Nunavut candidates talk business and the economy at Iqaluit forum

Conservative incumbent MP for Nunavut Leona Aglukkaq joined Liberal hopeful Hunter Tootoo, middle, and the NDP’s Jack Anawak for a candidates forum Sept. 24 in Iqaluit organized by the Baffin Regional Chamber of Commerce. (PHOTO BY THOMAS ROHNER)

In the longest federal election campaign Canada has seen in nearly 150 years, candidates are bound to repeat themselves and voters are bound to grow bored.

But both candidates and the public turned in a good showing in Iqaluit Sept. 23, when the three top candidates hoping to become Nunavut’s next MP in the Oct. 19 vote fielded questions submitted by the territory’s business community.

The question-and-answer session, hosted by the Baffin Regional Chamber of Commerce as part of the annual Nunavut Trade Show at the Arctic Winter Games complex, attracted an audience of more than 70 people, who came to see incumbent MP Leona Aglukkaq, Liberal party hopeful Hunter Tootoo and the New Democratic Party’s candidate Jack Anawak.

The Green Party of Canada is also running a candidate in this election — Spencer Rocchi — but he currently lives in Alberta, where he works as a teacher.

It wasn’t a “debate” because candidates weren’t allowed to rebut what they said about each other.

Instead, members of the BRCC board of directors selected seven questions from about a dozen submitted online by the public, an event organizer said.

Of course the candidates still took plenty of shots at each other’s platforms and the performance of their respective political parties over the past few years, while sticking to key phrases their campaign managers likely told them to repeat.

For Aglukkaq, the key phrase was, “now is not the time,” which she used to start about a dozen sentences over the hour-and-a-half event.

For Tootoo, who threw the most punches — particularly against the Conservative Party and Prime Minister Stephen Harper — the key words were, “long-term stable funding.”

Tootoo even used humour to land a point when, looking at the other candidates, he cited an old television commercial that said, “I don’t see a difference. Do you see a difference?”

And for Anawak, it was all about “thinking outside the box.”

Anawak performed with more spontaneity and emotion than the other two candidates, often speaking without notes while looking directly at the audience, switching back and forth between Inuktitut and English.

But it was mostly a non-Inuit audience who attended the Q&A session, many of them wearing tell-tale lanyards around their necks, identifying themselves as registered trade show participants.

Jen Hayward, chairperson of the BRCC, said the session was held as a topical way of engaging the nearly 400 registered participants in this year’s tradeshow.

“I was impressed with how well-prepared the candidates were, and how they stuck closely to the business theme,” she told Nunatsiaq News after the event, adding the candidates did not receive the questions ahead of time.

Organizers opened the trade show floor to the public Sept. 24, but, compared to last year, the floor seemed empty, which Hayward struggled to explain.

It was particularly puzzling, she said, because the 92 booths and 30 sponsors at the trade show this year are comparable to numbers from last year.

Starting next week, Nunatsiaq News will begin publishing daily profiles of candidates running for the Nunavut riding and the the riding that includes Nunavik, Abitibi-Baie-James-Nunavik-Eeyou.

Look for those profiles, in alphabetical order, beginning Sept. 28.