments, including $52 million from Nunavut Tunngavik Incorporated (NTI) and $50 million from the federal government.

However, the foundational systems required to sustain this institution — public health, primary education and housing — are effectively being left to crumble. This is a “sequence failure,” the prioritization of a capstone academic institution over the biological survival and educational readiness of its intended beneficiaries.

The evidence suggests the Crown and regional Inuit corporations are building a prestige roof on a cracking foundation.

The foundational crisis: Biology and education

The viability of any university depends on the health and educational attainment of its feeder population. In Inuit Nunangat, both are in crisis.

As of 2024, the TB incidence rate in Inuit Nunangat was 246.4 per 100,000 residents, which is more than 600 times the rate of the Canadian-born non-Indigenous population. Transmission of this airborne disease is fueled by a housing crisis where 51.7 per cent of Inuit live in crowded conditions, compared to 8.5 per cent of the non-Indigenous population.

Despite a 2019 federal apology for mismanaging federal funding for TB elimination........

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