Nukik Corporation's Anne-Raphaëlle Audouin: Connecting Nunavut to the Continental Grid

In April 2025, the Premiers of Manitoba and Nunavut signed a joint declaration to create a strategic energy and economic corridor between the two jurisdictions. Manitoba repatriated expiring hydro export contracts to the US and carved out 50 megawatts specifically for the Kivalliq Hydro-Fibre Link. As Anne-Raphaëlle Audouin, CEO of Nukik Corporation, explains in this episode: until that moment, the project had a concept but no product to flow through the transmission line. That declaration changed everything.

In Part 2 of this two-episode conversation, Anne-Raphaëlle takes Mark Magnacca and Rob Brant inside the project itself - its full specification, its commercial architecture, and the one remaining obstacle between concept and construction.

The Kivalliq Hydro-Fibre Link is a 1,200-kilometre dual-use transmission and fibre optic asset running from Churchill in northern Manitoba to five of the Kivalliq region's seven communities.

Its anchor customer is Agnico Eagle Mines which Anne-Raphaelle describes as the largest Canadian gold miner and the second-largest gold miner in the world with two operating mines in the region for close to 20 years. Mining represents 75% of Nunavut's GDP. That anchor customer's long-term energy requirements are the bankable revenue that makes private capital participation viable.

In this second episode, Mark Magnacca, Rob Brant and Anne-Raphaëlle cover:

◦ Why the April 2025 joint declaration was the project's defining commercial turning point, triggering MISO certification, the transmission service request to Manitoba Hydro, and commercial agreements with Qulliq Energy Corporation.

◦ The capital structure: Canada Infrastructure Bank leading the financial workstream, senior debt market sounding currently under way, and why the federal backstop is the piece that has not yet moved.

◦ The chicken-and-egg financing dynamic and why the federal government is a key enabler.

◦ The Greenland benchmark: no engineering reason separates what Greenland has built from what Nunavut could achieve, the gap is political.

◦ The defence and Arctic sovereignty dimension, and what Canada's growing national defence budget means for projects of this kind.

Commercial close is targeted for 2026 or early 2027. The financial investment decision follows in 2028, with construction starting by the end of that year.