Nunavik: where fear reigns supreme

Ordinary people are dying in the streets as you read this, in countries like Libya, Syria and Yemen, for the right to choose who will govern them in free elections.

But this past April 27 in Nunavik, a majority of voters said no to that very idea: an elected government leader and an elected executive council that would be accountable to the entire region in regular elections.

Okay. We’re exaggerating. But only a little.

Still, there’s no denying what it is that Nunavik residents rejected when they vetoed the Nunavik Regional Government proposal.

They said no to a directly-elected executive body that would administer those functions of government that most directly affect the lives of regular people: schools, health care, and municipal services.

That section of the proposal received far too little attention. Under it, voters in the region would have directly elected a government leader and four other executive members who would sit with an assembly comprised of elected representatives from each community.

Even in Nunavut, where Inuit beneficiaries are able to exercise more effective political power than any other aboriginal people in Canada, voters are unable to directly elect their territorial government’s executive council.

This Nunavik government would have managed an annual budget of at least $320 million a year. For Nunavik’s tiny population of about 10,000 people, the size of a small town, this represents a remarkable degree of autonomy.

And yet the people of Nunavik voted to throw it away.

It’s clear that those who voted no did so primarily out of fear and insecurity. There was fear of the agreement, which in itself was not well understood. There was the paralyzing fear of losing cultural identity and fear of the outside world.

But more than that, the people of Nunavik demonstrated that their greatest fear is fear of themselves. Through their own words, the large number of people who said “we’re not ready for this” simply demonstrated that this is a population that doesn’t believe in itself or in the possibility of a better future.

For Quebec, there are two lessons to be learned from this fiasco.

The first is that, for most of the province’s linguistic and cultural minorities, but especially for aboriginal people, the Quebec social model is an abject failure.

With a male life expectancy of only 62 years, the Nunavik region demonstrates that Quebec’s absurdly expensive and inefficient bureaucracy is a poor vehicle for delivering health care, social services and education to those who most need them. And that there are only about 50 private homeowners in all of Nunavik speaks volumes about the province’s economic development failures in the region.

So those who voted no likely feared that a new Nunavik government answering directly to Quebec City would likely produce yet more dysfunction and bad government.

The second lesson is that Quebec’s own insecurity about identity, language and culture comes with a price. In Nunavik, that price, unfortunately, is an insecurity about Inuit identity that is at least equally morbid.

It’s understandable then, that many voters rejected the NRG deal on the grounds that it contained little or no protection for Inuit language and culture.

On its face, however, this attitude doesn’t make sense. Inuit comprise about 90 per cent of the voting population in Nunavik, and were offered a chance to use that voting power to elect their own government. But a paralyzing obsession with identity led a majority of voters to reject this.

It’s also worth pointing out that those who voted no put forth no ideas of their own about how to best govern the region.

One group now suggests holding a big meeting later this year, with delegates from all communities, to talk about creating a new negotiating mandate. But unless someone were to put new ideas onto the agenda of such a meeting, this exercise would likely go nowhere.

Without improvements in governance, residents of Nunavik are destined to get more of what now defines their region: fear, negativity and increasingly isolated backwardness.

This week, Quebec Premier Jean Charest unveiled his government’s northern development plan, known as Plan Nord. In healthy places, such an announcement would be greeted as an opportunity, a chance to create new jobs and new businesses and to reduce the region’s dependence on government spending.

The Nunavik region needs political leaders and institutions capable of making deals with the Quebec government that take advantage of those opportunities. An elected Nunavik government could provide such a voice.

But, paralyzed by fear and resentment, the people of Nunavik appear incapable of seizing new opportunities and working with them. This does not augur well for the region’s future. JB

(Due to attempts to post abusive personal attacks that are irrelevant to this article, comments are now closed.)