NUNAVUT
From the campaign trail in Cambridge Bay Oct. 6, Liberal candidate Hunter Tootoo said Stephen Harper must denounce a Conservative candidate's offensive comments about indigenous people.

"There is no place for offensive and untrue comments about the Inuit or any indigenous peoples," said Tootoo. "Stephen Harper must denounce them immediately and the Conservatives need to apologize."

Richard Sagala, Montreal's Notre-Dame-de-Grâce-Westmount Conservative candidate, was speaking at an all-candidates' debate Oct. 1, and according to a news release, which included a recording, he asked the audience, "What can I do to prove to you that I am worthy of your trust, madam?"

"Perhaps you can tell me how you feel about his (Stephen Harper) using the phrase 'old stock Canadian.' Perhaps you can tell me how you feel about an inquiry into missing and murdered aboriginal women and the things we can do," said an audience member.

Sagala then launched into a wordy statement about "dark chapters in our history and dark chapters in the relationship with First Nations."

After saying he read a few books about Metis and aboriginal people 25 years ago, he noted "he felt very bad about this."

Then he launched into Nunavut.

"And I realized that it's a problem that seems to trail the governments, whichever are in power, you know. And the normal way of doing this is that we throw money at it, we try to send more people to talk to them, we even created Nunavut and it has been less than satisfying as far as the result goes, for them."

Sagala added: "Nunavut is not that great an experience. Just to tell you, the violence there is comparable to South Africa. Imagine, 1,000 times more than in Canada. You know, we tried to do some delegation of power to them and this is what happened."

Nunavut News/North tracked these statements back, almost word for word, to a 2011 Globe and Mail article in which crime statistics were loosely compared to South Africa and Mexico.

Tootoo said it was "hard to listen to the comments without concluding they are fuelled by anything other than prejudice and ignorance.

"To somehow link missing and murdered indigenous women to Nunavut's founding, to question Nunavut's very existence, to repeatedly refer to indigenous peoples as 'them,' frankly it's disgusting."

In fact, a Statistics Canada report on crime from July of this year indicates that since 2010, violent crime in the territory has decreased by approximately 20 per cent.

Nunavut Conservative candidate Leona Aglukkaq, in a written response to a request for comment Oct. 9, stated, "The comments made by this candidate from Notre-Dame-de-Grâce-Westmount are ill informed and regrettable. Nunavut has been, and continues to be, a strong part of Canada's national economy. We have immense resource potential, a young and growing work force, and a territory looking toward the future."

After Tootoo's statement was released on Oct. 6, Sagala doubled back on his own statement to "clarify."

"I fully support the delegation of authority in Nunavut announced by the Conservative government," stated Sagala, after which he quoted from the Conservative platform.

"In addition, the Conservatives have invested more in infrastructure, health care, education, training and economic development than any other government in Canadian history. We were the first government to develop a Northern strategy that Northerners can make choices that affect their lives."

Tootoo, in his statement, concluded, "That this candidate is welcome on Stephen Harper's team speaks volumes about the Conservative party."

Aglukkaq quoted from the Conservative party platform officially released Oct. 9. "As our platform stated today, devolution isn't just about economic success - it's about giving the people of the North more say in their own future, and greater control over their own destiny. I am proud to state that if re-elected our government is committed to completing the devolution of land and resource powers to the Government of Nunavut over the next four years."

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