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Okalik looks back on a mixed year

Frustration with Ottawa, but pride in Nunavut’s building efforts

JIM BELL

Premier Paul Okalik’s fondest memory of 2002 is the lingering picture of what he saw while visiting Pond Inlet’s new school last November.

In December 1999, Okalik saw students at the community’s old school studying in hallways and storage rooms.

"This past November, I went back up after they had finished the new school and I saw they now have space to study."

Okalik says it’s an example of the infrastructure that Nunavut has built for itself since its creation, and he considers that to be an accomplishment he’s pleased with.

But Okalik’s bitterest memory of 2002 also dates back to November, when Nunavut’s rocky relationship with the Department of Indian and Northern Affairs, and its minister, Bob Nault, got a lot worse.

That’s when Nault told reporters — at the end of a meeting of aboriginal affairs ministers in Iqaluit that month — that Nunavut isn’t ready to receive a share of revenues from mining, oil and gas development in the territory.

"The comments made by the Indian Affairs minister aren’t helpful. They’re very stupid," Okalik said.

Yukon and the Northwest Territories are moving rapidly toward the completion of agreements with Ottawa that give their governments a share of royalty and tax revenue from non-renewable resource development. The new money will lessen their financial dependence on Ottawa.

But Nault said Nunavut doesn’t have the capacity to handle the responsibilities that would be devolved to the territory under a resource revenue sharing agreement.

"It will be some time, I think, before devolution takes place here in Nunavut," Nault said in November.

For Nunavut’s premier that’s an insult.

"I think that what we have done in the three and half years that we have been in office is an indication of a record that we can do practically anything that we’re asked to do. I don’t think the minister has been looking at our record," Okalik said.

Nault’s comments were the latest in a series of frustrating experiences with Ottawa’s policies on fisheries, health-care funding, infrastructure development and housing, along with its treatment of Inuit as an aboriginal people.

Nunavut’s premier now says that putting "a new minister" in charge of DIAND may be the only hope for change in Nunavut’s relationship with the federal government.

"If not, I guess we’ll have to wait another year," Okalik said. "I hope the Prime Minister will feel that there needs to be some good positive change made on aboriginal issues and make the right decision in the new year. If not, we’ll just wait for a new prime minister to come along."

But Okalik also said 2002 was marked by special moments that made his job rewarding.

Those highlights include the Queen’s visit to Nunavut in October, and Iqaluit’s hosting of the 2002 Arctic Winter Games in March.

As for his government’s accomplishments in 2002, Okalik lists the settlement of a lawsuit launched by Ed Horne’s sexual abuse victims, the government’s work on creating more staff housing, the government’s new social housing rent scale, its work on a new Wildlife Act, and the introduction of a Human Rights Act.

"I would say that we have produced a lot more work since those formative years," Okalik said.

Looking to the future, Okalik says that he plans to run for MLA in this fall’s territorial election, and that, if elected, he will again seek the premier’s job to continue work that he started during the life of the current assembly.

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