Bérubé, Gull-Masty in see-saw battle for Nunavik where ‘confusion’ led to some voters getting left out
Some communities either see polling stations open late, close early, or not open at all
Voters across Nunavut, Nunavik and the rest of Canada are voting today to elect a new federal government. (Photo by Cedric Gallant)
Election day in Nunavik has turned into “a whole bunch of confusion,” says one regional councillor.
As the rest of Canada voted to elect a new federal government, in Nunavik one community’s polling station still hadn’t opened by late afternoon.
Nunavik is part of Quebec’s Abitibi—Baie-James—Nunavik—Eeyou riding, which takes up about a one-third of the province’s map. The riding has a population of 89,087 and there are 65,833 registered voters, Elections Canada says.
The riding has been represented by Bloc Québécois MP Sylvie Bérubé since 2019.
At midnight, Liberal Mandy Gull-Masty had retaken the lead in a see-saw battle with Bloc Québécois MP Sylvie Bérubé.
Gull-Masty had 7,577 votes compared to Bérubé’s 7,290 and Conservative Steve Corriveau’s 5,186. The NDP’s Thai Higashihara had 517 votes. Nearly half of polls — 150 of 214 — had reported results.
At 9:50 p.m., Elections Canada showed Bérubé leading with 655 votes over Gull-Masty’s 594 votes and Conservative Steve Corriveau’s 374, and New Democrat Thai Higashihara’s 45. Fewer than five per cent of polls had reported.
Another village saw its polling station closed after just two hours, while several other communities relied on a shared election staff to keep polling stations open for less than eight hours.
“We need help urgently,” Ivujivik Mayor Adamie Kalingo said in a phone interview.
In his community of just over 400 residents at the northern tip of Quebec, the only polling station still hadn’t opened as of 3:30 p.m.
“We have no election papers, or anything like that,” Kalingo said. “I am trying to know what is going on.”
He said that at election time, a plane or helicopter is supposed to deliver materials such as ballots and ballot boxes. A chartered plane did come in with Elections Canada workers on board, Kalingo said — but they didn’t bring the election materials.
He said he gave the Elections Canada workers his and his staff’s phone numbers, adding he has corresponded with them.
“I don’t know what else I can do,” he said.
According to the Elections Canada website, polls in the eastern time zone including Nunavik are to be open Monday from 9:30 a.m. to 9:30 p.m.
In a French interview late Monday afternoon, Elections Canada media representative Serge Fleyfel said he didn’t have much information to offer.
“From what I know, planes were sent and polling stations were installed, but no one came,” he said, noting that in one instance a polling station was opened in a store but the store closed at noon.
He said he was still unable to make contact with Luc Bédard, the election returning officer for Abitibi–Baie-James–Nunavik–Eeyou riding, as of 4:30 p.m. Monday.
In Salluit, the polling station opened four hours late, then closed after just two hours.
“They told people who were in line at 2:30 p.m. that they were closing the poll because they had to get on the airplane,” Salluit regional councillor Stephen Grasser said in a phone interview, referring to the election workers.
“Since when do weather conditions trump the ability to vote?”
Grasser said he intends to keep digging for answers, adding no messages were sent to the community to say when the polling station would open or close.
“A whole bunch of confusion,” is how he described the election day situation in Salluit.
Mandy Gull-Masty, the Liberal candidate in the Abitibi–Baie-James–Nunavik–Eeyou riding, posted on Facebook saying five villages in Nunavik have local workers staffing polling stations: Aupaluk, Kangiqsualujjuaq, Kuujjuaq, Inukjuak and Kuujjuaraapik.
She said the nine remaining communities have a “travelling poll staff” that would run polling stations being open from 11 a.m. to 6:30 p.m. This includes Akulivik, Kangirsuk, Puvirnituq, Quaqtaq, Ivujivik, Umiujaq, Salluit, Kangiqsujuaq and Tasiujaq.
Elia Lauzon, who is originally from Kuujjuaq but is travelling to Puvirnituq for work, said she wanted to cast her vote but was turned away by poll workers at around 2:30 p.m.
Lauzon said she was told by Elections Canada workers that they had leave in order to catch their flight home.
“It was done in a hurry,” she said in a phone interview. “There was a whole host of people outside, people trying to go vote.”
“They are literally throwing our votes away” by closing the poll early, she said.
“It is the only way I get to participate in a democracy, supposedly, and I am not even able to do that because they wanted to fly out right away.”
Lauzon said the workers told her they were concerned by the weather and wanted to leave while they could.
