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IQALUIT - The Northern head of the Public Service Alliance of Canada was in Iqaluit last week with the upcoming federal election in mind.

Jean-Francois Des Lauriers, PSAC's regional executive vice-president for the North, announced Sept. 15 the union will be posing six questions to the federal candidates on key issues of concern to its Northern membership, which includes workers in federal, territorial, municipal governments as well as in the mining and non-profit sectors.

These key issues include food safety, transportation safety, child care, the environment, the UN Declaration of the Rights of Indigenous Peoples and the status of aboriginal women.

"There's about 11,000 of our members across the North," said Des Lauriers at the press conference. "That's a huge mass of voters.

"(This) federal election, in particular, is very important. We are by and large a public sector union, so we care deeply about services to the public and we want to make sure that the politicians who are running in this election keep in mind that the people of the North depend on quality public services and they need those services to be maintained in the hands of the public and in their control and not in the control of industry."

Joining Des Lauriers at the press conference was Mary Lou Cherwaty, president of the Northern Territories Federation of Labour, which includes membership of PSAC and all other affiliated unions.

While he does not disagree with the issues being presented by PSAC, Nunavut Employees Union president Doug Workman said he believed that for the Nunavummiut membership, as well as for Nunavut voters in general, the top issues in the upcoming election centre around the cost of living.

"The membership I talked to and the people in the public eye that I talked to, the one thing that they're talking about is that those are kind of like national issues or they're big issues," he said. "Certainly I agree that the fact Canada has not agreed to the UN Declaration on Rights of Indigenous Peoples is a disgrace and they should be doing that, but up here, that's not tangible enough ... And they want tangible and so housing is big. Economic development is big. Access to royalties is big."

In particular, Workman emphasized the importance of issues such as housing, poverty and the cost of fuel. He also added education initiatives for Inuit residents was another concern for union members and Nunavut voters alike.

"I know Mary Simon, the ITK (Inuit Tapiriit Kanatami) president, has been working on an education initiative for Inuit and I think certainly any kind of funding we can get for the improvement of education in the North would be welcomed."