Education, jobs and a road south: two candidates face off in Arviat South

Jason Gibbons is a first-time candidate in territorial elections. He wants to make the role of MLA accessible and approachable to constituents in Arviat South. (HANDOUT PHOTO)

Joe Savikataaq was elected as MLA of Arviat South and served as Minister of Community and Government Services under Premier Peter Taptuna’s government. (HANDOUT PHOTO)

Running in the 2017 territorial election was not a last-minute decision for Jason Gibbons.

The Arviat father and maintenance foreman said he was encouraged by his family and friends for months leading up to this year’s election campaign.

“I think I’m good at talking to people,” said the 48-year-old manager with the Arviat Housing Association, an organization he’s worked with for the last 25 years.

“I love my job. I deal with tenants almost every day.”

It’s the conversations and contact with community members which serve as his motivation to run for a seat in the Nunavut legislature.

It may be that both of Arviat’s previous MLAs served as ministers and didn’t have time to tend to local issues, Gibbons said. But he wants to be approachable and responsive to constituents—something he says has been missing in the Nunavut community of about 2,700 people.

Here are the top issues Gibbons plans to focus on if elected as MLA Oct. 30:

• Education:

“We have to improve attendance in our three schools,” Gibbons said. “And we have to include parents in the process: how can we work with students, and especially parents, to encourage them to go to school?”

Part of the answer is to ensure that curriculum and programming at Nunavut’s schools are more culturally relevant, he said;

• Language:

Arviat is a strong Inuktitut-speaking community, and it’s important to community members to keep it that way, Gibbons said. He pledges to ensure Nunavummiut have the support for continuing the use of Inuktitut in their day-to-day lives.

“That’s part of our education system, but it should start from your home or your family,” he said; and,

• Public housing:

“The annual budget we get from the Nunavut Housing Corp. is not enough,” Gibbons said. “The units are falling apart. If we’re not renovating those older units, we have mould, and that affects families.

Some new buildings being constructed already have mould issues, Gibbons noted.

There are currently about 470 occupied public housing units in Arviat, but an additional 150 residents are on a waiting list for new units.

“There’s a long waiting list and we have a very young population,” he said.

Gibbons is the only other candidate running against incumbent MLA Joe Savikataaq this election.

Savikataaq, a former wildlife officer and long-time hamlet councillor, was first elected to the Nunavut legislature for Arviat South in 2013. He went on to serve as minister of Community and Government Services.

“I’ve always let it be known that I’d run again,” he told Nunatsiaq News. “Four years isn’t really a long time when you consider government planning processes.”

Savikataaq said he’s had four years to prove his strong work ethic and “common sense” approach to politics.

“When there’s a problem, we gather the facts and use them to find a solution,” he offers as an example.

As an MLA, Savikataaq said he raised a number of regional and local issues that constituents brought to him, from wildlife quotas to regional transportation.

As a minister, he acknowledges that his role changed, forcing him to think territory-wide.

Savikataaq said he has and will continue to push for a link between the Kivalliq and Manitoba: a permanent road, hydroelectric line and a fibre optic network.

The Manitoba government hasn’t been very receptive to the idea so far, he said, so Nunavut needs a strong advocate to continue to lobby the province.

In the meantime, the Kivalliq region’s trade links with Quebec—where most of the sealifts destined for Nunavut depart—continue to strengthen, despite the region’s proximity to the Manitoba border.

“They don’t seem to realize if they had a road, those trade ties would be guaranteed,” Savikataaq said, estimating the value of that trade at about $300 million a year.

Being a politician in Nunavut can be daunting, Savikataaq admits; there are a lot of needs and inadequate funding to respond to them all.

“We just don’t have the money to tackle all of them, with 90 per cent of our funding coming from Ottawa,” he said.

“We have a huge infrastructure deficit but we just have to keep hammering away.”

Asked to name a regret from the last session of the legislative assembly, Savikataaq points to the death of Bill 37, an act to amend the Education Act.

“Regular MLAs kiboshed the process—they killed the bill without ever debating it,” he said.

Savikataaq expects the issue will be raised again in the next assembly, and hopes the discussion will be more inclusive of the territory’s different regions and needs.

“Here in Arviat, the media version of the bill highlighted the bilingual education piece,” he said. “But here, everyone speaks Inuktitut. It’s very different than Iqaluit, where Inuktitut is weaker.”

And it’s no coincidence that the majority of the opposition to the bill was centred there too, he said.

But even more pressing, Savikataaq said: Arviamiut want to see jobs.

“People feel fatigued by the discussion around education,” he said.

“There just aren’t enough jobs in Arviat. We’re a fast-growing community but there’s just not enough work for them when they come out of the education system.”

Early voting ahead of the Oct. 30 election started this week and runs through until Oct. 26. Click here to see voting details for each Nunavut community.