Nunavik leader sends PQ back with to Quebec City with a message

Maggie Emudluk, chairperson of the Kativik Regional Government, also accompanied Pauline Marois, leader of the Parti Québécois, to Kuujjuaq’s Newviq’vi store where she and co-owner Eric Pearson talked about the high price of staples like potatoes, more than twice the price in Nunavik than in Quebec City. (PHOTO COURTESY OF THE KATIVIK REGIONAL GOVERNMENT)

KUUJJUAQ — A chance to send a personal message from Nunavik to Quebec City: that’s what Maggie Emudluk, chairperson of the Kativik Regional Government, saw in the brief visit that Pauline Marois, leader of the Parti Québécois, made in Kuujjuaq Nov. 8.

That Quebec must meet Nunavik’s basic needs was the theme Emudluk repeated over and over during her talks with the provincial opposition leader.

“Anything that will help our cause,” for more housing, a lower cost of living and basic infrastructure in Nunavik, is worth emphasizing, Emudluk said shortly after a chartered aircraft carried Marois back to the South.

Nunavik’s urgent need for housing is the major point that Emudluk hopes Marois remembers back in southern Quebec.

“There’s a snowball effect because of the housing,” Emudluk told Nunatsiaq News. “It has a big effect on the social conditions when you have 15 people, two to three families in one house. How can you enjoy a normal family?”

Overcrowding effects everyone and everything, Emudluk said — from kids who can’t do homework or sleep to personal hygiene because there’s not enough water in the reservoirs for people to shower.

“It really has an effect on the social fabric,” Emudluk told Marois.

But housing isn’t the only issue Marois heard about while in Kuujjuaq.

Emudluk and Makivik Corp.’s Pita Aatami, who also met with Marois during the morning, want to see Quebec put Nunavik’s need for basic infrastructure and services first — what Nunavimmiut need — before the grand plans for development and industry contained in the Charest government’s Plan Nord.

Plan Nord is not our priority, Emdluk said,

“Our priorities and needs [for housing, basic services and infrastructure] are the important challenges we have. If we don’t resolve these challenges, how can we advance in other directions?”

Municipal leaders in southern Quebec don’t have to beg for these basics, she said.

“Municipal regional councils don’t have to kneel down and say ‘give us water service’,” she said.

All Nunavimmiut want is the same level of basic services enjoyed by other Quebec residents.

But it took so long for Quebec to approve Nunavik’s fire safety plan, which will bring the region’s services up to standard, that she’s worried Quebec will drag its feet on supplying other basic programs and services.

To make progress on improving the youth protection and justice services in Nunavik, Quebec must deliver these because the lack of basic services is linked with the region’s social problems, Emudluk said.

And right now the aging Tulattavik Hospital in Kuujjuaq can’t even provide some of the specialized services people need due to lack of space and personnel, she said.

“We’re hoping that we have the same level of services,” she said — and that Marois can stand up in the National Assembly and talk more about Nunavik.

On her trip to Kuujjuaq, Marois was accompanied by Luc Ferland, who represents the riding of Ungava in Quebec’s National Assembly, and by Alexandre Cloutier, MNA for Lac St-Jean and the PQ’s native affairs critic.

Emudluk brought Marois, Ferland and Cloutier to Kuujjuaq’s Newviq’vi store where she and co-owner Eric Pearson talked about the high price of staples like potatoes, which sell for more than twice the price in Nunavik than in Quebec City.

Quebec provides Nunavik with about $3 million every year to offset the high cost of transportation to the region — but this program ends next March, and Emudluk wants lawmakers to support its renewal.

To remind the PQ visitors about Nunavik, they received gifts from the region’s organizations, including a sealskin backpack for Marois and carvings for everyone.

The group also went back to Quebec City loaded down with a package of studies on the high cost of living, lack of housing and other indicators in Nunavik, hopefully to help fuel their work on behalf of the region, Emudluk said.