Nunavut residents know all about that. Lung cancer, a hideous disease that inflicts a painful, lingering death on its victims, now runs amok in our territory. Fatal lung cancer among Inuit men is three times the Canadian average. Among Inuit women, fatal lung cancer rates are five times the Canadian average. Lung cancer is a disease that smokers inflict upon themselves.
Smoking also costs money, and lots of it.
What's worse, it's not unusual to find children as young as six or seven smoking cigarettes in public. The man who won the job, Hudson Bay MLA Peter Kattuk, is at least as inexperienced as the man whose resignation late last month created the vacancy, Kugluktuk MLA Donald Havioyak. It's no secret that Havioyak's department, Culture, Elders, Language and Youth, was been in considerable disarray and that MLAs were preparing to pepper him with questions about it. Instead of looking for a new minister from among themselves, MLAs should have let the position remain vacant, and Premier Paul Okalik should have re-assigned the CLEY portfolio either to himself or to one of his remaining ministers. Nunavut's legislative assembly does not contain a deep pool of talent from which to assemble an eight-person cabinet.