Bringing the assembly to the people

Is it wise for the Nunavut legislative assembly to hold expensive and risky sittings in communities outside of Iqaluit?

Wise? Perhaps not. As we’ve seen this week, the Arctic’s powerful climate can play havoc with the most carefully constructed plans. But for the short-term, the idea still has much merit.

In the early 1980s, the legislative assembly of the Northwest Territories adopted a practice under which they held at least one sitting a year in a community outside of Yellowknife.

This was an expensive, elaborate undertaking. But it exposed many Northwest Territories residents to a new institution that many could not otherwise have witnessed first-hand. For example, many Iqaluit residents will still remember the sitting of the NWT legislative assembly held in the fall of 1980 at the Gordon Robertson Education Centre, as Inuksuk High School was then called. For many Iqaluit residents, this was the first time that many residents had a chance to see their legislature.

In those days, before the widespread use of fax machines, before the arrival of the Internet, before organizations such as CBC North, the Aboriginal Peoples Television Network and APTN’s predecessor, Television Northern Canada, were able to carry pan-Arctic news and current affairs broadcasts, the territorial legislature was a remote institution for many NWT residents. The sittings held outside of the capital were, therefore, of great educational value in those days.

Do such sittings have the same value now? Yes, they do, as long as MLAs don’t get carried away with the idea, and as long as they don’t use them as substitutes for other means of communication. This week and next, the people of Rankin Inlet will be able to see the human side of their MLAs, and Nunavut’s fledgling legislature will have been demystified in their eyes.

However, the legislative assembly, as well as the government of Nunavut needs to do much more than they have done until now to disseminate public domain information about the Nunavut government, especially on Nunavut’s public broadcast media, as well as on the Internet, which is a cheap and efficient medium for distributing written documents to large numbers of people.

They are hampered, of course, by the sluggish pace at which communities are being connected to Nunavut’s new digital communications network, and by the need for more skill development among their staff.

The delayed television broadcasts of assembly proceedings that are due to start next week on APTN are good move in the right direction. But surely, the Nunavut legislative assembly also ought to be able to produce daily Hansards for distribution on the Internet, along with electronic copies of major policy papers and other important documents.

Meanwhile, the Nunavut legislature should continue to meet in communities outside the capital. But next time, perhaps, at a time of year when the weather is better? JB