Engaging Canadian Democracy: 12 Questions, 5 Parties, 1 Election

Jack Layton, Stephen Harper, Gilles Duceppe, Elizabeth May and Stephan Dion.
- Photo by Jake Wright

Politics isn’t that complicated. It’s how you organize your society. An election is a good time to do some of that organizing. Canada is a huge country, and the distances used to mean we didn’t know each other all that well. But modern communications – like the internet and now the blogosphere – mean we’re getting to know each other much better. From coast to coast to coast.

So on the fifth day of the election campaign to elect the 40th parliament, I sent 12 Questions to the 5 Party leaders in an open letter. In that letter I stated that the 12 Questions reflect some of the main concerns for the Inuit of Canada. Call them national Inuit concerns. I asked the party leaders to send their responses by the 1st of October, and we would put them on our website.

We soon received two sets of replies from the Liberals and the NDP. The following week the Bloc Quebecois sent their responses – in French, as we expected – but they sent them. On deadline day the Conservative Party sent their replies and the Greens were a day late, arriving a few hours before the English language leaders debate began.

Our questions touched on issues we have been working on with the government of Canada. We picked up from the June 11th Apology and went straight into questioning whether the parties would agree to a First Ministers Meeting with Aboriginal Leaders within a year of taking office. Would the parties change Canada’s vote at the United Nations on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples? Would they appoint an Inuk Commissioner on the forthcoming Truth and Reconciliation Commission? Would the parties respect Inuit languages in the workplace and accord similar funding to protect it?

The responses are all up on our website. You know for me the favourite part of the speech is usually the Q&A session following it. I love discussion. So for me the 12 Questions to the 5 Party Leaders was a form of discussion, a way of engaging our Canadian democracy, and an important way of getting to know each other better. I hoped that as Canadians read the answers they would help form opinions on how to vote, and learn more about Inuit and the Arctic.

I was thrilled to read the replies as they came in. Some of the answers demonstrated that developing parties were grappling with Inuit issues for the first time – as many people are. That’s fine. Next time around we’ll get to the next stage. There were plenty of examples of partisan barbs thrown from one party to another in the replies as well. During an election campaign that’s to be expected. As the national organization, however, our purpose was not to conclude the exercise by endorsing one of the parties. It was purely to engage debate.

I applaud the 5 Parties in sending their replies by the deadline. Over 6,000 people visited our site in September, and another 3,400 in October leading up to the election.

The economic turmoil that marked the election likely shifted focus away from domestic issues. I would like to think that if it were not for the market meltdown, more questions and more time would have been spent during the debates on aboriginal issues. They were raised only briefly, and were not the subject of any of the questions. That to me is an oversight on the part of the broadcast consortium.

Aboriginal leaders held a Town Hall on APTN which was broadcast on October 6th during the election. I followed this up with a commentary published in the Ottawa Citizen on the day of the election looking ahead to the new fall session.

During the election it was good to see national leaders campaign in the Arctic. But the default Arctic location for future election campaigns cannot forever and ever be Iqaluit. Other Arctic regions such as mine in Nunavik were woefully neglected during the campaign. The metaphorical electoral tumbleweeds were blowing through our Arctic communities while lawn signs abounded in southern Canada. Democracy must be demonstrable in all parts of Canada – in all regions – and we are getting there, but it does take time.

It is good for our democracy when we prod our national parties to pause and consider specific issues Inuit are concerned about. It is good for our country when these answers come in and shared with all candidates and Canadians. Politics isn’t complicated. It’s how we organize our society. Inuit will continue to engage in this process because we care what happens and how we’re organized as a country.

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