Nunavut Planning Commission names Hunter Tootoo as its next chair

Hunter Tootoo in 2011, when he became speaker of the Nunavut legislature. Tootoo, who now works for the Canadian North airline, will serve as the next chair of the Nunavut Planning Commission. (FILE PHOTO)

Hunter Tootoo, the former Nunavut politician, will serve as the next chair of the Nunavut Planning Commission, the NPC said Jan. 26 in a news release.

Tootoo becomes the first full-time NPC chairperson since 2013, when former chair Paul Quassa resigned to run for a seat in the Nunavut legislative assembly.

And he will take over from Percy Kabloona of Whale Cove, who has served as acting chair following Quassa’s departure.

“This is an important institution that has a wide mandate to protect and promote the existing and future wellbeing of residents and communities,” Tootoo said in the news release.

The NPC chair’s position is not a full-time job. Tootoo will keep his current day job, senior director of business and community relations for the Canadian North airline, after he takes on the duties of commission chair, the news release said.

This past August, the planning commission filed a lawsuit in the Federal Court of Canada against Aboriginal Affairs and Northern Development Canada, alleging broken promises and political interference on the part of AAND minister Bernard Valcourt and his officials.

The lawsuit flows from AAND’s apparent refusal to pay for a $1.7 million public hearing required to complete the approval of the NPC’s draft land use plan.

“The residents of Nunavut and the people who wish to do business in Nunavut are casualties in this dispute,” the NPC said at the time.

The federal court’s online records show that the NPC has, for now, stayed that court action pending the filing of an amended application for judicial review.

Meanwhile, the NPC’s huge land use plan for Nunavut appears no closer to getting final approval than it was this past summer.

The planning commission filed the draft land use plan, a massive blueprint for land use that covers Nunavut’s two million square kilometres, or about one-third the land mass of Canada, on June 20 and June 21, 2014.

The plan uses three simplified land use designations to map out land use in the territory: Protected Areas, Special Management Areas and Mixed Use.

To do that, they had to figure out where mining and other forms of industrial development should be banned, where it should be allowed under special conditions, and where development should proceed normally.

About 15 per cent of Nunavut is designated “Protected Area,” which includes about 80 per cent of the territory’s core caribou calving and post-calving areas — but not the Thelon and Kazan river areas.

Tootoo served as MLA for Iqaluit Centre between 1999 and 2013, and also served as minister of education, human resources, homelessness and minister responsible for the Nunavut Housing Corp. and the Qulliq Energy Corp.

Prior to his departure from territorial politics in 2013, Tootoo also served as speaker of the Nunavut legislature.