Apex candidate Duncan Cunningham stresses infrastructure, sustainable development
Duncan Cunningham rooted in 25 years’ work with Baffin orgs

Iqaluit-Niaqunnguu candidate Duncan Cunningham has worked for a variety of Baffin organizations and government agencies over the past 25 years. (HANDOUT PHOTO)
Duncan Cunningham hopes to bring more than 25 years’ experience with Baffin-based government and Inuit organizations to Nunavut’s next legislative assembly.
The long-time Apex resident is in the running for the Iqaluit-Niaqunnguu constituency. Its six candidates make it Iqaluit’s — and Nunavut’s — busiest race in the Oct. 28 territorial election.
“I think that bodes well for people,” said Cunningham, who kicked off the first week of the campaign with door-to-door visits to residents of Apex.
“From the public’s point of view it’s given them a lot of choice, and I think that’s healthy.”
For his part, “given the different and varied types of experiences I’ve had, I know I can provide good representation in Iqaluit,” he told Nunatsiaq News Oct. 2.
Most recently, Cunningham, 57, worked in the service of government with Innirvik Support Services, a private company contracted to produce the minutes of legislative assembly sessions.
His five years with that firm ended with his presidency in 2011, he said.
He has returned to a private business in Apex, where he works as practice manager at NunaVet animal hospital, a veterinary clinic run by his daughter Leia.
Cunningham, who has lived in Nunavut and the Northwest Territories since 1979, raised his family of three children with wife Rhoda of Pond Inlet in both the eastern and western Arctic.
He left his early career as a schoolteacher in physical education to take on work for the Baffin Region Inuit Association in Iqaluit, where he served as executive director when the Nunavut Land Claims Agreement was signed in 1993. The organization then became the Qikiqtani Inuit Association.
“That was a pretty exciting time,” Cunningham said.
The land claims agreement was signed in his seventh year with BRIA, and with that accomplishment “it was time to move on,” he said.
After a few years in private business, Cunningham would return to administrative work in 2000, when he took on the position of regional director for the Government of Nunavut’s old Department of Sustainable Development in Pond Inlet, his wife’s home community.
When the department was restructured, he and his family returned to Iqaluit in 2007, where Cunningham took on several appointments with the Nunavut Impact Review Board while working with Innirvik Support Services.
“I used to screen development all throughout Nunavut,” he said of his work for the NIRB.
This, and his earlier work in sustainable development, convinced him of the need to balance citizens’ concerns on environment and economic issues.
“My background has been in community development,” Cunningham said. “That included business development, economic development, fisheries and sealing, wildlife and environment. I adhere to the principles of sustainable development, and I believe this is important across Nunavut.
“I’m looking at economic development that’s not unfettered. Responsible development has got to be the key for the territory.”
Locally, his immediate priority for Iqaluit-Niaqunnguu is the need to improve the Road to Apex.
“It’s a very unsafe place. It’s not lit, huge holes are in it, and now with the new cemetery going in here, there’s going to be more and more traffic,” which causes a hazard for school buses and heavy trucks headed to the outlying community, he said.
“I know it’s a city issue, however, as a capital city, I think we should be looking at territorial and federal initiatives or programs to help us fix that road.”
This is just a starting point for infrastructure improvements needed in Iqaluit, whose status as a capital should make it a priority “through federal and territorial funding,” he said.
Cunningham said the territory must also increase its minimum wage. The current $11 per hour is close to levels in the rest of Canada.
“Given the cost of living here, I just don’t believe $11 is really a fair wage,” he said. “This is part of economic development in a sense, but it’s really a fairness issue.”
Even though this is Cunningham’s first run in a territorial election, it’s not the first time he has run in a crowded field. He ran as Nunavut’s first federal Conservative candidate in 2004, which the Liberal incumbent won by a wide margin.
“I know I am running against some competent individuals that are well known,” he said of the territorial race for the new Iqaluit seat. “I just look forward to the campaign.”
Also running in Iqaluit-Niaqunnguu are Jack Anawak, Pat Angnakak, Anne Crawford, Sytukie Joamie, and Methusalah Kunuk.
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