She is staying at the hotel due to work, she said, and knows there were rooms available.
“They could have stayed overnight at least,” she said, adding numerous community members told her they were caught off guard by the polling station’s unusual hours as they had planned to vote after their work shift ended.
Something FISHY !!!
This is terrible and illegal. This news needs to go national. Every elector has right to vote and can count on poll open for 12 hours on the day of the electio . This is illegal. Justice should get in there. Workers should have spend the time WTF thus is Nunavik…always plan for an extra day – come on.
This situation only contribute to losing all the trust in our democraty from people up north. In a riding where most of the voters are south in Abitibi – the voices of Inuit don’t weight much in the balance – and yet Elections Canada found a way to totally screw up a democratic process – leaving electors with incapacity the voice up their vote and again leaving Nunavik behind. How to build trust? This is unbelievable
Reminescing of the past centuries – this is disgusting. They could come up here with their plane to take our children but they can’t come up here and collect our votes – we are silenced again.
It’s your own people who couldn’t run the voting station. Are you surprised? We see this crap every single day here.
Its Nunavik , everything is all ways done half ass !!!!
Lot a poeple here in kuujjuaq was not even on the voting list
Including me my wife and my son
I live in kuujjuaq for more than 30 years alway vote in kuujjuaq but this year the put me on chissasibi voting list same for my wife who is born in kuujjuaq and same for my sons
I
Same happen to me. I could still vote cause I had my election card, but clearly confusion happened.
Revolution – so insulting. Anarchy
I didn’t no today was voting day till after 8 pm Nunavut too no papers to vote in the mail no information nothing.
Indeed, there is something strange here. There is more to the story than what Elections Canada has revealed so far. A proper investigation is warranted.
Firstly, election workers should be focused on doing the job right. And if that means staying in a hotel longer just to catch the next flight, or if an extra charter flight is required, then so be it. The time to go home is when the work is done!
Secondly, it looks like Elections Canada should have made a much stronger effort to recruit election workers locally. This would have reduced the dependency on airplane flights (including the paucity of flights and the risks of cancellations during inclement weather).
Moreover, the aviation weather conditions at this time of year are not a secret. On this topic, Elections Canada staff could easily have spoken with people at NavCanada, Transport Canada, or even just the pilots of charter airlines. At this time of year, Nunavik (just like Nunavut and other remote areas) often has flight cancellations due to bad weather. And, of course, the first rule of aviation safety is that the decision to fly or not to fly rests with the pilot. Anyone who flies in a plane should know that. (And, this goes double for the Elections Canada staff tasked with overseeing elections in remote areas.)
Thirdly, better voting venues should have been chosen. Having a poll in a retail store that closes at noon is an example of poor planning. For example, the hours of retail stores are known in advance. Schools, community centres, and hamlet offices are better choices. (Election venues should be chosen for reliable hours, and ideally all should have automatic backup diesel generators too. None of this is rocket science.)
Thirdly, election materials could have been delivered far in advance. After all, the candidates in every riding were announced several weeks ago. So, all the ballots should have been printed, all the boxes and other essentials mailed. The same goes for all the training materials. In a pinch, training could have been done via online methods. (To save time, the training materials could have been e-mailed and printed locally. Laser printers are ubiquitous.)
And, because the election date itself was known in advance (it was announced by Mark Carney on March 23, thus more than five weeks ago), the recruitment and training should have begun as soon as the election date had been announced.
(Also, the expectation of a federal election was already in the news months before that date. So, Elections Canada had plenty of “warm-up time”, plenty of advance notice to set its machinery in motion. Moreover, the electoral procedures are well-known, highly codified, and rigorously documented. Therefore, the mechanical work of running the polls is relatively routine.)
On another note: it seems that the Elections Canada workers who arrived by plane seemed to have been making the implicit assumption that in small Inuit villages, people do not actually have working hours! Consider that the Elections Canada media representative (Serge Fleyfel) said that “planes were sent and polling stations were installed, but no one came”.
However, in a community of just a few hundred residents, it is entirely possible that all the people of voting age are at work until the usual end of day (5pm). So, an Elections Canada representative who says that “no one came” is either incompetent or dishonest.
Every vote counts. Every year, certain ridings have razor-thin margins, sometimes as little as a dozen votes or so. Voters left standing in the cold have every right to be furious when elections staff ignore them.
