Is Nunavut Really a "Failing State"?

Seven experts weigh in on what lies ahead for Canada's newest federal territory.

For many Canadians, The Globe and Mail’s in-depth report on Nunavut ("Trials of Nunavut: Lament for an Arctic Nation") published this past spring was their first and only window into the realties of life and politics in the vast northern territory. The report rang alarm bells across the country, framing Nunavut’s short history as a failure of Canadian nation-building, a region at risk of becoming another Haiti. In light of the controversial picture the report painted, The Mark approached various experts on Nunavut and the North to respond directly to the controversial question: “Is Nunavut a failing state?”

The real question is: What can be done to reverse the existing damage?

Tim Querengesser
Journalist; former associate editor, Up Here magazine.

Patrick White's report in The Globe and Mail shed light on Nunavut, a still too-dark corner of our country for many Canadians. It also (rightly) put responsibility for the failings in the territory on its own leadership, rather than the usual finger-pointing towards Ottawa. But I feel the report’s underlying conclusion, and the one many readers reached after consuming the story – that Canada's 11-year-old experiment in Nunavut has created a domestic “failed state” – isn't correct.

Read the full article here.

The term “failed state” carries rhetorical power, but, when applied to Nunavut, it’s needless hyperbole.

Jim Bell
Jim Bell, Editor, Nunatsiaq News.

My answer is no. The email from The Mark News inviting me to submit this piece described the question as a “controversial topic.” But the simple answer is not controversial. It’s obvious.

Nunavut is not a failed, or failing, state – at least not in the sense in which the term “failed state” is most commonly used: a state incapable of providing even the most basic services, such as public security, health care, electricity, drinking water, and sewage treatment, as well as executing decisions or enforcing the law. Failed states are characterized by extreme corruption, a poorly educated population, and the existence of warring factions more powerful than the impotent state.

Read the full article here.

The Inuit are being held hostage by so-called nation-building and the Aboriginal Industry.

Frances Widdowson and Albert Howard
Frances Widdowson and Albert Howard co-wrote Disrobing the Aboriginal Industry: The Deception Behind Indigenous Cultural Preservation.

Nunavut never was, and cannot be, a state, since it lacks the economic, political, and cultural prerequisites to be self-determining in the modern context. Historically, the area of Nunavut was occupied by small kinship groups that engaged in hunting and trapping largely for subsistence purposes.

Today, with the exception of mining, the only industry that exists in Nunavut is the Aboriginal Industry (the self-serving group of non-aboriginal lawyers and consultants that uses government funds to justify the isolation and deprivation of the aboriginal population). As a result, Nunavut’s dependence on federal transfers, and the “havoc and hardship” documented by The Globe and Mail, will continue.

Read the full article here.

Nunavut is far from a failed state: The strength of community, culture, and identity there are not often found elsewhere in Canada.

Shauna Labman
Trudeau scholar, Liu scholar, PhD candidate, University of British Columbia.

How is it that we can ask whether Nunavut is a failing state when too many Canadians do not even understand its reality as a territory? Spanning one-fifth of Canada’s landmass, Nunavut is the most misunderstood and unknown region of Canada. It is remote. From anywhere in Canada, it is cheaper to fly to Europe and Asia than to fly north. The roads that lead out of Iqaluit, Nunavut’s capital, literally end at the outskirts of the city. Much of the territory is accessible only by air or water or ice. The Nunavut that is known to the rest of Canada – to those of us in “the South” – is filtered through the lens of the media and too often divides between reports of violent tragedy and generalized iconic images of Inuit in igloos.

Read the full article here.

The phrase “failed state” is unjust and oversimplified.

Geoff Green
Adventurer; educator; environmentalist; speaker.

There is no doubt that Nunavut, now 12 years young, has much more than its fair share of problems and challenges. There is absolutely no question that the overall status quo – and especially the fact that 75 per cent of Inuit youth do not graduate from high school – is simply not acceptable. But there are also many successes, things to celebrate, and causes for hope in Canada's northernmost territory.

Read the full article here.

Nunavut, a “failed state?” It isn’t a state, and perhaps that’s the problem.

John Baglow
Owner of firstwrite; public and social policy professional; poet.

Nunavut is a territory, without even the powers over resources that are accorded to Canadian provinces. Its governance is a ramshackle affair; an accident of history. The Nunavut government is a public one (i.e. not ethnically based), and is strapped for cash; the Nunavut Tunngavik Incorporated (NTI) manages the implementation of a comprehensive land claim on behalf of the 85 per cent of the Nunavummiut who are Inuit, and is flush with settlement money. No fewer than five joint Nunavut federal Institutions of Public Government administer natural resources. Jurisdictional overlaps are the order of the day. Institutional paralysis is a veritable hallmark of Nunavut governance.

Read the full article here.