Joanasie hopes to hold onto South Baffin

South Baffin MLA David Joanasie hopes to represent his riding, which encompasses the communities of Cape Dorset and Kimmirut, for a second term. (PHOTO COURTESY DAVID JOANASIE)

David Joanasie is seeking a second term as MLA for South Baffin, representing the communities of Cape Dorset and Kimmirut.

“Four years go by very quickly. I just want to continue the work I started,” said the 34-year-old, who hails from Cape Dorset.

Both of his riding’s communities have pressing infrastructure priorities. For Kimmirut, it’s the replacement of the community’s crumbling, 40-year-old airport terminal and its accompanying runway.

By Joanasie’s count, he has brought up this matter in the legislature nearly 20 times during his term. He says this pressure helped bring Nunavut’s minister of transportation to the community to inspect the facility, and shortly afterward the territory commissioned a site study for a replacement airport and runway.

The territorial government is now attempting to secure federal funds for the project. “Beforehand, it was just an idea,” said Joanasie.

Cape Dorset, meanwhile, needs to replace its aging power plant, which was built in 1964 and is well past its expected life. A replacement, announced this summer, is expected to cost $28 million and be complete by 2020.

“It’s now under construction. But it took over four years to get to here,” said Joanasie.

One of the tougher parts of Joanasie’s past term involved dealing with the loss of Cape Dorset’s newly renovated Peter Pitseolak High School to arson in Sept. 2015.

“It does feel like the community lost a resident,” Joanasie said at the time. “Well, I guess Peter Pitseolak was a person so in a way, his spirit has burned down and is no longer there.”

Construction of a new school is now underway. The new building is expected to be ready for students by the start of the 2018-19 school year, at a cost of $34 million.

Joanasie faced the censure of his colleagues in Oct. 2014 for a drunk driving conviction he received the previous summer, while visiting Charlottetown, P.E.I.

Police had charged him for driving with a blood-alcohol level more than twice the legal limit. After pleading guilty, Joanasie received a fine and a year-long suspension of his driver’s licence.

After being reprimanded by his fellow MLAs, Joanasie offered a lengthy apology, in which he said “the blame lies entirely with me” and that he was relieved nobody was hurt and no damage done, “other than to my reputation.”

Reflecting on that event now, Joanasie said, “That was one of my low points over the past four years. I apologized sincerely to my colleagues and my constituents. I do still feel sorry for what I had done. I can’t erase it from my history. I have to live with it.”

Improving Nunavut’s education system remains a preoccupation for Joanasie. He’d like to see the territory make greater efforts to hire Inuit educators and to develop curriculum that helps convey Nunavut’s history.

Joanasie is a graduate of the Nunavut Sivuniksavut college program in Ottawa, which he credits as an eye-opening experience for understanding how Nunavut’s Inuit came to be where they are today. “We’re regaining that history and trying to become the self-reliant and strong people that we once were,” he said.

The next time Nunavut’s legislators take a run at amending the territory’s Education Act they will have to involve more people in the process, he said. The recent, failed attempt at reform only involved a special committee with five MLAs, when greater efforts were needed to involve all MLAs, and also draw Inuit organizations into the process, he said.

“We need to have everyone on board,” he said.

And creative solutions could help address Nunavut’s severe shortage of social housing. Joanasie wonders whether it’s worth borrowing an idea from the territory’s mining camps, which use quick-to-assemble, modular housing to shelter their workers. “Maybe this is worth duplicating,” he said.

Joanasie was the youngest MLA to be elected last time around. But if he’s re-elected, that will no longer be the case. Mila Adjukak Kamingoak, who won Kugluktuk’s seat in the legislature by acclamation, is 31.

Joanasie is being challenged by Michael Salomonie, most recently a reporter with CBC Nunavut. He declined to be interviewed by Nunatsiaq News.

His campaign’s Facebook page says he’d like to improve Cape Dorset’s public housing availability and the community’s access to health care and other government services.

For Kimmirut, Salomonie identifies the need to replace the community airport and the high cost of air travel. He also raises the question of whether the community would benefit from redrawn electoral boundaries.