EdinburghNLP/nunavut-hansard-plusplus huggingface dataset:
Mr. Speaker, I rise today to commemorate the late Kananginak Pootoogook.
Mr. Speaker, Kananginak was a prominent community leader and a renowned artist, whose artwork has been exhibited in galleries around the world.
Mr. Speaker, this year ten pieces of Kananginak’s work are being exhibited in the 57th International Art Exhibition of the La Biennale di Venezia in Venice, Italy.
Mr. Speaker, the Venice Biennale is one of the world’s largest and most prestigious international art exhibitions.
Mr. Speaker, this exhibition has taken place every second year in the Venice, Italy since 1895.
Mr. Speaker, the late Kananginak is the first Inuit artist to have their work exhibited in this significant visual art event.
Mr. Speaker, ten drawings by the late Kananginak have been selected and can be found at the event’s “Pavilion of the Earth” installment. Among these drawings are some of Kananginak’s later ink and coloured-pencil on paper works, which depict the Inuit way of life.
Mr. Speaker, this year’s Venice Biennale exhibition enhances the global profile of Cape Dorset artists and reinforces the role of Inuit art on the international stage.
Mr. Speaker, while in Venice, representatives of Dorset Fine Arts and the West Baffin Eskimo Co-operative organized a special event to celebrate this historic moment for Inuit art.
In attendance were many international dignitaries and delegates.
Mr. Speaker, the event was also presided over by the Canadian Ambassador to Italy, Peter McGovern. I thank them all.
(interpretation ends) Mr. Speaker, (interpretation) I invite my colleagues to join me in commemorating this event and the achievements of the late Kananginak. Our thoughts and well wishes go to his extended family, descendants, and the community of Cape Dorset.
My colleagues, you must have noted that the clock was not set properly. I apologize
Member for Pangnirtung. Mr. Johnny Mike.
Member’s Statement 568 – 4(3): Update on 2017 Pangnirtung Fishery (Mike)
Good day to the people of Nunavut as well as the residents of Pangnirtung.
I, too, have a member’s statement I would like to make. I rise today to speak about an integral community initiative.
The turbot fishery commenced in February and continued to May 31 of this year.
During this winter’s turbot fishery, the fishers landed close to a million lbs. of turbot, or Greenland halibut.
The fishery hasn’t experienced this type of success in a while, but this winter Pangnirtung’s sea ice formed beautifully and it was nice and thick, which allowed them to fish until the end of May.
In the past decade the sea ice hadn’t been forming properly and typically the season would end around the beginning of March and sometimes at the end of February. In some years we could continue fishing until April, but this year the conditions were ideal for our turbot fishers.
With a harvest of close to a million lbs. of turbot within Pangnirtung Fiord, the income earned by the fishers was over $800,000.
The fishers also hire helpers to assist them. Another side benefit is the employees who work at the fish plant to process the landed catch. There are approximately 200 local people working within this fishery in Pangnirtung.
This is a very beneficial sector for our community as it assists in our local economy and supports the residents. Further, the board members of the fishery are very competent and committed to their role. They plan the fishery, which is also controlled by local Inuit.
With these developments, although I have only skimmed over the details, the conditions this winter allowed the turbot fishery to continue. I am very pleased that Pangnirtung residents are able to operate this fishery successfully.
Question 745 – 4(3): Dust Control Initiatives (Mikkungwak)
During our winter sitting I asked the minister a number of questions concerning dust control initiatives in the territory.
In his response the minister indicated that his department would be undertaking pilot tests on a new dust suppressant product called Dustop, which can be used on airport roads.
Will the minister consider having this product tested in Baker Lake this summer?
The pilot project that the member is talking about that I stated about in the winter sitting, as the member will recall, it was going to be tried out in Iqaluit and in Arviat.
The one in Iqaluit was inconclusive due to weather and other factors.
In Arviat it was delayed due to the rain. It rained more than normal and it was colder than normal.
It has to be dry and it has to be about 5 degrees, so the pilot project wasn’t done.
The pilot project will continue in Arviat as soon as it gets warm enough and before the rainy season.
Once that pilot project is done in Arviat, we will know whether it’s a suitable product for the rest of Nunavut.
On March 14, 2017, in his response to my questions, the minister stated that his department “funds the municipalities for dust control” and will continue to do so.
Can the minister tell us how much funding in total was allocated for the purchase of Nunavut’s dust suppressants for the summer of 2017?
CGS does fund the hamlets. It’s part of their block funding.
I can’t tell the member how much was spent on dust suppression because we fund the hamlets and it’s up to the hamlets how much of that money they use for dust suppression.
I can’t answer that information because the hamlets are responsible for purchasing their own dust suppression.
