Iqaluit (June 23/03) - Svend Robinson is driving a 4 by 4 Tracker up Ring Road towards Baffin Regional Hospital, navigating his way around pot holes and bumps in the road like he knows the place already.

New Democratic MP Svend Robinson visited Iqaluit last week to support the third annual Pride Day festivities and also to level some sharp criticism at the federal government. - Kathleen Lippa/NNSL photo

He's only been here a few days, however.

Before his tour of the hospital, Robinson, MP for Burnaby-Douglas, B.C., talks about something most Canadians are talking about right now -- gay marriage in Canada.

"It'll take a year or two," said the MP who wears a ring on his wedding finger and has been openly gay on the political scene since 1988. "But it's going to happen."

As the first openly gay MP in the House of Commons, Robinson is the main MP in the spotlight whenever issues turn to gay rights in Canada.

Robinson attended Iqaluit's third annual Gay Pride picnic on Sunday at Sylvia Grinnell Park where about 100 supporters of gay rights turned out, many of whom wanted to share their thoughts and feelings with him.

But on Monday during a press conference at the legislative assembly,

Robinson wanted to discuss a number of things, including health care consent forms for aboriginal people, shrimp quotas, Nunavut's need for human rights legislation to include sexual orientation and the fact that health minister Anne McLellan should visit the North.

With health minister Edward Picco looking on, Robinson called the Liberal government's push for health consent forms a "deeply offensive intrusion" into the privacy of First Nations people, and wants Nunavut's Liberal MP Nancy Karetak-Lindell to speak out against them.

The forms which must be signed by Sept. 1, will track non-insured medical benefits First Nations people receive as part of their treaty rights.

"Imagine if you're in a small community," Robinson said, "and you have HIV/AIDS and you're concerned that your medical records might be shared with your neighbours, your friends, the people you work with. That should be confidential."

Denying Nunavut fishers their share of the shrimp quota is much like consent forms, in that it shows an "arrogant, top-down approach" of the Liberal government and a "contempt for the people of Nunavut."

Picco agreed with Robinson on a number of issues, and encouraged federal health minister Anne McLellan to visit the North.

"We have not had a federal health minister come to Nunavut since April 1, 1999. That's not only embarrassing, it's pathetic," said Picco.