Inuit need representation in the Senate

MARY SIMON
President of Inuit Tapiriit Kanatami

Before he retired this week at age 75, Willie Adams, the senator for Nunavut, was the longest-serving current member of the Canadian Senate. In his retirement, I wish him many good days of hunting and fishing in his home community of Rankin Inlet.

Though he was appointed by Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau in 1977 to serve as senator for the Northwest Territories, he became Nunavut’s first senator when the territory was created in 1999. In his 32-year career, he has been a passionate advocate for the interests of Inuit. He was the first Inuk senator, but he would not be the last.

Charlie Watt, senator for Quebec was named to the post in 1984. In early June of this year, I was a witness in the Senate during a special committee of the whole examining the residential school apology by Prime Minister Stephen Harper one year ago.

In the Senate, I was proud to speak the Inuit language with simultaneous interpretation in the Senate chamber for the first time in its history. With the retirement of Senator Adams, Inuit will lose a powerful voice in the Senate chamber.

In his first speech to the Senate on Aug. 5, 1977, he spoke of his responsibility to represent Inuit, our rights, our way of life and the challenges of exploration and development in Canada’s Arctic. He has served Inuit Nunangat, and in doing so, he has served Canada.

He has spoken about the effects of climate change on the Arctic, the rights of Inuit to earn a living from hunting seals and potentially damaging incursions on the turbot fishery in the Eastern Arctic. More recently, he urged parliamentarians to approve a motion for concurrence in the passage of the Official Languages Act by the Legislative Assembly of Nunavut, which would enhance and protect the status of the Inuit language.

He voted against Bill C-68, the long-gun registry, his own party’s bill, because it would have impeded the ability of Inuit to feed their families and earn a living from the land. Notably, he resigned from the Standing Senate Committee on Aboriginal Peoples over the matter.

Senator Adams’ retirement is a great loss for Inuit and I urge Prime Minister Stephen Harper to name an Inuk to the vacant post for Nunavut before the Senate and the House of Commons return in the fall. I hope that he will visit Canada’s Arctic communities during the beautiful summer season and spend some time on the land under the 24-hour sun.

In that time, I trust that he would meet many passionate Inuit able to serve the interests of Inuit in the Senate. I would like to quote Senator Lowell Murray, who said in the Senate chamber earlier this month in bidding farewell to Senator Adams, “The one Senate seat for Nunavut ought not to be left vacant for long. His people, more than most, need a voice in both Houses of Parliament.”