16    
  Spring/Summer 2026
CLIMATE RESILIENCE 
THE ICE ROAD HOME
Geographic housing inequities and the impact 
of climate crises on northern infrastructure
F
or more than 50 remote 
communities across the 
country, winter roads are 
lifelines. Without all-season 
access roads, ice roads are the only way 
to move crucial supplies for survival and 
development, including heavy building 
materials, fuel and bulk supplies. In 
Kashechewan First Nation in northern 
Ontario, the winter road used to open in 
December and stay open through April, 
allowing a period of four months to move 
what a southern town can order on a 
Tuesday and receive by Friday. But that 
window is shrinking every year, sometimes 
down to as little as six weeks or less. 
Nobody sees the change more than the 
people in community. Rachel Wesley, 
economic development officer for Cat 
Lake First Nation, manages the construc-
tion and maintenance of winter roads in 
the area – specifically, the 167-kilometre 
stretch between Cat Lake and Sioux 
Lookout – and takes regular account of 
the state of the roads. The winter access 
road, which was built by her father in 
1995 according to the Feb. 5 episode of 
CBC’s Now or Never podcast, requires 
annual building and maintenance of five 
snow bridges. 
“We bring a lot of our housing materials 
through the winter road,” Wesley shared 
with CBC. “We have a small time frame to 
do this. It becomes increasingly shorter 
with the warmer temperatures.”
When the ice doesn’t freeze solid enough 
for safe passage, the trucks don’t run, and 
when the trucks don’t run, homes do not 
get built. For Indigenous women across 
northern Ontario, the shrinking winter 
window is the reason that three genera-
tions may share a two-bedroom house, or 
why a mother cannot isolate a sick child. It 
is why, for too many women, home turns 
into a place of sustained, grinding stress 
instead of a place of safety.
“I actually bought a snow-maker,” 
Wesley continues, asserting the need for 
creative solutions.
A 2024 report from the Canadian Climate 
Institute, prepared by Shared Value 
Solutions, quantifies the trap. Through 
surveys and interviews with Indigenous 
housing officials across the country, the 
report found that First Nations face a 
cascading series of obstacles: geographical 
constraints of reserve lands, flooding, 
wildfire, extreme heat and melting perma-
frost. One interview participant described 
how the original placement of reserves 
under the Indian Act left communities 
vulnerable from the start. “You’ve got 
reserve land which is usually put in 
remote, and I’ll say subpar land – where 
only fir trees grow, not oaks and things 
like that,” the participant said. “Once a 
fire catches, it intensifies quickly, and it’s 
a huge risk.”
The National Indigenous Collaborative 
Housing Inc. (NICHI) is a national, 
Indigenous-led organization working 
to close this gap. According to NICHI, 
shortened winter road seasons have 
dramatically reduced the timeframe for 
transporting bulk building materials. 
What were once predictable delivery 
periods have become condensed, high-
risk shipping windows. Communities are 
forced into “panic purchasing” with little 
margin for delay. When key materials do 
not arrive, entire construction seasons are 
lost and the housing backlog grows.
Simultaneously, warming temperatures 
are destabilizing muskeg and permafrost. 
This requires fundamental adaptations 
to building design and foundations 
– adaptations that increase costs and 
require specialized expertise that is often 
unavailable in the far north. One housing 
official told researchers for the Canadian 
Climate Institute: “We are in continuous 
permafrost, and the ice roads are closing 
earlier than normal and often have weight 
restrictions on them, which means that no 
real goods can be transported. The cost 
of the building supplies goes up because 
most of them would have to then go up 
along the barge, but the water level is so 
low, so the other way is to fly. You do it or 
you don’t build it.”
The result is a chronic housing shortage 
that leads directly to overcrowding, and 
that backlog lands hardest on women. 
Danielle Cognigni, director of business 
operations at NICHI, puts it simply: 
“Overcrowding makes it harder for women 
to protect children, care for Elders, 
manage illness and ensure safety.”
Overcrowded homes are not a distant 
figure on a spreadsheet. They are a 
daily reality that compounds physical, 
emotional and social burdens. Women 
are often primary caregivers, and limited 
space makes it nearly impossible to 
manage respiratory infections or skin 
conditions when isolation is out of the 
question. “Especially when families are 
dealing with violence, mental health 
challenges or substance use in the home,” 
Cognigni adds.
The Canadian Climate Institute report 
shows how housing quality compounds 
the crisis. According to Statistics Canada 
data cited in the report, 44.2 per cent of 
First Nations homes on reserve require 
major repairs to fix issues like defective 
plumbing, faulty wiring or structural 
issues with walls, floors or ceilings. For 
non-Indigenous households, that figure 
is just six per cent. “The current state 
of infrastructure in some First Nation 
By Bryan Hansen

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