And, this election is especially historic because one of the candidates (the Conservative one) is eager to follow the Trump playbook of dismantling democracy, destroying the civil service, and turning his back on Indigenous reconciliation, all with the ultimate goal of further enriching the already-wealthy. We cannot afford to go back to the dark era of Stephen Harper. We cannot afford a Trumpian who slashes social services, smashes public services, privatizes public assets, and destroys regulations that protect the environment and human health and safety.
Granted, having advance polls would have been helpful. I think that we need a law that advance polls are mandatory in every community, no matter how small the population is.
And, although voting by mail was an option, the problem is that the mail turnaround (which depends on privately owned airlines) is often too slow to be reliable. This again shows the paramount importance of having ample in-person voting opportunities.
Again, a proper investigation is needed. Elections are a cornerstone of democracy. Anything less than absolute integrity is unacceptable.
Why always depend on someone coming in ? That the life story in Nunavik anyway, someone somewhere, not us will do it. Nunavik falls victim to dependency over and over, it’s getting worse. Yes, I understand that there’s a mess being made, but when will people take responsibility for doing what needs to be done. Open the shops at the right hour, open the gas station, go to work people, wake up. Get over it the south is not going to do anything for you, if you don’t help yourself get out of bed in the morning, election day, or Jack the baptism day.
I spoke to the election workers and the issue was the lack of workers. They were asking southerners to work there as Inuit were not willing to. It’s a shame but unfortunately a trend up here. People want change but refuse to do so.
That’s why self government in Nunavik cannot, I repeat CANNOT ever become so. You can work at home, but it’s hard from bed with drug and alcohol morning after, or some just too lazy to work.
@ Guy
ELECTIONS CANADA will say whatever they want to deflect their incompetence here.
This is simply not believable. Never has Nunavik been a part of such a sh*tshow election.
Gives one pause to wonder if the ELECTIOS CANADA “officials” in this matter had ties to the BQ, in an attempt at voter suppression.
Stephen harper was best PM Caanda ever had . And for Nunavut, we got the most out of them … like iqaluit shipping port , or boat launch areas . And as far as economic, harper had balanced budget , stronger military.. I recall Canada being much safer then .
Election Canada charter plane landed on icy runway and Air Inuit couldn’t, I know it’s for safety purposes.
There was a post that even if the store closed during lunch hour that the polling station will remain open, I was planning to go to vote before 6:30 as stated that it will be open, but they had to leave early under unforeseen circumstances, there were rooms available at the hotels and still was nice to fly out too.🤔😳
For the corrupt federal government to close the polling stations early to catch their flight is ridiculous and probably illegal. N.N. says “According to the Elections Canada website, polls in the eastern time zone including Nunavik are to be open Monday from 9:30 a.m. to 9:30 p.m. “They told people who were in line at 2:30 p.m. that they were closing the poll because they had to get on the airplane,” I agree 100% with Mr. Grasser. Salluit regional councillor Stephen Grasser said in a phone interview, referring to the election workers. The 2 white women who were in our community (there is usually a local person hired to be a worker and an interpreter but this time there wasn’t) were disrespectful and did not open their station until 10:00 a.m. and closed at 5:45. Something is terribly wrong with the canadian elections and another 4 years of lies and corruption for the true canadians. hey liberal government!!!!! Allow us canadians to post on one of the medias on the internet. Your former leader is no longer a ccp.
“Since when do weather conditions trump the ability to vote?”
Changes need to be made immediately so that this never happens again, and somehow some reparations should be made now.
As a small rural farmer without means or power, I don’t know what I can do. Perhaps you can suggest what we insignificant people here who are also dismayed and outraged at this can do.
I will be spreading this story, contacting Elections Canada and a federal government representative.
I am sorry that you have once again been let down.
I would vote for any government to help the people of Nunavik become more motivated and get out of bed in the morning and go to work. That includes teachers and daycare workers, gas station, like cooperative in kuujjuaq especially. I would vote then maybe for a motivated, educated, and sensible person from Nunavik, to be the one I would vote for. But nunavik Is fallen into deeper oblivious and becoming helpless, and the southern society is quickly moving in, as a necessity to keep the Nunavik society safe m and secure. Plus providing services in the lack of peoples motivation to not get out of bed. Between the beer and wine stores, and silly little childlike games of guessing names of animals and people, and adult gambling, the community of kuujjuaq has gone to the dogs so to say, and just saying , childlessness rules the life of so many Nunavik residents.
MY THOUGHTS EXACTLY !!!
Finding local E.C. part-time staff would be easier if the pay was raised and if the wait time in receiving pay was a day, E.C. needs to remember money does not go far in the region’s fly-in villages.