Citing failing health, Arvaluk quits Nunavut legislature

Following a long and often troubled political career, James Arvaluk, 63, announced May 16 that he has resigned as MLA for Tununiq, the seat he’s held since 2006. (FILE PHOTO)

(Updated 3:00 p.m., May 16)

James Arvaluk, one of Nunavut’s oldest political veterans, has quit his job as MLA for Tununiq, the legislative assembly seat that includes Pond Inlet.

Arvaluk, 63, announced his decision May 16 in a letter to the deputy speaker of the Nunavut Legislative Assembly.

“Following consultation with family, constituents and colleagues, I have determined that the needs of my constituents would be best served by affording them the opportunity to elect a new member to serve in the Legislative Assembly,” Arvaluk said in his letter.

Arvaluk has represented Tununiq since 2006, when he won a by-election held following the death of Jobie Nutarak, who had held the seat previously.

Over the past year, Arvaluk has suffered two heart attacks and is now recovering from heart surgery at home in Pond Inlet.

Because of his work at the Inuit Tapirisat of Canada in the early to mid-1970s, Arvaluk is assured of a permanent place in the history of Nunavut.

In September 1974, Arvaluk was elected president of ITC, replacing Tagak Curley, the organization’s founding president, and was re-elected in March 1976, a year after the organization submitted an early proposal on the creation of Nunavut to the federal government.

But on Jan. 17, 1977, Arvaluk abruptly quit the presidency of ITC, saying he was tired and needed a break.

By 1979, Arvaluk had become president of the Baffin Regional Inuit Association and then ran as the Liberal candidate for Nunatsiaq in the Feb. 18, 1980 federal election.

In that election, Arvaluk took 41.8 per cent of the vote, but lost to Peter Itinnuar of the NDP.

It was after 1991, when Arvaluk was elected to the Legislative Assembly of the Northwest Territories as the member for the Kivalliq constituency of Aivilik that he suffered the first in a series of career-damaging encounters with the criminal justice system.

In 1992, while serving as NWT minister of education, Arvaluk resigned from cabinet after he was charged in connection with a sexual assault alleged to have occurred in Rankin Inlet in 1980.

Though he was acquitted after a trial on the Rankin Inlet charge, Arvaluk was charged with two more sexual assaults laid in connection with incidents alleged to have occurred at a hot-tub party at his Yellowknife residence.

After he resigned from the NWT legislature in February 1995, Arvaluk was convicted on the two Yellowknife sex charges and was sentenced to a total of five years in jail.

But one of those convictions was overturned after an appeal, and Arvaluk’s sentence was reduced to two and a half years, which he completed before Nunavut’s first territorial election on Feb. 15, 1999.

On that day, he won election to the Nanulik constituency in Nunavut’s first legislative assembly and served in Nunavut’s first cabinet after Premier Paul Okalik appointed Arvaluk to the education portfolio.

After a short-lived stretch of respectability, Arvaluk quit the Nunavut cabinet after he was charged with assaulting his girlfriend in August 2000.

Following two trials, which produced a conviction on the Coral Harbour assault charge, Arvaluk resigned his seat in June 2003 and in January 2004 was sentenced to nine months in jail.

Despite his record of criminal convictions for crimes of violence against women, voters in Pond Inlet elected Arvaluk to the legislative assembly in a by-election held Oct. 16 2006, then re-elected him in Nunavut’s 2008 general election.

John Quirke, the clerk of Nunavut’s legislative assembly, said no date for a by-election has been set yet for Tununiq, but cabinet will likely consider holding one on Sept. 12.

That’s the confirmed date for two other Nunavut by-elections, which will be held to fill vacant seats in Pangnirtung and Iqaluit West.