Finance minister accuses Nunavut MLA of using “alternate facts”

Finance Minister Keith Peterson delivers his budget speech in the Nunavut Legislative Assembly Feb. 22. Peterson fired back at Iqaluit-Sinaa MLA Paul Okalik in the legislature March 2, accusing the MLA of using “alternative facts” for suggesting consultation on the opening of a beer and wine store in Iqaluit has been inadequate. (FILE PHOTO)

Nunavut Finance Minister Keith Peterson borrowed a now common phrase from American politics in the legislature March 2 in a rebuttal aimed squarely at Iqaluit-Sinaa MLA Paul Okalik.

The remarks came a week after Okalik criticized the government for moving forward with a beer and wine store in Iqaluit without adequate consultation or local addictions treatment.

“There are clearly alternate facts and I would be remiss if I did not respond accordingly for the record,” Peterson told Nunavut’s legislature during a formal reply to Okalik’s statements, March 1.

“Let me be perfectly clear, the government is opening a beer and wine store,” he said, noting the six times Okalik used the term “liquor” to describe the store during his Feb. 22 statements.

“The beer and wine store would offer an alternative to buying hard alcohol from a bootlegger and should reduce binge drinking,” he said.

Peterson rebutted Okalik’s allegations that consultations prior to the beer and wine store’s planned debut in 2017 were inadequate, rifling through a chronology of talks and public events on the topic stretching back to 2010.

Peterson cited Nunavut’s Liquor Act Review Task Force, which spent 27 months compiling data and holding consultations across Nunavut, ultimately releasing a 195-page final report in 2012 suggesting a beer and wine store could be part of the government’s “harm reduction” plan.

Following the task force, the Government of Nunavut invited local Iqaluit special interest groups to speak and advise on the issue, while also hosting a public consultation session sanctioned by Iqaluit’s city council in October 2014.

More than 100 people attended that public meeting, with 3 of 32 speakers supporting the beer and wine store, according to statistics provided by Peterson.

Around the same time, an online survey, distributed by the GN, found that 95 per cent of the 310 polled also favoured opening the store.

And the results of a citywide plebiscite in 2015 proved a “clear majority” supported the beer and wine outlet, Peterson said, with a 40 per cent voter turnout and 78 per cent of voters favouring the store.

“There were good intentions to open a treatment type facility in Nunavut [in 2000] but it never materialized,” Peterson said, referring to a period when Okalik was premier of Nunavut.

While attending a 2002 conference in Montreal, Okalik, as premier, promised to open a limited detox centre in the territory, but that facility never materialized.

Iqaluit’s last addictions treatment facility closed in Apex in 1999 and while Peterson added it was unclear exactly why the facility closed, he suggested it was due in part to high operational costs.

Peterson continued by adding “a quick scan around the city of Iqaluit reveals that there are already many legal ways, and have been for years, for residents to purchase beer, wine or hard liquor.”

“There’s even a brewery, approved by the City of Iqaluit, under construction out by Sylvia Grinnell Park.”

Peterson acknowledged that the decision to open a beer and wine store “was not an easy one to make” but “it was the right decision to make at this moment in our history.”

“A beer and wine store is not going to solve all the well-documented issues that some people have with alcohol,” he said, but many believe it will help diminish bootlegging and the binge drinking of hard liquor.

Since Peterson delivered his response after the legislature’s question period ended, Okalik was unable to reply.

But the MLA responded indirectly by tabling an excerpt of a Nunavut’s legislative assembly Hansard from Sept. 13, 2013 shortly afterwards.

In that excerpt, Peterson is quoted saying that “consultations or discussions” for the beer and wine store would “be one-on-one with all of the affected members of the community.”

Peterson also confirmed, in a reply to then-Quttiktuq MLA Ron Elliot, that nearby communities would also be consulted.

Okalik, who admitted to suffering from alcohol addictions in the past, resigned from his cabinet positions in 2016 after it became clear the government was going ahead with opening the store.

Okalik told Nunatsiaq News shortly after his resignation that he’s not “opposed to a liquor store per se,” but that the community should have supports in place for addicts when the outlet opens.

The issue has simmered into a tit-for-tat feud between Okalik and Peterson that has spurred more than one exchange between the two politicians over the last year.

In his original response to Peterson’s budget address, which mentioned the beer and wine store, Feb. 22, Okalik argued that a treatment centre should be opened along with the store.

Other groups have also advocated for a new treatment centre ahead of the beer and wine store’s opening.

Baffin mayors—meeting in Iqaluit for a three-day forum last year—passed a resolution demanding that an addiction treatment and wellness centre be established prior to a beer and wine outlet opening in the territory.

In February, Nunavut Justice Paul Bychok called alcohol abuse in Nunavut a “crisis” that’s “tearing apart out society…tearing apart our families,” during the sentencing of Jamie Mikijuk.

Mikijuk is the man who incited a 41-hour armed standoff with the RCMP in Iqaluit’s Happy Valley neighborhood in 2015 while high on drugs and alcohol.