Elections Canada admits failure to hire Nunavik staff, apologizes to residents
Polling stations in 7 communities closed early or didn’t open at all after Elections Canada failed to hire local staff for April federal election
Canada’s chief electoral officer Stéphane Perrault, shown in an Elections Canada Facebook post, apologized to Nunavik residents for his agency’s failure to hire local workers for the April 28 federal election. (Photo courtesy of Elections Canada/Facebook)
Updated Sept. 10 at 10:10 a.m. ET
Elections Canada failed to hire local residents to run polling stations in Nunavik, preventing some residents from casting their ballot in the federal election, Canada’s chief electoral officer Stéphane Perrault says.
On April 28 — the day most Canadians voted to elect a new federal government — seven Nunavik communities reported problems with the voting process. Some polling stations closed early and others didn’t open at all.
“Normally, our business model is neighbour-serving-neighbour and it requires us to engage ahead of the election and not come in at the last minute,” Perrault said in an interview Tuesday while visiting Kuujjuaq.
He said that flying people in is sometimes necessary, but not as a general plan.
“This plan is not one that we should have supported,” he said. “Headquarters should’ve caught that, should’ve intervened”
Perrault apologized in person to Nunavik residents at a Kativik Regional Government council meeting on Tuesday.
“What happened is unacceptable, and I understand why the people of Nunavik are angry and I have to say that I share that anger,” he said to council members.
Elections Canada had planned to fly people in to work at the polls in Nunavik but that didn’t work, Perrault said.
“The plan was to have people stay over. That required a bit more organization, and the returning officer did not receive the support he would have needed to make that happen,” Perrault said.
He said the returning officer quit immediately after the election and a new one will be recruited.
A fact-finding inquiry has started to determine what went wrong and will examine the facts and evidence, Perrault said at the council meeting.
Several councillors commended Perrault for coming in person to address the issue.
“I’m glad that you’re going to make changes and I’m happy to be part of these discussions, because elections are very important,” Jennifer Munick-Watkins, Kuujjuaq’s councillor, said in Inuktitut.
Kangiqsualujjuaq Coun. Maggie Emudluk said, “We have rights as Inuit. We are taxpayers. So if we’re being noticed by one of the major services, it’s good.”
Salluit Coun. Stephen Grasser suggested some recommendations to improve the voting process in Nunavik, including preliminary ballot counting by local officials and using suitable venues like school gyms as polling stations with a public voters list.
As part of the effort to work with community leaders and elected officials, an Elections Canada delegation visited four Nunavik communities between last week and this week.
Perrault said the visits to Puvirnituq, Kuujjuarapik, Kuujjuaq and Salluit gave him insights into the resources available in the region.
“There is capacity on the ground that we need to leverage and work with to deliver those services,” he said.
Note: Article was updated to note Stéphane Perrault was not part of the Elections Canada delegation that visited the four Nunavik communities earlier this month
Read between the lines, Maggie, no one was willing to work.
This was a tempest in a teapot. All sorts of people want to vote, no one cared enough to work for a week.
This is much of the problem in Nunavik.
Rather than admonish Elections Canada, maybe emphasize civic participation, and encourage local people to get off their sofa and make the difference they apparently want *someone else* to make for their community.
It’s childish to blame others when no one steps forward when jobs were posted and ignored.
This isn’t a “tempest in a teapot”, we’re talking about a situation where people who wanted to vote in the federal election and were not able to do so. The politicians all across the country love to wax poetic about how this is the foundation of democracy and the bedrock of society, but when push came to shove the Canadian entity was not able to deliver on its promises to thousands of people.
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EC got lucky the election results were not particularly close, but if it were a different election cycle they very well could have seen margins similar to the ones in Nunavut and accidentally swayed the results and invalidated the whole thing.
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This is a big deal….
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It’s also dishonest to say that the problem boils down simply to people who didn’t care enough to work for a week and part of the larger “problem in Nunavik” (seemingly just blaming Inuit for a larger failure).
