MLAs must review cabinet

It’s summer. The fish are running, the harp seals and snow geese are headed for Baffin Island and the caribou are now fattening themselves on the greening tundra.

In Nunavut, tupiqs are popping up everywhere. Hunters patch their boats and mend their nets, smacking their lips at the prospect of fresh seal meat and maktaak. Their wives are eyeing the south-facing hillsides, calculating how many berries they’ll get this September. Freshly liberated from their suffocating classrooms, children play long into the night.

As winter’s rotting ice vanishes from Nunavut’s bays and inlets, few of us are willing to burden our minds with politics ­ except perhaps for a few foolish newspaper editors who have yet to grasp the meaning of life.

So it is with our deepest apologies that we turn to politics once again, at this most inappropriate time.

To the great relief, no doubt, of Nunavut’s long-suffering voters, the NWT legislative assembly shut down last month for the summer.

That means most of us now have our MLAs back with us in our communities, running about with nothing useful to do except to remind us about what, at this time of year, we would rather avoid.

So to give our MLAs something to occupy their minds this summer, we offer the following suggestion:

As soon as you get back to Yellowknife this fall, organize a thorough review of the territorial cabinet’s performance. And when you do it, be prepared, if necessary, to remove those ministers whose performance you deem to be inadequate. That includes any minister, up to and including the premier.

Here’s why we believe such a review is in the best interests of NWT voters:

Mid-term cabinet reviews in the NWT legislative assembly are now a tradition. Past territorial governments have subjected themselves to such reviews, and there’s no reason why this government shouldn’t. This fall, the current territorial government will have been in office for two years ­ the half-way point of its mandate.

The GNWT is now the subject of an investigation by the RCMP’s commercial crime squad, who, out of a desire to preserve evidence, has refused to say who and what it is investigating. By next fall, we may know more about this investigation ­ and it’s possible charges may have been laid by then. If not, MLAs must question Premier Don Morin and any other affected ministers about it and question them hard.

The deputy minister of finance, Eric Neilsen, appears to have left his job. The last senior bureaucrat to quietly pack up and leave was Roland Bailey, the former deputy minister of the executive. At the time, the GNWT didn’t admit this to the public until several months after Bailey had left, and said nothing believable about why he was suddenly gone. This time, MLAs should use a cabinet review to clarify Neilsen’s status.

Like most of their counterparts in previous territorial governments, most members of the current cabinet aren’t much interested in ethics. Premier Don Morin’s stonewalling on the issue of public access to information about secret, negotiated contracts is but one example.

The GNWT’s community wellness and community empowerment initiatives are now moving ahead, sort of, in the form of negotiations with numerous communities. But Health Minister Kelvin Ng and Municipal Affairs Minister Manitok Thompson should be grilled, and grilled hard, on why they’re applying these policies differently in the Keewatin and why the hamlets of Rankin Inlet, Arviat and Baker Lake can’t run their own dental therapy and other health programs on their own.

Nunavut’s perennial housing crisis is turning into a catastrophe for low income people who can’t afford to buy, build or lease private housing. To be fair, Housing Minister Goo Arlooktoo doesn’t have a lot of options available to him right now. But MLAs must question Arlooktoo and other ministers about why they’ve failed to develop a comprehensive housing policy for Nunavut.
The current territorial government is not without its successes. For example, their elimination of the deficit, albeit through measures that hurt Nunavut far more than the west, is a major accomplishment.

But this fall, MLAs must perform their duty to the public.