When candidates are mum, what will they be like as MLAs?
Willingness to speak up is one factor voters should consider on election day
MLAs toss their papers from their desks Sept. 18 in celebration of the end of the final sitting of the legislative assembly before the Oct. 27 election. (Photo by Jeff Pelletier)
If political candidates won’t talk to Nunatsiaq News during an election campaign, what makes you think they’ll speak to you … or for you, after they get elected?
It’s a question voters should consider before the Oct. 27 territorial election — a little more than a week from now.
Nunatsiaq News has been publishing profiles of each of the races in the upcoming election. They’re brief introductions to the candidates in each constituency and the issues they’re talking about.
You can read eight of them in this week’s paper on pages 12 through 15. Five were published last week and the rest will be in next week’s paper. But they’ll all be published on our website.
Not surprisingly, housing and food prices are recurring themes.
Tracking down 58 candidates in the 20 constituencies where there are races in a month is a tall order.
Some candidates were easy for our reporters to reach, while others unfortunately were very hard to get in touch with.
There’s a mishmash of contact information on Elections Nunavut’s website, which provides only information that the candidates offered. Some gave phone numbers and email addresses; some just gave their mailing address. (To find out where they stand, you could write them a letter … in the middle of a postal strike.)
Reporters found some candidates unavailable despite repeated attempts to contact them over at least two days. If, before the election, a candidate won’t return a phone call or email within 48 hours, you might wonder how responsive he or she would be after the election.
A few turned down interview requests, saying they preferred to keep their campaigns local. Presumably, they figured they could win by talking only to their neighbours. Or they counted on Facebook pages to speak for them.
Not so fast. Though someone gets elected by the people in their community, every MLA has a responsibility to the territory as a whole. The decisions an MLA for Arviat South, for example, make will affect the lives of people from Kugluktuk to Pangnirtung and every hamlet in between.
And in Nunavut’s consensus government — where political parties aren’t part of the government machinery — any MLA elected on Oct. 27 could conceivably become the premier or a cabinet minister responsible for important departments such as health, education, finance or justice.
The interviews for the election stories were pretty easy: Talk to a reporter for 10 minutes. Explain your background. Share a bit about your family. Describe the issues you’d champion if you were elected.
If a candidate can’t make time for that or, worse, brushes it off, ask yourself — is this who I want running the Government of Nunavut’s $3-billion budget and making decisions about health care, education and housing?
Nunatsiaq News doesn’t have a tradition of endorsing candidates the way some Canadian newspapers — especially in big cities in the south — do. We’re not in the business of telling readers who to vote for.
But there’s a lot at stake in the election. When candidates don’t talk to the news media during a campaign — whether they’re not available, they don’t provide contact information or simply choose not to speak — it sends an early signal about the kind of representative they’ll be.
Voters should take that into account before they put an X on a ballot.
Maybe they just need a job and they think they have a % chance of landing one?
One reason we should vote for the Netsilik riding incumbent as stated by him is because he hasn’t had a drink in 4 years. We can do better.
😂 Like a candidate in the west, running for office said, “If you vote for me, I’ll go to Detox.”🍺🥳😂
Qikiqtarjuaq is further east than Pangnirtung. It is the only community in Nunavut’s fourth time zone
Just because they don’t respond to nunatsiaq does not mean they won’t respond to the constituency. People don’t make decisions on what nn writes. It’s all slanted stuff. Even this article is trying to tell the voters if they won’t respond to us. They won’t respond to you. Don’t vote them. Sad. Most people don’t read nn anyway.
Most people don’t read. Period. But you missed the point, sir. Asking to represent a constituency means representing the people of that riding or district. That means being accessible to them to hear their concerns. It’s a large piece of a representative’s responsibility. Availing of the media is an effective avenue to engage the public.
NN used to be the place to read up on candidates profiles back in the day. The paper had merit and the reporters knew the issues facing the territory. Why get interviewed by a transient reporter and be chastised remotely be Iqaluut readers?
Inuit governance has become a shameful joke. Lots of clueless incompetents just going through the motions and playing dressup.
Twenty five years into the creation of Nunavut, this is totally pathetic.
I believe I’m optimistic by nature, yet can’t help but think it’s really never going to get better here. There are just too many embedded myths and distortions in the noise. Nunavut is in many ways a systemic failure, some of which is by its own design.
And that’s why Ottawa will always have such a loud voice in matters of Nunavut’s future and the devolution of the territory’s management and its resources.
The same reason you don’t allow children to run with scissors.
I dont even think Corey, the writer of this editorial can vote in the election, as he is not a Nunavut resident.
Perhaps this is an opportunity for some introspection by Nunatsiaq.
Most Inuit I know stopped reading this website years ago. The comment section here is infamous for dismissive and malicious racism against Inuit masquerading as insight and ‘accountability’.
Instead of blaming MLA candidates for not responding to you, perhaps it’s better to consider why they may be willing to do that? Perhaps ask why an outfit that employs people who don’t live here and/or aren’t even citizens of this country should be taken seriously by Inuit?
This isn’t an attack – I’m letting you know what people say about Nunatsiaq – specifically about the comments you allow on here. The moderators seem to increasingly cater to a small, angry, resentful, terminally-online subset of old white dudes and it’s doing you harm.
If you are trying to suggest that candidates are not talking to Nunatsiaq News because of their comment policies instead of the candidates’ own deficiencies and cluelessness, you’re revealing your own prejudices more than anything.
Okay, if mum talking to the press. Let’s hear wannabe MLA’s talk about the Mountain High modular home $$$$$ gravel pads built and staill are in Rankin Inlet.
Had a tour around Rankin on Sunday to view these gravel pads that no longer take half or full day to build. Instead weeks and weeks.
Makes you wonder how many houses could have been built if Housing Corp. didn’t spend big bucks for sky high pads. Ok wannabe MLA’s, let’s hear what’s going on. Or it’s expected you will still stay quiet as a mouse even if elected?