Continuing lack of building inspector has Iqaluit residents concerned

For all but a few months of the last five years there has been no building inspector employed by the City of Iqaluit, leaving some residents concerned about the quality of buildings in town.

"We don't have a building inspector, what that means essentially is that [developers] can build however poorly they want," said Jonathan Wright.

A long-time Iqaluit resident, Wright is planning on building his own home in Apex this summer. He said he will build it following the National Building Code of Canada guidelines because he and his family will be living in the house, but he worries about homes that are not built by the homeowner.

"I don't know if a house is going to fall down on someone, but that being said, if you don't have a building inspector, you never know," he said.

Brandon Alger is a contractor and has lived in Iqaluit for five years. He runs his own business and says his company does a lot of renovations.

"Whether there is a structural problem or an insulation problem or something like that, we are finding flaws in the construction," he said.

"Most of the homes we are doing renovations in are older homes which were built back when Iqaluit was booming and there was no governing body involved, so whoever was building that job basically called the shots."

Building bylaw in place, but no enforcement

Iqaluit enacted a building bylaw in 2005, and another in 2010, setting out the requirement for building permits and inspections at several stages of construction, but the city says it is not administering it.

"There is no oversight provided in Nunavut on a municipal level on the building code currently," said Iqaluit's director of planning and development Mélodie Simard.

"It's my understanding that there is no territorial legislation [requiring] the city to administer the building bylaw, so the city has discretion."

The city has hired three different building inspectors since 2010, but none lasted for more than a few months.

Simard said because her department has had a difficult time hiring and retaining a building inspector it has opted to not follow the bylaw.

"Even with our building bylaw my understanding is we have no liability whatsoever in terms of whether buildings are built to code or not. The liability at the end of the day is on the builders themselves, it's not on the city," she said.