MLAs get down to business

AARON SPITZER

IQALUIT — Though Nunavut’s budget will dominate discussions in the territorial assembly for the next several weeks, some other issues have also crept into the legislative debate.

Here’s a sample of what MLAs have been talking about since the Feb. 21 start of the assembly’s fifth session.

Waging war on low wages

Nunavut’s lowest-paid workers have a champion in the legislature.

Glenn McLean, the MLA for Baker Lake, rose before the assembly Feb. 23 to pressure Nunavut’s premier about when the territory’s residents will see a hike in the minimum wage.

At $7 an hour, Nunavut’s minimum wage is lower than that of several other provinces and territories – though the cost of living here is the highest in Canada, McLean noted.

McLean also didn’t hesitate to point fingers, charging Nunavut’s retail stores with underpaying their workers.

“It’s no secret… when we go into a store today those are the majority of the people that are paying the minimum wage,” he said. “We all know the companies and the individuals that pay minimum wage in Nunavut, they also benefit from the lowest corporate income taxes in probably Canada.”

According to Premier Paul Okalik, the Nunavut Law Review Commission is studying the minimum-wage issue and will present a report on the subject in December.

That response didn’t satisfy McLean.

“December of this year… is 10 or 11 months away,” he said.

“The point that I’m trying to get to here is that by then we will be into our third year and I brought this issue up two years ago. Is this government taking the minimum wage issue seriously or is it just something that is going to be ignored and thrown away?”

Time zone tempest

Nunavut’s time-zone debate just won’t die.

Last week in the assembly, Uriash Puqiqnak, MLA for the Nattilik riding, tabled a petition by residents of Taloyoak requesting to roll back their clocks two hours.

The petition, signed by 163 residents of the central Kitikmeot hamlet, asked that the community be allowed to move back to the mountain time zone.

Until the fall of 1999, Taloyoak and the rest of the Kitikmeot region were on mountain time. The creation of Nunavut’s unified time zone then moved the community to central time. Then, last autumn, the GN announced that all Nunavut communities would switch to eastern time for the winter.

Further west in the Kitikmeot, Cambridge Bay and Kugluktuk rebelled, reverting to central time and mountain time, respectively. After a several-day stand-off the GN gave in and allowed both towns to remain in the central time zone.

In April, with the beginning of daylight-savings time, most Nunavut communities will switch back to central time. But several communities in the Baffin are expected to hold out and stay on eastern time.

Boosting business in “have-not” hamlets

Nunavut entrepreneurs got what appears to be good news from the department of sustainable development last week.

According to Minister Olayuk Akesuk, the Nunavut Business Credit Corporation is slated to open its headquarters in Cape Dorset on March 19.

The corporation provides loans of up to $1 million to small and medium-sized businesses in the territory.

It has $8 million to loan out, and as companies pay the money back, those same funds will be loaned out again to new recipients.

Akesuk said the NBCC will place a particular focus on “have-not” hamlets.

“I have also asked the (NBCC) to increase their attention to lending in non-decentralized communities as part of our government’s commitment to increase the availability of our programs in our smaller communities,” he said.

Anawak pledges help for Iqaluit

The Town of Iqaluit will get more help from the Nunavut government, promised Jack Anawak, the minister of community government.

Anawak made the vow after Iqaluit municipal leaders and Hunter Tootoo, the MLA for Iqaluit Centre, complained that Nunavut’s biggest community has been shortchanged in territory’s capital budget.

In that budget, which is now before the legislature, the GN proposed to spend much less on Iqaluit than the Town says it needs to treat its water and dispose of its waste.

For example, the capital budget allots only $3.65 million to Iqaluit for the construction of a $12 million incinerator that the Nunavut Water Board insists must be online in less than a year.

Anawak said he’s aware of the shortfall and will work to correct it. “We will do all we can to ensure that either we enable Iqaluit to get more funding out of the federal government, or privately, or from the government of Nunavut,” he said.

