Nunavut assembly re-convenes this week in Iqaluit

The winter sitting of Nunavut’s legislative assembly begins Feb. 21 and is expected to wrap up by March 8. (FILE PHOTO)

The Legislative Assembly of Nunavut’s winter session gets underway Feb. 21 in Iqaluit.

And the main agenda item for MLAs after their first day will be a review of the territorial budget.

The legislature meets Feb. 21 as part of its session to review the territorial budget. Finance Minister Keith Peterson will then give the budget address Feb. 22 at 1:35 p.m., following lunch-hour lock-ups for media and other groups.

Nunavummiut can expect an update on the territory’s suicide strategy in the budget, which is expected to announce an addictions treatment pilot program along with the renovation of an existing Iqaluit building into a mental health treatment centre.

As part of its suicide action plan, the government committed to develop a capital plan to build or buy facilities to be used for mental health work and a plan to hire and train more mental health workers by 2014.

That should address frustrations from many Nunavummiut who say there isn’t sufficient support for people who are depressed and suicidal. Thirty-three Nunavummiut died by suicide in 2011, the second-worst year in the territory’s history.

The 2012 winter sitting will be the first since Premier Eva Aariak shuffled her cabinet last November, following the resignation of long-time cabinet minister Tagak Curley, who now sits as a regular MLA.

During a cabinet retreat in Iqaluit last November, Aariak and her ministers went through the results of a structural review the Government of Nunavut had commissioned on ways to operate more efficiently.

One of the review’s proposals was to put health care and social services into two separate departments and ministerial porfolios – a suggestion that moved Curley to resign his position.

“The two services really have to interact,” Curley told Nunatsiaq News last December. “Don’t expect me to lead a department only to unravel it after all I’ve done.”

Curley said he had asked Aariak for a change in portfolio as early as August 2011, arguing that three years at the helm of health and social services is “rigorous” work.

Following the shuffle, Cambridge Bay MLA and former justice minister Keith Peterson took over responsibility for health and social services.

Peterson stays on as finance minister, but the justice portfolio went to Arviat MLA Dan Shewchuk.

Shewchuk, in turn, gave up the environment portfolio to Uqqummiut MLA James Arreak.

Aariak said last fall that it has yet to be determined if and when a leadership forum will be held to replace Curley as minister.

During the fall session held last October, MLAs passed eight bills, including Bill 22, an Act Respecting Constituencies of Nunavut, which approves new electoral boundaries for the territory.

Under the plan, produced earlier this year by the Nunavut Electoral Boundaries Commission, the number of members will rise from 19 to 22 in time for the next territorial election.

MLAs also passed Bill 15, the Appropriation Capital Act, which approved $94,499,000 for projects identified under the capital budget for 2012-2013.

The budget went to finance dozens of projects, from communications upgrades at the legislative assembly to major infrastructure projects. But the cash-strapped Government of Nunavut came up short on approving money for two much-anticipated projects: a heritage and performing arts centre for Iqaluit and a mine training centre for Cambridge Bay.

MLAs also voted last October to delete $500,000 budgeted for the design of a new recreation complex in Rankin Inlet from Nunavut’s proposed 2012-13 capital budget, a move that stalls the arena project.

MLAs turned against the plan when they discovered that the scope of Rankin Inlet’s project had gone from a basic arena to a multi-plex complex that would house a games arena along with a curling rink, convention area and an Olympic-sized swimming pool.

Lorne Kusugak, the Nunavut minister of Community and Government Services said last fall that a revised project brief for Rankin Inlet’s new hockey arena should be ready for review by the legislative assembly’s winter session.

The winter sitting may also be the venue to see the release of the Makimaniq action plan, the work of the three-day poverty summit held in Iqaluit last November.

Nunavummiut are also hoping to get a peek at the winning design of the GN’s license plate contest, which will replace the territory’s iconic polar bear plates.

The sitting is expected to complete its work by March 8.