PM heading north for informal tour

Paul Martin will visit Nunavut next week, in a five-day summer tour of the northern territories hosted by his Liberal party’s three territorial MPs. It will be his first such visit as prime minister.

“He’ll fly up and go visit the national parks first, the one in Pond Inlet and the one in Panniqtuuq, mainly to meet with the people,” Nunavut MP Nancy Karetak-Lindell said last Tuesday. “Then he’ll come back to Iqaluit, where we’re going to try to have events in which people can have a chance to come and say hello to him.”

As of Nunatsiaq News press-time this week, Martin’s tour schedule was incomplete.

Martin will arrive in Iqaluit Aug. 10, where he’ll spend the night before heading to Pond Inlet the next morning.

“We had some questions as to why he didn’t come up to visit during the election campaign, so we did press him to make sure he visits the North,” Karetak-Lindell said.

After his Baffin visit, Martin will carry on to Inuvik and Tuktoyaktuk in the Northwest Territories. On Aug. 13, he’ll hit Whitehorse, where he and Yukon MP Larry Bagnell will attend a reception and some local grip-and-grin events.

On the morning of Aug. 14, he’ll spend a few hours in Watson Lake, then fly all the way over to Rankin Inlet, where he’ll wind up his northern tour with what Karetak-Lindell calls a “meet-and-greet” type of event.

“He’s really interested in meeting with northerners and speaking to them about their concerns and about what they hope for Canada. And he wanted to visit a few key communities where the prime minister doesn’t often go,” said Melanie Gruer, Martin’s press secretary.

Officials with the government of Nunavut and the Nunavut legislative assembly appeared to be taken by surprise when the PMO issued the announcement this past Tuesday afternoon.

That’s likely because the northern MPs aren’t likely to line up any official face-to-face meetings between Martin and northern politicians.

Instead, Karetak-Lindell said, Martin will “be chatting with people at the meet-and-greets.”

On Sept. 13, Martin will host a federal-provincial-territorial premiers’ conference on health reform. Premiers are now pressing him for full federal funding of all medical travel costs in the three northern territories and Labrador.