by Ian Elliot
Northern News Services

NNSL (Dec 01/97) - The topic of Canadian unity is not exactly setting the North on fire.

Territorial MLAs will meet tomorrow for a special session to discuss where Quebec fits into Canada and how Northerners and aboriginal organizations fit into the framework. They have been soliciting public input to guide their discussions, but response has been tepid.

A well-advertised public meeting last week in Yellowknife hosted by the city's MLAs drew only seven people to the legislature building on Tuesday.

In many other areas of the Arctic, there has been no public discussion at all, and it does not seem to have been missed.

"We have 200 people living here and 100 of them are school-age children," said Resolute's senior administrative officer, Dan Leaman. "You could have a meeting here and the only person who would show up is the person who organized it. Maybe."

Like other communities, Resolute got a pile of brochures to distribute to residents, who also got them in the mail when it was running. Most of them have sat untouched.

"It's been sort of a ho-hum thing here," he said of the unity initiative.

"I think everyone's had enough," said Tuktoyaktuk Mayor Eddie Dillon, who observed that every federal initiative concerning national unity already reaches out to Quebec to try and convince them to stay. The message now being drafted by the premiers has been sent, he said, and it is time to move on.

"People are wondering why would we spend more energy convincing someone who wants to leave not to leave."

The No. 1 concern in his region is jobs, especially with division looming, he said, and the popular feeling is that politicians should be focusing on employment.

One of the Yellowknife MLAs who hosted last week's meeting says that issues such as government cutbacks, Nunavut division and the development of a new constitution for the western Arctic all seem more immediate than the Quebec question, but the latter is as important.

"National unity is one of those issues that don't seem to affect people immediately," Jake Ootes said.

A number of people had expressed their thoughts on the issue to him personally or set them down in writing, he said, rather than giving up an evening to attend a meeting.

Other commentators have said that the country has been in a state of constitutional fatigue since the last Quebec referendum, with even the Quebec saying it wanted to put sovereignty aside for a while to concentrate on the province's economy.

Still, elected officials all stress the importance of the issues being discussed, even if the public hasn't caught the fever.

Bertha Lennie, mayor of Tulita, said Northerners may be more familiar with the effects of separation than anyone else in Canada.

"We're going through the same sort of preparation with the Western and Eastern Arctics and we're losing the unity we used to have."

She also noted that Northeners are keenly aware of the problems inherent when two or more bodies claim their own governance, as happens in communities where there is an elected council and one or more tribal councils.

"Separation is not the answer. It causes a lot of division, prejudice, that sort of thing."