Mr. Mikkungwak: Mr. Speaker, the cost of product-based dust control includes the cost of the labour of municipal employees who apply the product in their communities on a regular basis throughout the summer.
Will the minister commit his department to conducting a cost analysis to determine how much Nunavut will have spent on the application of dust suppressants in the summer of 2017?
Yes, it’s dust time again. It has started in most communities.
I don’t see the point in an exercise to see how much exactly is spent.
Like I told the member, we fund the hamlets to purchase and operate the dust suppression.
We also put on training courses through the MTO to train the municipalities on application of dust suppression.
No, I will not commit to figuring out exactly every penny of how much is going to be spent on dust suppression.
I would rather their energies be spent on trying to deal with the dust problem that we have in Nunavut and try to lessen the amount of dust that the people of Nunavut have to tolerate because it is a problem.
We hear about it every year and we are doing our best to come up with a cost-effective solution for the dust problem in Nunavut.
Question 746 – 4(3): Vacant Staff Housing Units (Enook)
Good morning, fellow residents of Pond Inlet and Nunavummiut.
As the minister and all Members of the House are very much aware, a long-standing issue of concern for me has been the issue of long-standing vacant staff housing units.
Mr. Speaker, Action No. 23 of the minister’s Blueprint for Action on Housing indicates that the Nunavut Housing Corporation and the Department of Finance will, and I quote, “collaborate to make better use of existing staff housing stock through review of the process for reallocating vacant units…”
Mr. Speaker, my question for the minister is: can you update us today on the status of this work?
Mr. Speaker, as was previously stated, we were going to be dealing with the matter that he’s referring to. I would like to inform the member now that this work continues.
We have started working with the Department of Finance in regard to staff housing units so that they can be properly reviewed again.
I can tell my colleague now that we have directed a consulting firm to look into this matter and all the details of staff housing.
In May of 2015, and I have a copy of it, the minister wrote a letter to me concerning staff housing units in Pond Inlet.
At that time there was a total of 68 staff housing units in Pond Inlet, almost 15 percent of which were vacant.
Minister, can you tell me as of today, how many staff housing units in Pond Inlet are vacant?
I’m just going through my documents here to find the details for Pond Inlet and the percent of vacant staff housing units.
Mr. Speaker, if it’s okay with you, I want to find that information.
I can recall it, but I don’t want to say the wrong thing.
Mr. Speaker, what we explained in previous months is we need to update the information on how many units are vacant and how many are occupied.
The numbers are always changing, but I can get the information for my colleague during this sitting detailing how many units are vacant in Pond Inlet.
I’ll be expecting that information you committed to providing.
I have maintained and fellow residents of Pond Inlet have voiced the same concern that if government units are always going to be vacant, in light of the continued housing shortage faced by our community, it is unnerving to see and it becomes a sad state of affairs as well.
We see rows of empty staff units with no signs of occupancy and some units have never been occupied since they were constructed.
I have tried to voice this in the past and have had my constituents ask if these units will continue to sit vacant forever.
My constituents in Pond Inlet have told me that if the government cannot fill its vacant staff housing units in a reasonable period of time, the government should turn the units over to the community’s LHO to help address the public housing shortage crisis.
Is the minister open to this idea, yes or no?
Mr. Speaker, as per my earlier reply, the purpose of government staff housing units is to provide housing for our employees throughout Nunavut.
The issue is under review and as per my earlier comment, this has already begun and we have identified the terms of reference for the review.
What I can say here now regarding this review is that we plan to report on it in our fall session in September.
I have no doubt the report on the review will be ready for presentation and tabling in the House.
With regard to the member’s specific question, it will be included in the review on government staff housing.
I expect that the answers to his questions will be provided by the housing corporation as to whether the idea of transferring of units can be considered.
If there is a need to look into that, we will be able to do so.
Question 747 – 4(3): Premier’s Appearance before the House of Commons Standing Committee on Finance (Angnakak)
Good morning to everybody in the House and everybody watching.
On April 9, 2017 the Premier and the Minister of Community and Government Services appeared before the House of Commons Standing Committee on Finance on the occasion of one of its hearings on the issue of economic growth in the three northern territories.
Mr. Speaker, I strongly support efforts to bring Nunavut’s issues and concerns to federal decision-makers in Ottawa.
That’s very good to hear. I was very pleased that the Premier and the minister made this effort.
For the benefit of our viewing audience, can the Premier highlight what message he took to Ottawa on our behalf?
Mr. Speaker, we continually participate in discussions with our federal partners on the needs of Nunavut. One of the key things, of course, we’re trying to do is bring the cost of living down in Nunavut.
We’ve got a high cost of goods and services and food insecurity. One of the reasons being is the lack of transportation infrastructure.
That’s one of the key things that will bring our costs down for daily living for Nunavummiut.
