Paul Martin braves the North

SARA MINOGUE

Prime Minister Paul Martin displayed an intimate knowledge of Iqaluit’s raffish past on the first day of his northern tour when he asked, “What happened to the Zoo?” as he and his wife Sheila left the Frobisher Inn in Iqaluit early Wednesday morning to catch a flight to Pond Inlet.

The Zoo was the local nickname for the Frobisher Inn’s old Tulugaq Bar, which was replaced last year by the Storehouse Bar and Grill.

The first night of the prime minister’s northern tour was a quiet evening in Iqaluit. Martin officially launched his northern visit at a community event at Pond Inlet High School at noon on Wednesday.

Martin spent yesterday at a community event in Panniqtuuq before returning to Iqaluit to meet Premier Paul Okalik and later, some community members at the Cadet Hall.

The prime minister heads west today to meet Northwest Territories Premier Joe Handley in Inuvik, and then on to Tuktoyaktuk, Whitehorse and Watson Lake before wrapping up his visit in Rankin Inlet tomorrow.

Cambridge Bay MLA Keith Peterson welcomed the prime minister to the North in a letter written Aug. 5.

In the same letter, Peterson expressed regret that Martin would not be visiting the Kitikmeot region, which, Peterson wrote, “has the potential to become the engine of economic growth for all of the territory.”

Peterson first met the prime minister when Martin was Jean Chretien’s finance minister, and Peterson led the Nunavut Association of Municipalities.

“I am glad to see that you are finally getting a first-hand look at some of the issues we discussed,” Peterson wrote.

Peterson also invited the new DIAND Minister, Andy Scott, to visit the Kitikmeot during his northern tour tentatively planned before parliament meets this fall.

Scott, the MP for Fredericton-York-Sudbury in New Brunswick, replaced former DIAND minister Andy Mitchell in the cabinet shuffle this July. He already had the northern territories on his agenda when he was serving as minister of state for infrastructure earlier this year.

This spring, Scott was communicating with Yves Ducharme, president of the Federation of Canadian Municipalities, about the “infrastructure gap” in the North.

In a letter dated May 21, Scott told Ducharme that he agrees a gap exists, and that educating the government about the region and its lack of infrastructure was a priority of the secretariat.