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Nunatsiaq News documented situations where some towns HAD the spaces ready, HAD the workers lined up, and the unprepared Elections Canada staff hadn’t even managed to send them the ballots and requisite paperwork to open up and let people cast their votes. How is that the fault of the people?
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This is not a situation where you can just blame the Inuit for being lazy or unprepared or whatever. Yet again we are dealing with a failure of the larger Canadian system to pay adequate attention to the needs of Nunavimmiut and understand the unique circumstances we have been put in since they made us a part of Canada.
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Everyone is aware of the need to line up accommodations for special events well in advance in Nunavik, EC didn’t do that.
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Everyone is aware of the need to line up delivery of special material for special events well in advance in Nunavik, EC didn’t do that.
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As much as some people want to blame Nunavik, most people can clearly see this is a failure from the top down. Don’t blame the communities and don’t blame the region.
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If there was more support for Nunavik beyond building the region up for the purpose of extractive industries, Nunavik would have enough infrastructure to host EC officials overnight, Nunavik would have the level of community engagement and education etc to better staff its centres, etc. The Victim-blaming can only carry so much water in a situation like this.
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Elections Canada failed Nunavik, just like Canada has failed Nunavik…
Nunavik doesn’t get any advance notice of an election. No one does.
They get the same 6 weeks the rest of the country got. Other remote communities got their election administered just fine.
There’s plenty infrastructure to house staff for an election, the point is, it shouldn’t be necessary. If ppl want to vote, they should be willing to step forward to act as polling workers.
It’s the same thing in every election. Look at the voting rates in past elections. It’s not exactly surprising to see a lack of engagement, it’s pretty much on brand.
I guess next election there’ll be a lineup to work as polling workers…
You are wilfully looking past issues clearly attribuable to Elections Canada’s lack of organisation to continue to lay blame on communities for the whole mess.
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From NN’s article on April 28 – “Bérubé, Gull-Masty in see-saw battle for Nunavik where ‘confusion’ led to some voters getting left out”:
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“We need help urgently,” Ivujivik Mayor Adamie Kalingo said in a phone interview.
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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.
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“We have no election papers, or anything like that,” Kalingo said. “I am trying to know what is going on.”
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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.
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He said he gave the Elections Canada workers his and his staff’s phone numbers, adding he has corresponded with them.
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“I don’t know what else I can do,” he said.
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Nunavik doesn’t need “advance notice of an election” – I never mentioned that.
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But Nunavik clearly needs someone competent in organising their elections and ensuring they provide all the necessities to hold an election without running out of time and they didn’t get that. You may be shocked but there can be more than one person to blame, and that often involves holding the management accountable.
Ballots have to be handled in accordance to strict procedures. There were no polling staff hired in Ivujivik.
No polling officers to receive ballots isn’t a normal situation.
It’s the same issue with all the open until filled postings throughout the region. Why don’t NVs have a multi function space for polling? Is it ECs fault the co op closed early in one of the villages?
How come schools and churches work for the rest of the country? Plenty of those in Nunavik. Like many other issues, there’s a lack of engagement. No one ever dares to mention that.
Can’t wait until rubber bullet injuries are the next cause du jour! Cause no one except the government can be blamed north of 55.
Tell me something, why should Nunavik know well in advance about and election that only called 40 days before the voting day? Every other community in Nunavut was able to get workers and no one had to fly in, why is Nunavik Special? No one in your hamlet didn’t realize an election was going on and no one rented the hamlet for voting?
You were one of the ONLY communities in Canada that had to have staff flown in because you were so unprepared.
Who worked the previous elections in your community? Why didn’t they reply?
You are asking for special treatment that no other Nunavut based community got.
There’s over 40 000 population in Nunavut and about 14 000 for Nunavik, you are comparing apples and oranges…. Hope it answers one of your questions
Elections Canada is just about like every other gov’t Dept. Next to useless. they are just another Fed. Dept given to waste and sloth.
Wait was there bingo the night before? A little under the weather the next day…