Stephanie McDonald
Northern News Services
Monday, August 6, 2007

OTTAWA - Two veteran Nunavut politicians are contemplating a run in the next federal election, and one is already taking a swipe at the other's prospective party.

The Green Party is wooing Peter Ittinuar and Jack Anawak is thinking of running as an independent candidate.

"I think they're closely tied to Green Peace who destroyed the livelihood of the Inuit by their anti-sealing campaign," Anawak said of the Green Party in an interview with News/North last week.

A Liberal member of Parliament between 1988 and 1997 and former MLA, Anawak expressed disappointment with the Nunavut Liberal Association's nomination selection process that occurred this spring.

He had hoped to put his name on the nomination list, but said he found out a day too late that nominations had closed.

"I've been thinking about running as an independent," he said. "I have the experience and the commitment to help people in Nunavut and I see the government spending a lot of money on the North in terms of Arctic sovereignty and they're not spending anything on the people of Nunavut."

As an independent, Anawak feels he could raise issues relating to Northern people, including the high rate of suicide, family violence, mental issues and a lack of leadership.

Anawak is currently living in Ottawa completing an eight-month business administration course.

Upon graduating in August he said he plans to return North to talk to the people of Nunavut.

Meanwhile, former Nunavut member of Parliament for the riding of Nunatsiaq, Peter Ittinuar, is considering a run with the Green Party. If he does so, it will be the third political party he has been affiliated with, formally being elected as an NDP candidate in the 1979 election and crossing the floor to the Liberal Party in 1982.

Ittinuar, currently a negotiator with the Ontario government's Ministry of Aboriginal Affairs, was approached to run as a nominee for the Green Party in the Ontario riding of Brant, for the upcoming provincial election.

While he lost the nomination last March, Green Party leader Elizabeth May spoke to him the same night.

"She asked if I would seriously consider running in Nunavut for the Green Party and I said I would seriously consider it," Ittinuar said from his office in Ontario last week.

It's that decision that Ittinuar is wrestling with right now.

"I have a safety net here, I have a great position with the Ontario government and my wife's health is a factor," he said.

"I'm not a young whippersnapper anymore, but I have enough energy to make a go of it if I decide to."

If Ittinuar did take another stab at politics, it would be because the North needs a strong, vocal representative. It is still an infant territory and needs help at the federal level, he said.

Green Party policies resonate with Ittinuar at this time as does the party's leader, Elizabeth May.

"They have a claims policy, health policy, and environmental policies, none of which conflict with Nunavut issues," he said.

Anawak, on the other hand, asserted that the Green Party doesn't have a real understanding of Nunavut to deal with issues of hunting, trapping, and selling furs, "which we are very dependent on."