Commission rejects separate seat for Nunavik

MONTREAL — The prospects for the creation of a seat for Nunavik in the Quebec National Assembly are as remote as ever.

Quebec’s electoral commission, the Commission de la représentation électorale, tabled its 10-year review of Quebec’s electoral map last week, with recommendations on how to divvy up Quebec’s 125 ridings.

Despite high hopes for change, there was no good news in it for Nunavik, because the commission does not recommend a seperate seat for Nunavik in the assemblé nationale.

In 1972, a group of snowmobilers from Ivujivik travelled to Quebec City to ask that “an electoral district be constituted in Northern Quebec to allow a Quebec Eskimo to hold a seat in the National Assembly.”

Ever since then, Nunavimmiut have been lobbying for their own provincial riding.

That’s because Nunavik is lumped into the huge Ungava riding, which stretches from the Hudson Strait almost as far as Val d’Or. Within Ungava, Inuit are vastly outnumbered by Cree and non-Aboriginal residents.

The commission now says Nunavik should stay within the current Ungava riding. The report even suggests adding three new predominately francophone municipalities to the southern section of Ungava.

“We were quite disappointed, to say the least,” says Johnny Adams, the chairman of the Kativik Regional Government, who had been lobbying for months on behalf of a Nunavik-only riding.

After the commission’s report was tabled, members of the National Assembly began a five-hour debate on the new electoral map.

Quebec’s native affairs minister, Guy Chevrette, who is also the Parti Québécois government’s minister responsible for electoral reform, criticized the commission’s methodology and said it should have accommodated Nunavik’s request for a riding.

Chevrette has publicly promised that he’ll lobby for a Nunavik-only riding.

However, in his rambling comments to the MNAs, Chevrette stopped short of saying some way should be found to give Nunavik a riding and suggested instead the issue — among others — needed more study.

On the other hand, the Liberal Party’s critic for electoral reform, Jacques Chagnon, the MNA for Westmount-St.Louis, spoke out strongly in favour of creating a riding for Nunavik.

There is a precedent for such a move —in 1895 the isolated Magdelan Islands, les Iles-de-la-Madeleine, got a seat for their 900 voters, and their riding still has only a little more than 10,000 residents.

The best-case scenario would have seen Chevrette demanding MNAs support the immediate creation of a Nunavik riding, either through a redistribution of ridings or a change in the law to add a 126th seat to the National Assembly.

The Liberal Party’s native affairs critic, Geoff Kelley, the MNA for Jacques-Cartier, said it would have helped if Chevrette had given a “clear political indication” that the commission should find a riding for Nunavik — especially if he had spoken out before the report’s tabling.

Ungava’s current MNA, Michel Létourneau, has said he’s in favour of Nunavik having its own riding because, as an MNA, he doesn’t have the budget to adequately cover the riding, which is Quebec’s largest, covering 55 per cent of its land mass.

The Kativik Regional Government had sent each MNA a long document explaining why Nunavimmiut don’t support the commission’s proposal for Ungava.

“It would dilute their voice and negate their cultural individuality and the uniqueness of Nunavik’s 14 communities. Moreover, any chance of having a resident of Nunavik represent the territory would vanish should this proposal be accepted.”

At 21,893 residents, Ungava has the second smallest population of any riding in Quebec. Although there are six ridings that don’t fit the norm, most of Quebec’s 125 ridings represent an average of 42,713 residents.

According to Quebec’s electoral act, every riding should be about the same size.

However, a riding is also supposed to be a “natural community” whose residents share a similar history, geography, and social situation.

The KRG argued Nunavik is different from the other areas included in the Ungava riding because of its distinct geography, climate, culture, language and economy.

“Making room on Quebec’s political scene for a small predominately Inuit population living in this vast region for thousands of years would be a decision universally applauded,” the KRG said.

But it’s too late for Quebec’s PQ government to look good now — unless some exceptional move is made on Nunavik’s behalf.

Now that the official debate is over, the provincial government can formally set the new electoral boundaries, which will be announced in the Jan. 2 edition of the Official Gazette.