Waiting for a plan

An astute reader pointed out the irony that Friday’s Nunatsiaq News homepage had a news story about the rejection of the Nunavut Land Use Plan as well as a feature about an upcoming production of the play Waiting for Godot in Inuktitut.

Waiting for Godot is a famous play by Irish writer Samuel Beckett. Artist Tatanniq Idlout translated it into Inuktitut and started holding auditions this week for a production to hit the stage next spring in Ottawa.

In the play, two characters spend their days waiting for someone named Godot — a God-like figure — whose arrival, they believe, will save them from their suffering. But Godot never arrives.

That situation might sound familiar to those who have been waiting 16 years for the finalized Nunavut Land Use Plan, a document that would guide and direct resource use and development in the Nunavut Settlement Area.

Nunavummiut recently learned the federal government, the Government of Nunavut and Nunavut Tunngavik Inc. had rejected the latest draft of the land use plan.

It has been three years since those decision-makers received the draft land use plan, which was prepared and recommended by the Nunavut Planning Commission, the organization responsible for the development, implementation and monitoring of land use plans in the territory.

Adopting a land use plan was one of the requirements of the Nunavut Agreement in 1993.

The announcement that three organizations whose approval of the plan is needed had rejected it came in a news release on June 3 — a Friday afternoon at 5:10 p.m.

You don’t need to be a hardcore cynic to see that as a deliberate strategy to avoid scrutiny.

Unfortunately, it has become common for governments and other public organizations to mete out announcements late in the day — especially on Fridays and especially when it’s a contentious issue they’d rather not have to answer questions about.

That tactic is beneath governments that are supposed to serve the public, and beneath NTI, which exists to ensure promises made to Inuit under the Nunavut Agreement are kept. But that’s a separate issue.

Their joint statement said the plan “cannot be accepted at this time, as currently drafted.” They concluded “there remains further work to do” in conjunction with the commission.

But the signatories — Ottawa, the GN and NTI — didn’t elaborate on what more needed to be done or how long that might take. Nearly a week later, a Nunatsiaq News reporter was not able to get a representative of any of the three organizations to address those questions.

They did, however, document their concerns about the draft plan in the planning commission’s public registry. They cited the fear that the plan could strip regional Inuit organizations of the right to manage their own lands as a reason to turn it down.

So it’s encouraging that at least the reasons are spelled out for anyone who wants to wade through 196 pages of documentation (in four languages) on the public registry’s website. It’s all right there … hidden in plain sight.

What Nunavummiut deserve is a simple, straightforward explanation of what work still needs to be done and how long it will take.

In the meantime, Nunavut is waiting for a plan.