Nunavut’s top 10 news makers

You may not like some of the people who made the news this year and you may not agree with what some of them said or did – we feel that way too.

But after a wee bit of thought, here’s our list of Nunavut’s 10 top news makers in 2006. Feel free to disagree, and if you do, write us and tell us why:

* Number 1 – Nunavut Premier Paul Okalik: After a fairly quiet start, Okalik ended the year with a bang when he started preparatory talks on devolution, followed soon after by a strong declaration of Nunavut’s right to receive oil and gas revenues from internal waters. Will Nunavut continue to limp along as a struggling quasi-colony? Or will Nunavut win the means to one day stand on its own two feet? More than anything else that happened last year, these talks will lead to an outcome that could determine Nunavut’s future for generations to come.

* Number 2 – Justice Thomas Berger: It’s unlikely that his recommendations on education in Nunavut will ever be fully carried out, but Berger’s synthesis of what Nunavummiut have been saying about education for the past 30 years gave us a lot to talk about this year and a lot to build on. His less-publicized, but equally important, conciliation work on the land claims implementation contract is also worthy of notice. We can only hope that NTI and the federal government will find a way to build on that conciliation work. If they can’t, it’s beneficiaries who will be the big losers.

* Number 3 – Justice Beverly Brown and the Nunavut Electoral Boundaries Commission: If their recommendations on expanding the size of the legislative assembly to 23 seats are accepted, the shape of Nunavut’s legislature will change dramatically, with an expanded regular members’ caucus that will outnumber the cabinet by a big margin. But our prediction is that MLAs will reject much that report, on the grounds that now is the wrong time for an expensive expansion of the legislature.

* Number 4 – The polar bear: The uncertainty over how polar bear populations will respond to global warming has sparked a major conflict between Inuit hunters and scientists that’s in neither side’s best interest. Unfortunately, Nunavut has probably lost the battle already.

* Number 5 – Jim Prentice: One of Stephen Harper’s best cabinet ministers, Prentice came through with major commitments on housing and compensation for residential school survivors, then made sure that long-delayed Nunavut devolution talks got started. Unfortunately, Prentice may soon move to another portfolio in an expected cabinet shuffle.

* Number 6 – Nunavut Tunngavik Inc.: After five years of frustrating negotiations on a new implementation contract for the Nunavut land claims agreement, NTI is now taking the federal government to court. Will it work? Right now, it’s too early to say. But in the process leading up to that lawsuit, NTI’s work shed much light on Nunavut’s education and training needs. We can only hope that this work will not have been in vain.

* Number 7 – Prime Minister Stephen Harper: Harper makes this list because of the stir he created last summer with a speech vowing to defend Canadian sovereignty within clearly defined Arctic borders. But his government has tough questions to answer on this issue. The underfunded Coast Guard’s icebreaker fleet is aging and due for replacement – so why are three new icebreakers proposed for the Navy? And why are Nunavut’s internal waters excluded from devolution talks?

* Number 8 – James Arvaluk: Arvaluk, the man who doesn’t know how to take no for an answer, makes this list for managing, once again, to vault back into office after a potentially career-destroying criminal conviction. You may be appalled by his past and you may not be happy about his by-election victory in Tunnuniq last year. But you can’t deny that he’s given us a lot to think about.

* Number 9 – Qikiqtani Inuit Association: QIA makes this list for producing the most constructive proposal yet for resolving the vexing questions that surround the killing of Inuit dogs in the 1950s and 1960s: a “truth” commission. Much depends on how such a commission would be structured, and whether government agencies would be indemnified in exchange for agreeing to participate. But if its focus is therapeutic and not punitive, it just might work.

* Number 10 – Ed de Vries: Nunavut’s marijuana motormouth, Ed de Vries, may grate on your nerves and offend your sense of propriety. But buried within the enormous mound of self-serving nonsense that he piled up this year there lies a grain of uncomfortable truth: a large proportion of Nunavut residents, a majority probably, really do smoke dope. But as de Vries learned last summer, when some Igloolik residents wanted him run out of town, it’s a truth that most would prefer to bury.

Happy New Year, and a belated Merry Christmas to all our readers. May 2007 be your best year yet. JB