Nunavik’s new MP struggles to find his way

In his attempts to get to know the region he now represents in Ottawa, Yvan Lévesque, Nunavik’s member of Parliament, has been having a tough time emerging from the shadow of Guy St-Julien, the region’s former Liberal Party MP.

His problems are due to his lack of familiarity with the region and its complicated issues, rather than the fact that Lévesque is a member of the nationalist Bloc Québécois Party.

Lévesque’s credibility has suffered some serious blows: in January, Lévesque ended up in Kangiqsualujjuaq instead of Kangiqsujuaq, a mistake that baffled Nunavik’s leaders.

“If he can’t find his way to the right community, you have to ask how he well he’s going to help us in Ottawa,” said one Makivik Corp. executive.

This week, Lévesque continued to plug along: he was visiting Nunavik’s Hudson Strait communities from Ivujivik to Quaqtaq — continuing to carry out his commitment to visit every Nunavik community, a vow he made shortly after beating St-Julien in last June’s federal election.

In a news release prior to his departure to Nunavik, Lévesque, who has been in the region on several other occasions, said he is pushing for an enlargement of Puvirnituq’s airstrip and for more housing to alleviate Nunavik’s housing crisis.

“In several communities there are very severe housing problems,” Lévesque told the Val d’Or newspaper, La Sentinelle, in mid-January. “Some houses have three or four families which creates conditions that favour illnesses like tuberculosis. The government has to do something because there is a crying need for housing. There’s a need for at least 10 houses in each of the 14 villages.”

Lévesque also said an Ottawa-Québec housing program to deliver prefabricated houses to Nunavik hadn’t delivered the goods and many communities in Nunavik hadn’t received new housing construction over the past five years.

St-Julien, who now works as a consultant for Makivik in Ottawa, was quick to correct Lévesque’s error.

Since 2000, a five-year housing program managed by Makivik has built 227 housing units in Nunavik.

St-Julien said a renewed version of this housing program will allow housing construction in the region to continue.

“This new agreement should be even better… this is very positive for the Inuit who live in the Far North. It’s true there is still a need for more houses, but it’s entirely false to say that none have been built over the past five years,” St-Julien said.