Was Nunavut worth it?

As many Nunavut residents get ready to celebrate Nunavut Day tomorrow, and then to “celebrate” it again on Monday if they happen to work for a government or quasi-government employer, now may be as good a time as any to think about whether the Nunavut project was worth doing.

It’s a complicated question, because Nunavut is, and was, a complicated project: an agreement to compensate Inuit for lands that came under the control of the Canadian state, and a related agreement to divide the Northwest Territories and create a new territorial government.

It’s never a welcome question, either. Most Nunavut leaders, like political leaders everywhere, are excessively fond of feel-good political displays full of fluffy words and little substance.

A good example of that is tomorrow’s proclamation of the Wildlife Act into law – minus the regulations that will actually tell people what they may or may not do. It’s like being armed with a rifle, but no bullets.

And there are many members of territory’s small political and bureaucratic elite who get prestige, social status, and above all, easy money, from Nunavut’s multi-layered networks of administrative institutions. It’s simply not in their interest to ask many deep questions whose answers could weaken the legitimacy of the system.

So was the creation of Nunavut worth it?

There are some beneficial things that governments, and others, have done that could not have happened without the creation of Nunavut. They include a nursing program at Arctic College that has already begun to graduate Inuit nurses; more aggressive efforts by the RCMP to recruit and train Inuit police officers; and the highly-publicized program to train Inuit law graduates.

And when Nunavut left the Northwest Territories in 1999, it was possible, at long last, to get a clear picture of what the people of Nunavut really need to better their lives: especially in health care, housing, municipal infrastructure, correctional services, education, and economic development. It isn’t often a pretty picture. But now, policy makers enjoy access to indisputable sets of facts that they can use to lobby for better housing, health care and many other essential services.

The creation of the Nunavut government and other institutions has also given the region a stronger voice. In the national health care funding debate, Nunavut is now recognized as a special region with special needs, even if those needs are still not met. Though a child born in Nunavut today can expect to live, on average, 10 to 15 fewer years than a child born in Toronto or Vancouver, at least that is now known.

And in the allocation of fish harvesting rights within Nunavut’s adjacent offshore, Nunavut’s share is rising slowly. Even though Nunavut still doesn’t have the infrastructure needed to take advantage of its new quotas, it makes future planning easier.

On the other hand, many Nunavut residents are not happy with the Nunavut project, especially those who live far from the capital. Many Kitikmeot residents are so dissatisfied, they’ve been musing aloud about threatening to separate from Nunavut. That’s not surprising, given that for many years Nunavut’s western region received better services from Yellowknife than they now get from Iqaluit.

The Nunavut government has now had enough time to recover from the wounds inflicted upon it by blunders committed within the Office of the Interim Commissioner during the 1997-99 planning period. But when Nunavut residents try to get services from their government, they’re too often confronted with incompetence and confusion. Just ask a student who’s tried to get a FANS cheque on time, an entrepreneur who’s applied for an economic development grant, or a medical patient stranded in Ottawa.

The Government of Nunavut may be better staffed than in the desperate days of 1999 and 2000, but it’s clear that many employees still don’t know what they’re doing, and that some departments are still suffering from the effects of decentralization.

And some communities are, in different ways, signaling that the Nunavut project’s official institutions are inadequate. The hunters of Qikiqtarjuaq, for example, have turned their backs on the officially-endorsed Baffin Fisheries Coalition, and have made great strides towards the creation of their own community-based fishery. In Baker Lake, hamlet councillors have said they want to make their own deals with a company that plans to build a gold mine near their community – because they believe the Inuit Impact and Benefits Agreement process doesn’t offer them enough.

But these are hopeful signs, because it shows that the spirit of independence still lives in the hearts of Nunavummiut. If that spirit isn’t crushed by Nunavut’s often robotic bureaucracy, then perhaps a decade or so from now we may be able to say with certainty that the Nunavut project was worth it. JB