Nunavut senator reflects on career of balancing ideals and compromise

Sen. Dennis Patterson’s office is on the fifth floor of the Victoria Building on Wellington Street in Ottawa. It has a simple decor that looks like it hasn’t been updated in years.

There are flourishes of Nunavut, though. Draped over the back of a chair is a red fox fur pelt; on the coffee table a sits handbag made of sealskin; on a side table stands a Inuit soapstone carving of a polar bear.

On the wall is a framed copy of the front page of Nunatsiaq News from September 2009, when he was sworn-in as senator for Nunavut.

Former senator Charlie Watt, a Liberal, steps forward to support Nunavut’s Conservative Sen. Dennis Patterson, on the day he was sworn into office in 2009. (Photo by Denis Drever)

The photo’s caption reads “northern solidarity,” in reference to Nunavik’s Charlie Watt, then a Liberal senator for Quebec, as he walks arm-in-arm with Patterson, a Conservative. They are all smiles.

Patterson’s career in the Senate ends on Dec. 30, when he turns 75, the mandatory retirement age in the Red Chamber. As that day approached, he sat down with Nunatsiaq News to reflect on his political life as someone with strong political ideals but who also isn’t afraid to compromise.

“My hero, from the age of nine was John Diefenbaker,” Patterson said, adding he vividly remembers the former Progressive Conservative prime minister’s election in 1957.

Conservatism may have been Patterson’s guiding principle but bipartisanship, working with those he might disagree with, has always been his way to get things done, said Claudine Santos, who has worked as his parliamentary affairs director since 2012.

“I have learned many valuable lessons from [Patterson] throughout the years, but the first one is that politics is the art of compromise,” she said.

“It’s not always about scoring … partisan points for him. It’s really about what is best for the North.”

The idea that created Nunavut

One of those compromises ended up creating the territory of Nunavut.

It was 1989, and negotiators for the federal government, N.W.T. government and Inuit leaders were hammering out the final points for the Nunavut Land Claims Agreement. Patterson was involved in this process as the premier of the Northwest Territories.

Inuit negotiators wanted to see provisions for the creation of a future territory, but federal policy at the time barred “political development” to be part of any land-claims agreement. Instead, land claims were about land and money, Patterson said.

“So how do we get around that?” he asked.

“I had written a letter with Paul Quassa to the then-prime minister Brian Mulroney saying we’re ready to sign the land-claim agreement. But there has to be a commitment to the creation of Nunavut in order for us to sell this to the Inuit.”

It was 2 a.m. on a December night when Patterson had the idea that became Article 4 of the Nunavut Land Claims Agreement. 

Essentially, it was a commitment to working on a separate agreement which would eventually become the Nunavut Act, laying the foundation for the creation of the new territory. 

“[Article 4] was concocted as a face-saving way for the feds to make it happen in spite of cabinet policy,” Patterson said.

Two months after the land-claims agreement became law, the Nunavut Act was signed. Nunavut officially became a territory on April 1, 1999.

Reflecting on this milestone during tributes to Patterson on Dec. 13, Sen. Scott Tannas called Patterson “a modern-day father of Confederation.”

Developing Nunavut

Patterson has spent his Senate career working tirelessly for the development of Nunavut, its infrastructure and mining.

The Grays Bay Road and Port Project, which promises to connect a mineral rich area of Nunavut to the rest of Canada, has been a particular passion.

Grays Bay still exists only as a $550-million dream — it has had a number of proponents attempt to guide it through a permitting process that will alone cost millions. The Nunavut government backed out in 2018, leaving Kitikmeot Inuit Association at the helm. Then KIA also backed out in January.

When West Kitikmeot Gold Corp. announced in November it would take the reins, Patterson was present at the signing ceremony.

Patterson also said he’s proud of his work getting former prime minister Stephen Harper to commit to building Iqaluit’s deepsea port. It’s a project he said he was pushing for 40 years.

The port opened last summer. 

But Patterson recalls one of his proudest moments as seeing construction start in August on a recovery centre for Nunavut. Work on the $83.7-million project in Iqaluit is currently underway. 

Taking a stand

Patterson withdrew from the Senate’s Conservative caucus in February 2022 over a lack of condemnation from his party of Ottawa’s Freedom Convoy protests.

While mostly a symbolic move — Patterson is still a member of the Conservative Party — he described the decision as one of solidarity with Inuit living in Ottawa.

“The outrage of my constituents from Nunavut, whose family members were here for medical [reasons], whose children were here [for school]; the Inuit who live in shelters downtown; the Inuit who work for the government here on the Hill,” he said.

“I had family members calling me from the North worried about the safety of their kids.”

So perhaps it’s not surprising that when asked whether he would choose conservative politics or the people of Nunavut, he said: “Your first loyalty is always to the people of Nunavut.”

As Patterson readied to move out of his office on Wellington Street, he said he was thinking about turning to writing.

“Not about me, but about having been a participant and sometimes a bystander in [Nunavut’s] evolution,” Patterson said.

He said he’s also hoping to stay involved in the Grays Bay Road project and other infrastructure projects, and make some more time for those he loves.

“My wife would be the first to say [Nunavut’s] been maybe an obsession,” Patterson said. 

“I am grateful to my wife. She has been waiting for me. I owe her some time.”