The GN’s invisible politicians

For more than a year, Nunavut’s embryonic fishing industry has been under attack, mostly from commercial fishing interests in the Atlantic provinces. They don’t like the federal government’s decision in 2001 to give Nunavut a 100-per-cent quota for turbot in northern Davis Strait, and they don’t like the way the Baffin Fisheries Coalition is developing Nunavut’s turbot resource.

Their attack on Nunavut is two-pronged.

The first tactic is to divide and conquer the BFC — by exploiting various grievances within its eleven member organizations. They hope that HTOs and small community-owned fishing companies will abandon the BFC, and then apply for and receive small fragments of the now-unified turbot allocation in northern Davis Strait, or division “0A.” After that, southern companies like Davis Strait Fisheries Ltd., Clearwater Fine Foods, Seafreez Foods Inc., along with numerous others, would only be too happy to step in and fish it for them — paying a few dollars for Nunavut’s fish, then taking the value-added wealth, including most of the jobs, back to Newfoundland or Nova Scotia.

That’s the way it’s done in southern Davis Strait, or division “0B,” where 73 per cent of the turbot quota is allocated to southern interests, and the remaining 26 per cent is fragmented among a collection of small Nunavut operators.

The second tactic is political: to exploit public opinion in the Atlantic provinces, and to lobby political bodies in Ottawa, such as the Senate standing committee on fisheries, which held hearings on Nunavut’s fishery last fall and then issued a 49-page report this past April.

The exploitation of public opinion got well underway last week, when Gus Etchegary, a former executive at Fisheries Products International got himself on CBC radio and television on a slow news day in St. John’s last week to huff and puff about the BFC’s use of a “foreign” — or Greenlandic — boat this summer and next.

Before he went on the air to make a fool of himself, somebody should have told him that from Nunavut’s point of view, Greenland is our Inuktitut-speaking circumpolar neighbour. However, because many Newfoundlanders blame European trawlers for destroying their cod fishery, braying and ranting about foreigners arouses deep emotions in that province.

But there’s nothing new about Etchegary’s allegations. Disgruntled southern firms who can’t get into the northern Davis Strait fishery, and who can’t persuade the BFC to charter their boats, brought the same complaints to the Senate committee hearings last fall.

But there’s a good reason why the BFC won’t use a Canadian boat. They can’t find one that’s big enough and at the same time uses an environmentally-friendly hook-and-line method of catching fish. Unable to find a suitable boat in Canada, they’ve gone out and found one that used to be owned by the state-owned Royal Greenland firm, which they have the option of buying in two years’ time.

The BFC, don’t forget, is an instrument of Nunavut government policy. It was created through the work of a Nunavut fisheries working group that GN bureaucrats participate in and support.

So throughout the entire time that Nunavut’s interest in the fishery has been under attack, what have the Government of Nunavut’s elected politicians been up to? As far as we can tell, hiding in the nearest bolt-hole.

Instead, non-elected officials like Ben Kovic of the NWMB and Gerry Ward of the BFC have gone on the radio this week to do the kind of work that elected politicians are supposed to do — speak out on behalf of Nunavut’s interests.

The most informed and articulate defence of Nunavut’s interests so far has actually come from Nancy Karetak-Lindell, and from John Efford, a federal cabinet minister from — guess where? Newfoundland.

And isn’t that the same Nancy Karetak-Lindell who, just more than a year ago, was being attacked by territorial politicians for not defending Nunavut? Now it’s the territorial politicians who are sleeping, and Nancy who is doing the work.

What an embarrassment for the GN. There are far too many territorial politicians who think politics is all about big trucks, cell phones and pretty sealskin vests, with a few boring weeks of legislative assembly meetings to get through as fast as you can. It’s time for Premier Paul Okalik and his cabinet to start doing their jobs. JB