Another point I brought up too was the carbon taxing.
We pleaded that no matter how you cut it, it’s a tax.
Money has got to come out of somebody’s pocket.
That’s one of the key things that I continually talk about with my colleagues down in Ottawa where we did manage to get recognition of the unique circumstances for the north.
That’s still indeterminate.
We don’t know exactly where that’s going to lead to, but that was recognized in the document of the pan-Canadian climate change framework.
We were recognized as unique, so I am continually encouraging and talking about the uniqueness of Nunavut. It’s the most expensive place in Canada and probably the most expensive place in the world to do any kind of business.
The cost of living is phenomenal.
Again, carbon taxing is one of the things that I had hoped to really encourage the committee that they pay hard attention to.
We’ve got to get our fuel up from southern jurisdictions and we pay the taxes for the other jurisdictions.
There are no two ways about it. We’re going to be on fuel for a long time yet. We don’t have any alternate energy options here in Nunavut and of course the north.
One of the things I want them to consider very seriously is to exempt home heating, power generating fuel, and aviation fuel.
I thank the minister for his response. It leads right into my second question.
In reviewing the transcript, I found it very interesting to read this, the presentation that they gave to the committee.
I noted that he raised the issue of the need to replace a number of aging power plants in our communities.
Can the Premier confirm if the issue of hydroelectric power development came up during his meeting with the federal ministers of Parliament?
Our discussions are always about how we’re going to figure out a way to bring our costs down for the people of Nunavut. That discussion did not come up.
We had anticipated that during the budget cycle of the federal government, one of our requests for the replacement of our aging generating plants in Nunavut… . 60 percent of our power generating plants in Nunavut is over the useful lifecycle. Some of them are 60 years old.
We do need modern generating stations within our isolated communities.
As you know, Mr. Speaker, every power plant is unique to its own community. Again, there is no connection between communities.
Every power plant in every community has to be in working order, modern, and contributes to less greenhouse gas emissions because we do have aging power plant stations within our communities.
That’s one of the key things that the Department of Finance, including other departments, has indicated to the federal government before the budget announcement was made in March.
That’s one of the key things that we had asked for from the federal government to include in the budget for replacement of our old and inefficient power generating plants within our communities.
I’m very much looking forward to reviewing more reports like this on your deliberations.
Can the Premier give us a sense today of how his presentation was received by the federal Members of Parliament?
Speaker (interpretation ends): Thank you. (interpretation ends) The Hon. Premier of Nunavut, Hon. Peter Taptuna.
I believe that it is still a task to inform and educate our colleagues in southern jurisdictions. A lot of them do have an understanding of our uniqueness of the north. Again, when we talk about the north, we do want to be a participant in how the north is developed.
We don’t want unilateral decisions made for the north, especially our territory of Nunavut, and we do want to be a partner with the federal government and find ways together to bring the cost of living down for Nunavummiut.
The federal government being our key partner, as you know, 92 to 93 percent of our core funding for operations of Nunavut comes from the federal government.
We encourage them to understand our uniqueness, unique situation, our lack of infrastructure when it comes to transportation, and the uniqueness of building 25 of everything in Nunavut.
As mentioned before, when we build a school for a population down south, for a population of 100,000, there is one school built, but in Nunavut you have to build 25 of everything: 25 schools, 25 health centres, 25 airstrips, 25 of everything.
That’s the key thing that most politicians down south don’t understand. For the small population of Nunavut, one of the things that they are starting to understand is the unique differences between southern jurisdictions and the north.
That’s a message that we continually bring down. Going into the future, we want our politicians down south to fully understand our uniqueness up here.
Question 748 – 4(3): Improving Health Care Services (Shooyook)
I have continued to ask the minister questions about issues.
Mr. Speaker, I have another question for the Minister of Health.
I want to voice our ongoing concerns with medical travel and diagnostic challenges faced by residents.
The shortage of physicians and nurses is the root cause.
Can the minister consider this idea I am suggesting here?
My idea to meet the challenges is to have doctors, such as the ones here in Iqaluit, rotated to outlying communities. There are three communities I am thinking of that should have a local or rotating doctor position in our future: Pangnirtung, Pond Inlet, and Igloolik.
As an example, this would alleviate our regional challenges in diagnostic requirements, as currently we are falling further behind and the use of the machines is expensive. With these facts, I wonder if the department has considered ways to alleviate these challenges or if the answer will be that it’s too costly.
I want to ask what future plans the department has in relation to this idea I am asking with having doctors in these three communities. This would lower the wait times and would benefit the outlying communities since the residents outside of these three communities would only have to travel a short distance where diagnostic machines could be available.
Can you inform me as to whether you have considered this possibility?
I appreciate the member’s question. It has been raised to me also by MLAs from the communities that he mentioned.
