Jane Stewart blasts off in Kangiqsualujjuaq

QUEBEC CITY — Indian Affairs Minister Jane Stewart travelled 1500 kilometers from Ottawa last Friday to set off a spectacular explosion of rocks .

“You could see the rocks flying,” said Stewart, who pushed the plunger to set off the charge at a “blasting ceremony” in Kangiqsualujjuaq. “Then, we all walked over to the blast and could see the big cavity which had been blown out.”

The blast provided an impressive backdrop to bolster the federal government’s waning profile in northern Quebec. On the one-day junket, Stewart handed out an additional $5 million for new housing in Nunavik, and $300,000 for nine other projects.

But Lucien Bouchard’s PQ government is upstaging the federal government with its own increasingly successful partnerships with aboriginal peoples.

And the Quebec cabinet scuttled any hopes that Stewart would sign the historic Nunavik Political Accord on behalf of the federal government in Kangiqsualujjuaq when they decided to postpone Quebec’s approval of the deal until this week.

The Nunavik Political Accord would lead to a unique form of self-government within Quebec for the people of Nunavik. The people of Nunavik would get an elected Nunavik assembly, and a government administration financed by a block funding agreement with Quebec City.

A “Nunavik Commission,” similar to the Nunavut Implementation Commission, would be set up to make recommendations on the design of Nunavik’s new government.

Stewart didn’t waste any time taking a shot at her rivals in Quebec City.

“We’ve been ready for 10 months to procede with the [Nunavik] commission, but we’ve been waiting for the province,” Stewart said. “They’ve been dilly-dallying and deciding whether they’re in or whether they’re out. We’ve been waiting for them.”

Stewart said that all parties should ideally sign a pre-approved document at the same time, since, in her opinion, the Nunavik political accord is a tripartite agreement involving Canada, Quebec and Nunavik.

“We haven’t seen the final draft. We don’t know what cabinet will aprrove, whether they’ll approve everything that’s been approved or make changes,” she said. “In my mind, we’ve been waiting for 10 months and finally they decide that they’re ready and they have push to get a signing. If we’re going to work together effectively on this, we should do so right from the start.”

Yet federal bureaucrats in Ottawa shouldn’t be too surprised by this recent turn of events.

The 1975 James Bay and Northern Quebec Agreement rubber-stamped the federal government’s withdrawal from the region, something Ottawa had sought since 1925 when it first maintained that Quebec’s Inuit were wards of the province, not Canada.

Since the 1970s most government services for Inuit in Quebec have been administered from Quebec City, or through the provincial government’s arm in Kuujjuaq, the Kativik Regional Government.

But Stewart said she hoped the new commssion would study and redefine the governments’ roles.

“I would similarly see as we move forward on something as important as governance, that again we want the three partners there, so that we all understand what our new roles potentially could be and how we’re going to implement them over the course of time,” she said.

Stewart’s big boom in Kangiqsualujjuaqalso also marked the official kick-off of Nunavik’s $30-million marine infrastructure program, a program that will bring new docks and wharves to three communities in Nunavik, and create more jobs for heavy-equipment operators and labourers.