Iqaluit (May 09/05) - As sealift season approaches, companies involved with shipping everything from pop to stereos and snowmachines to Nunavut communities are calling for an end to marine service fees.

The federal fees support coast guard and icebreaker services. Any shipments from one community North of 60 to another is exempt, but all cargo that leaves from a southern port, as most sealift services do, wind up being dinged by the surcharge.

Rankin Inlet North MLA Tagak Curley led the charge against shipping fees earlier in March, when he put forward a motion in the legislative assembly calling for an end of the fees, which passed unanimously.

After Department of Fisheries and Oceans minister Geoff Regan's recent visit to Nunavut, shipping companies themselves are now chiming in.

"It's a hidden tax," said Archie Angnakak from Nunavut Eastern Arctic Shipping, which supplies sealift services for 10 Baffin communities.

Angnakak said when the fees were introduced in 1997, stakeholders weren't properly consulted.

The Kivalliq region and the communities of Iqaluit, Sanikiluaq, Iglulik and Hall Beach are supplied by Nunavut Sealink and Supply Inc. (NSSI), which is a partnership between Transport Desgagnes and Arctic Co-operatives Ltd. Last year the company transported more than 100,000 cubic metres of freight to Nunavut.

Kivalliq residents pay an extra .04 per cent on what they purchase because of marine shipping fees, said NNSI managing director Daniel Desgagnes.

"They go back to the consumers," he said of the service fees. "It's obviously a good thing to minimize taxes and fees."

In November 2004, the Arctic Marine Advisory Board, which represents Northern carriers, called on the federal government to make them exempt from the fee.

The protests fit into a larger backlash against fees. In mid-March Inuit Tapiriit Kanatami called on the federal government to drop the GST in Nunavut because everything costs more in the North and Inuit typically earn less money.

Angnakak himself likened the shipping fees to another GST.

"We don't need another one," he said.