Quotes of the year

“I’ve always maintained that Iqaluit people think the western boundary of Nunavut is the airport runway in Iqaluit.”
— Charlie Lyall, president of the Kitikmeot Corp, commenting on how Nunavut’s Iqaluit-centred government ignores the Kitikmeot region.

“We create Inuit organizations with humongous operational costs and they’re just above our heads up there, they’re not really at the ground level. Our communities are craving for control and yet there’s no real mechanism to give them that control. You have hamlet councils, but their focus is narrow. There’s really no ground support for people in a holistic way. I think aboriginal government, Inuit government, hasn’t really happened with the land claim.”
— Abe Tagalik on why men are being left behind in Nunavut.

“People wanted to kill this race and they did.”
— Tom Braggard commenting on last year’s Nunavut Snow Challenge, and Nunavut Productions’ broken dream of airing the race on The Sports Network for a second time.

“Number one, it’s hard to explain. Number two, no one can understand it. Number three, it doesn’t make any sense.”
— Education Minister Ed Picco on the Government of Nunavut’s reasons for getting rid of a school funding formula that was phased out this past April and replaced with a new one.

“I think drugs and alcohol are a problem because they’re so expensive. On the radio in Igloolik, you hear people selling a TV for $30 just to get a gram of marijuana.”
— High school student Sandi Vincent in a meeting with the Canadian Centre on Substance Abuse.

“What’s next? Beer gardens for day care?”
— Iqaluit councilor Glen Williams on whether the city should allow a beer garden to raise money for a soup kitchen in Iqaluit.

“A lot of people in the communities are not too sure of what the government does.”
— Uqqummiut MLA James Arreak, in the legislative assembly on March 4, 2005.

“Of course, we understand how it feels when there’s a disaster or tragedy.”
— Maggie Emudluk, who was mayor of Kangiqsualujjuaq when an avalanche devastated her community on Jan. 1, 1999, commenting on the outpouring of support for Asian tsunami victims that swept Nunavik and Nunavut last January.

“You can count on them to make the wrong decision. Their first impulse is to make the wrong decision because they don’t think through the problem first.”
— A Nunavik doctor commenting on the beleaguered Inuulitsivik Heath Board and their continuing problems.

“We’ve got people living in these million dollar mansions, with big bank accounts and traveling all over and not helping us at all with the social problems. So we’re left holding the bag, trying to explain to the families and the communities what’s going on. With our limited resources, drugs and alcohol have caused us a lot of problems.”
— Brian Jones, KRPF police chief, at a press conference announcing the arrest of 42 suspected drug traffickers in Nunavut, Nunavik and Montreal.

“We’re already calling it Nunavimmiut Aquvinnga and later we’ll worry about what they’re going to call it in English and French.”
— Nunavik’s chief negotiator, Minnie Grey, about the agreement-in-principle for self-government in Nunavik.

“We’re the Third World. We’re a different country, and we have sub-standard resources. It’s like another country.”
— A resident of Kangirsuk bemoans her community’s deteriorating social conditions.

“This has really offensively pissed me off.”
— Norm Cohen of Igloolik Isuma Productions on his company’s long wait for funding from Nunavut Film. Igloolik Isuma Productions effectively closed its Igloolik office in March, when a labour rebate was late in arriving from the GN’s Department of Economic Development.

“The Arctic is part of Canada. This is our territory and we are going to occupy it the way we do in the South.”
— Prime Minister Paul Martin, speaking at the UN Climate Change Conference this past December.

“The GN considers staff accommodations a privilege, and not a right or benefit of employment.”
— The GN’s new staff housing policy, which attempts to move the staff housing system to market-based rents.

“If you’re running a jail for the Department of Corrections, you’re supposed to be setting an example at that level. People in those positions should set an example: if they aren’t going to, they should pay the price for their mistakes.”
— A Kugluktuk resident comments on assault charges laid against Helen Laroque, the former head of a new correctional healing centre in Kugluktuk.

“It doesn’t pass the smell test.”
— NDP member of Parliament Peter Stoffer, commenting on the Baffin Fisheries Coalition, its relationship with Nataaqnaq Fisheries and the Nunavut Wildlife Management Board, and their handling of turbot quota in northern Davis Strait since 2002.