IQALUIT - The prime minister announced Aug. 18 in Iqaluit that the new Northern Economic Development Agency will be located in Nunavut's capital city.

Harper said his senior officials had given him "a million reasons" why the headquarters for the agency now dubbed CanNor should not be in Iqaluit.

"My reaction, the more I thought about this, was the whole idea of this agency is it's supposed to be an economic development agency," Harper said. "So why don't we as the federal government face that directly by putting the agency where the challenges are the greatest and overcoming them ourselves?"

Indian and Northern Affairs Canada was the lead agency in consulting with people to decide the location, but Harper said he had the final say.

"I think that's safe that in the end the decision was mine," Harper said.

INAC Minister Strahl said about 30 jobs would be created in Iqaluit to staff the CanNor headquarters.

"The hope is of course as always that a good portion of people will be Inuit, but more importantly they'll be Northerners," Strahl said. "I can't speak to an exact percentage but most importantly they do need to be from the North and be willing to live in the North, and in this case Iqaluit ... We want Northerners who understand Northern issues so when we pick up the phone we can get advice from them rather than give advice to them."

Strahl said the local offices in Whitehorse and Yellowknife would address the "enormous" differences between the three territories.

An Indian and Northern Affairs spokesperson said 48 positions have already been transferred from Ottawa to the three territorial capitals.

Until a permanent home is found, the agency's Iqaluit headquarters will be temporarily located in Inuksugait Plaza. No official opening date has been set.

It's not clear whether the federal government will arrange housing for the CanNor employees in Iqaluit; that information wasn't available from Indian and Northern Affairs. The tight housing market was one of the challenges Harper mentioned when he discussed the case against basing the headquarters in the city.