Nunavut, NU — 2008 Federal Election Results Map

Nunavut

Twenty-five communities, none joined to another by road, made up the riding of Nunavut. The territory covers close to two million square kilometres across the Kitikmeot, Kivalliq and Qikiqtaaluk regions, and the 2006 census counted 29,474 residents, 6,184 of them in the capital, Iqaluit. Everything moved by air, by winter road or by the annual sealift.

Candidates

Leona Aglukkaq (Conservative) — Aglukkaq had represented Nattilik in the Legislative Assembly of Nunavut since 2004, holding the Health and Social Services portfolio along with responsibility for the status of women. She stepped down from her seat and the territorial cabinet on 10 September 2008, three days after the writ was issued, to run for the Conservatives. Born in Inuvik in 1967, she had sat on the hamlet council in Cambridge Bay and spent years in the territorial public service, latterly as deputy minister of culture, language, elders and youth.

Kirt Kootoo Ejesiak (Liberal) — Ejesiak, born in Iqaluit, won the Liberal nomination in March 2007. He had served as a city councillor and deputy mayor of Iqaluit and as chief of staff to Premier Paul Okalik, then went south as a Fulbright scholar and took a master's in public administration at Harvard's Kennedy School in 2005. He ran Uqsiq Communications, a multimedia firm, and an art gallery in Apex, and put housing shortages, poverty and dependence on social assistance at the front of his campaign.

Paul Irngaut (NDP) — Irngaut had reported for CBC North for about a decade before joining Nunavut Tunngavik Incorporated in 2000, where he worked in the wildlife and communications departments. He took a leave from the land claims organisation to contest the seat.

Peter Ittinuar (Green) — Ittinuar sat in the House of Commons for Nunatsiaq from 1979 to 1984, elected as a New Democrat and crossing to the Liberals in 1982. Living in Brantford, Ontario by 2008, he returned to run for the Greens and argued that his party's opposition to the commercial seal hunt did not extend to Inuit sealers; he said he and Elizabeth May had agreed the Greens would pursue certification for Inuit-harvested seal products from Nunavut, Nunavik, Nunatsiavut and the Inuvialuit region.

About the Riding

The seat was open. Nancy Karetak-Lindell had held it since 1997, the first election after the riding of Nunatsiaq was renamed Nunavut, and had served as parliamentary secretary to the natural resources minister and as chair of the Commons committee on Aboriginal affairs and northern development. After eleven years she was not running again, leaving four candidates to compete in a constituency where about 85% of residents are Inuit and Inuktitut is a first language for most.

Governments supplied most of the salaried work, but 2008 was the year mining money arrived in volume. Agnico-Eagle was building the Meadowbank gold mine north of Baker Lake, pushing mineral investment in the territory past a billion dollars for the first time, and in February Baffinland submitted a feasibility study for the Mary River iron deposit on north Baffin Island that priced full development in the billions. Against that ran the pressures every community knew: chronic housing shortages despite a northern housing trust created in the 2006 federal budget, grocery prices only partly offset by the Food Mail Program's freight subsidy, and shortfalls in health care, schooling and mental health services.

Two files sharpened the campaign. Nunavut Tunngavik's December 2006 suit against Ottawa over failures to implement the 1993 land claims agreement was still live. In July 2008 the European Commission proposed banning trade in seal products across the European Union, threatening one of the few sources of cash income in small communities. Arctic sovereignty ran alongside: announcements of a docking and refuelling facility at Nanisivik, an army training centre at Resolute Bay and new offshore patrol ships were framed in Ottawa as northern spending and weighed in Nunavut against housing and food costs. A territorial general election was fixed for 27 October, two weeks after the federal vote.