How much does your Nunavut MLA get paid?

Despite repeated absences from orientation sessions, a leadership forum and legislative assembly sittings, outgoing Uqqummiut MLA Samuel Nuqingaq still collected salary and allowances totalling $48,232 for the first five months of his term in office.

Documents tabled at the legislative assembly this week show Nuqingaq received a basic salary of $38,654 between Oct. 28, 2013, the date of Nunavut’s last territorial election, and March 31, 2014. (See document embedded below.)

That’s roughly $2,500 less than his fellow MLAs, and likely due to a pay cut he suffered in the first month following his election.

The MLA went on to collect $9,578 in northern allowance, although his travel and living allowance claim was only $389 in that period, compared to allowances ranging between $4,000 and $10,000 among Nunavut’s other MLAs.

It’s unclear if Nuqingaq, expelled from the legislature last month by MLAs, who cited ongoing behavioural problems, faces more pay cuts during the last six months of his term as MLA.

All of the territory’s MLAs receive a basic annual salary, called an indemnity, of $97,355, documents show, increased from $94,518 last October. On top of that, they receive northern allowance payments and some receive a housing allowance.

Members from smaller, more remote communities usually get bigger northern allowance payments.

During that period, the assembly’s biggest earner was Government House leader and Netsilik MLA Jeannie Ugyuk, who took in a six-month salary and allowances totalling $83,767. Of that, $26,136 is a ministerial indemnity paid out to cabinet members (the speaker and deputy speaker of the assembly also receive this indemnity.)

After Ugyuk, Premier Peter Taptuna was the next biggest earner, with $81,569.

Other members’ salaries and allowances ranged between $50,000 and $75,000; 10 MLAs claimed housing allowances, while all claimed northern allowances.

During the report’s period, no members received any reimbursement for the costs of establishing or maintaining blind trusts.

The last MLA to do so was former South Baffin MLA Fred Schell, who lost his seat in the 2013 territorial election.

In a previous report detailing MLA salaries and allowances for the period of April to November 2013 — also tabled this week — Schell is shown to have been reimbursed $33,732 from his blind trust.

Schell had placed his Cape Dorset-based contracting firm Polar Supplies Ltd. in a blind trust in 2010.

But in 2012, Nunavut’s integrity commissioner found that Schell, when he still served as a regular MLA in 2009, and before he had put his business into a blind trust, put himself into a conflict of interest by sending a threatening email to certain GN employees.

Schell was later stripped of his ministerial portfolios under Eva Aariak’s government and was the subject of another integrity commissioner review.

In that same report covering the period from April to November 2013, former premier Eva Aariak was the legislature’s top earner, taking a salary and allowances totalling $121,088.

The lowest was former Pangnirtung MLA Hezekiah Oshutapik, who took in $65,742 over the same period.

Nunavut MLA Salaries 2014