It is something that the Department of Health continuously looks at to make sure that doctor visits are scheduled for appropriate lengths of time.
There has been some desire for actual physician placements in some of those communities.
During the review of the model of care, that is one of the things that we’re looking at to make sure that Nunavummiut are getting the appropriate care by the appropriate level of health care provider.
It is part of the model of care review that’s being undertaken as we speak, Mr. Speaker.
Mr. Shooyook (interpretation): Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I also thank the minister for his clear response.
As the minister mentioned, this matter is of great importance.
Every year the practice is to have a physician visit the communities for precursory examinations. However, these visits are always too short. Many patients don’t get to see the doctor and the scheduled days quickly pass.
This is problematic because I feel that we can make better use of our health care funds if several outlying communities had local doctors in the three communities that I mentioned.
When will your department have an idea as to what type of rotation or physician placement would occur, and what year are you estimating this could be accomplished?
In what year will this start, or is your department just in the initial planning stages for this?
When would your department have a concrete plan for physicians in the three communities with a year identified as the goal?
Can you provide more background on this issue?
With the model of care review that’s being undertaken right now, I’m looking to have a draft preliminary report some time in the very near future so that I can analyze some of the data that’s in there, along with my officials from the Department of Health.
Then we can look at proposing solutions to mitigate some of the issues on health care delivery in the communities and across the territory.
Again, I just want to reiterate that when we’re trying to provide health care, especially physician services in the communities, it is often felt that they’re not there long enough, that they don’t get through the full waiting list.
It’s something that I have spoken to my officials about on looking at some options on either keeping the physicians there longer or increasing the frequency of visits to communities.
It is something that I and the officials are looking at already, but we will get further substantiation from the model of care review.
This is a very important issue, so I encourage the minister to take action on the high cost of doctor visits.
I would like to see doctors stationed locally in nearby communities. This would reduce the costs associated with flying in doctors.
That just makes logical sense.
While that is the situation we face, I wonder if this minister can also address a slightly different but related matter.
This is regarding the previous discussion we held around maternity travel. As an example, many experienced mothers must travel and wait up to a month awaiting the birth of their babies.
In my previous questions on this subject, a response was provided that some communities can accommodate pregnant women if there are no complications and they can have a local birth and that perhaps this could be a practice in the future.
However, the response was that local Inuit don’t have licences and therefore can’t be accommodated to allow local delivery of children. There aren’t many licensed midwives in Nunavut.
Mr. Speaker, we have publicly maintained that Inuit are very experienced and capable of delivering babies, as that has been in practice since time immemorial, and can alleviate our childbirth challenges.
Will this idea ever be considered in our future or will the health care system continue to disregard Inuit knowledge and local capacity issues?
Can’t this government place licensed midwives in various communities and have local childbirth deliveries where complications are not expected?
This would allow families to witness the birth of a newborn.
Will this never be implemented either in the immediate future?
Speaker (interpretation): Member Shooyook, your question is not related to your line of questioning.
If the minister doesn’t want to respond to that question, he won’t respond to it. (interpretation ends) Hon. Minister of Health, Mr. George Hickes.
I know this topic came up recently, so I’ll answer the question as the member asked.
When we’re talking about midwives in the communities, there are three regional centres that we do have midwives in: Cambridge Bay, Rankin Inlet, and here in Iqaluit.
When I was in Cambridge Bay fairly recently, I actually spoke to the midwives there and I was very impressed with the level of expertise that they have.
That being said, it is something that I would like to see down the road, of having midwives in the communities. There are some challenges, not so much with licensing, but I guess there’s an impact on that with how many deliveries they have to keep their licensing requirements.
It’s not that the nurses in the communities are not licensed for delivery; they’re there for emergency deliveries.
If somebody on an emergency basis had to give birth in a community, they would be able to function in that way.
I can’t commit to putting midwives in every community across the territory. We are looking at solidifying the midwifery program in the regional centres and hopefully we can continue to expand from there as time and opportunities progress.
Question 749 – 4(3): Crime Prevention Initiatives (Joanasie)
Mr. Speaker, the government’s Community Justice Division has the very important role of providing crime prevention programs within Nunavut.
Mr. Speaker, in its current business plan the department indicates that the Community Justice Division is partnering with the Department of Health’s Mental Health Division on a project called Ikajuqtigiinniq.
The department also indicates that the purpose of this project is to identify crime prevention and wellness issues at the community level.
Can the minister provide us today with more information on any specific goals and planned actions that have been set out for the Ikajuqtigiinniq project?
I wasn’t getting a very clear interpretation on what exactly he was asking, but we tabled our Nunavut Crime Prevention Strategy in the winter sitting based on several years of consultations. There were a number of recommendations in there.