Your choices: the five most-read stories on Nunatsiaq Online last week

Politics and political judgment attracted most of you to the Nunatsiaq Online website and the Nunatsiaq News Facebook page last week.

Here are the Nunatsiaq Online stories that you clicked, tapped or swiped most often, based on Google Analytics pageview data:

• the chair of the Nunavut Planning Commission says he is surprised and disappointed that Nunavut Premier Peter Taptuna didn’t come to him first with concerns about a recent decision regarding Baffinland Iron Mines Corp., rather than going straight to the federal minister. Hunter Tootoo said he learned June 1 that Taptuna had sent a letter May 8 to Bernard Valcourt, the minister of Aboriginal Affairs and Northern Development Canada. Taptuna told reporters later he didn’t bother to copy Tootoo on the letter, or go to the NPC, because he didn’t want to appear to be interfering with the process.

• while Inuit employment in the Nunavut public service has improved slightly overall since 1999 — from 44 per cent of those employed in government to 50 per cent in 2014 — in some departments, Inuit job holders have declined. According to statistics on employment filed at regular intervals by the Government of Nunavut, Inuit employment has dropped within the departments of Culture and Heritage, Community and Government Services and the Office of the Legislative Assembly.

• local and regional organizations have begun working towards a community wellness plan to help the people of Inukjuak cope with a series of traumatic events and deaths. The Hudson Bay community of 1,600 is still struggling to find answers to explain a number of recent suicides and violent altercations with police in which community members were killed. “This past year we’ve had traumas and it has impacted us,” said Inukjuak mayor Siasi Smiler as she welcomed members of the Kativik Regional Government to the community last week, where its regional council held meetings May 25 to May 28.

• a Nunavut administrator questioned the accuracy of school enrolment numbers and suggested some schools may be fudging data to preserve teaching jobs. That’s because individual school enrolment data proved crucial earlier this year when the Government of Nunavut’s education department shifted teaching allocations based on those student numbers. It meant that many schools gained teaching positions, while others lost.

• Why no escorts for English-speaking elders? — that’s what a letter-writer wants to know. “I think you should revise the policies you have in order to please all peoples,” Louisa Pootoolik wrote in a letter to the Government of Nunavut’s health minister, Paul Okalik, seeking redress for a policy she says discriminates against frail English-speaking elders. “I am delighted to hear that the unilingual elders will have escorts from now on. However, I am not so pleased on the part where English-speaking elders who need assistance as well are ignored.”