Anawak admitted that spending money on Nunavut’s wealthiest town isn’t popular in the poorer corners of the territory.

But Iqaluit belongs to all Nunavummiut, he said. “This is where the government is established. The people of Nunavut will have to realize that this is the capital of Nunavut.”

The real cost of gas

Has the government actually lost money by hiking the price of gas so high?

That’s what Iqaluit MLA Hunter Tootoo wants to know. On Feb. 23 Tootoo asked Kelvin Ng, the minister of finance, what impact last autumn’s fuel-price increase has had on the Nunavut government. The GN, which subsidizes the price of gas for territorial consumers, instituted a 13.9 cent price increase in October in reaction to skyrocketing world crude-oil costs.

At the time, many MLAs lobbied the GN to cut the hike in half, charging it would harm Nunavut hunters and homeowners. Many also argued that the hike would hurt the government itself, which must buy gas to power its buildings and fuel its fleets of vehicles.

Ng said he would provide information on the issue later in the session.

Education law due this summer

A draft of the GN’s long-awaited new Education Act will likely be released this summer. That was the word from Peter Kilabuk, the minister for the Department of Education.

Speaking before the Nunavut assembly last week, Kilabuk said he is still awaiting the report from a joint GN-NTI committee tasked with holding public consultations on the old act and recommending changes to it.

The draft will be the GN’s second attempt at proposing a new Education Act. Last year, a draft act released by the department was met with condemnation from many Inuit leaders, who felt the legislation to be lax in its requirements for Inuktitut schooling. Parents also criticized the draft for taking power over educational decisions out of the hand of local residents.

Schools in Nunavut currently operate under an education law inherited from the Northwest Territories.

Raising IQ

Bringing Inuit traditional wisdom into the workings of the Nunavut government is taking too long, say several MLAs.

On Monday, Nanulik MLA James Arvaluk rose before the assembly to condemn the pace at which Inuit Qaujimajatuqangit is being implemented.

The problem, he suggested, is that too few Inuit are in charge of the IQ program. “The reason behind (the delay) is people who do not understand the Inuit language and the culture are the ones who are doing the implementation,” he said.

“If we are going to speed up the process it has to be done by people who understand Inuit Qaujimajatuqangit and the traditions and cultures.”

To drive home his point, Arvaluk reminded MLAs of several ugly events in recent Inuit history. “At that time when there was relocation… they did not ask us first what we Inuit thought about it,” he said. “When they decided to kill our dogs, they did not check with us first. Also we were given e-disc numbers for identification, and they did this without consulting the Inuit.”

“The process is too slow,” Arvaluk said. “We have only two more years in our term and we will want to have this issue progress before then.”

David Iqaqrialu, the MLA for Uqqummiut, weighed in on the issue as well, urging the government to find money for IQ wherever possible.

“If our leaders have a strong crow bar to pry even the toughest obstacles we can find funding to deal with Inuit Qaujimajatuqangit,” he said.

“Nunavummiut will not be promoted by others. We have to promote our language and culture ourselves.”

Sending power south

Nunavut should explore exporting power to energy-hungry cities in the South, said Ed Picco, the minister in charge of the Nunavut Power Corporation.

In the assembly Monday, Picco suggested that Nunavut, with its wealth of lakes and waterways, might one day be able to generate hydroelectric power it could sell to the United States and southern Canada.

The issue arose as part of a discussion about extending Manitoba’s power grid north into the Kivalliq region.

Pressed by Baker Lake MLA Glenn McLean, Picco pledged to look for sources to fund a $10 million feasibility study to explore the extension of the grid.

One of the advantages of bringing transmission lines into Nunavut is that they could eventually serve as a conduit for sending hydro power to the South, Picco suggested.

In Labrador and the southern reaches of Nunavik, hydroelectric mega-projects produce much of the energy that heats and lights the cities of eastern Canada and the northeastern United States.