Mumilaaq Qaqqaq on Leaving Politics

 

NDP MP Mumilaaq Qaqqaq (Nunavut) recently stood up in the Canadian House of Commons and said she would not run again. She lamented that no change was possible as an elected representative, because “The systems are built to work for certain people. It’s middle-aged white men.”

This is not helpful. This is appallingly defeatist. For it necessarily means that nobody they elect can ever make things better for the Inuit. They are left helpless. Any improvement must be done for them by others. It seems to me it is an abdication of her responsibilities as a leader. Like a general sending his troops into war with the warning that they are all going to get killed and there is no point.

As an elected representative, it is her job not just to point out problems; anyone can do that; but to propose solutions. 

Qaqqaq’s signal accomplishment as an MP was apparently to introduce a bill to put Inuktitut on the ballots in Nunavut. A purely symbolic matter; there are probably no Inuit of voting age who cannot read the Roman alphabet.

So far as I can make out, her “solution” to the various problems of Nunavut, the alarmingly high suicide rate, the lack of affordable housing, the lack of jobs, is just to spend more money: “These powerful individuals don’t think change is worth the money.” 

That is either a cynical or a cowardly position. No matter how much money is being spent on any given problem, anyone can score points by claiming more money should be spent. We need concrete proposals, and it is precisely her job to come up with such proposals.

Everyone wants the best for Canada’s Inuit. Everyone wants the best for Canada’s women, and perhaps particularly, to be frank, its attractive young women. Nobody wants anyone committing suicide. The question is, what can we do about it?

Perhaps that is the clue to Qaqqaq’s, and Nunvut’s, problem. Qaqqaq is an attractive young woman. Because everyone loves an attractive young woman, attractive young women get the habit of expecting things to be done for them. They do not learn initiative.

Similarly, the problem for the Inuit, and for Canada’s indigenous people as a whole, may well be that the majority population is too fond of them, the romantic “noble savage.” Governments and the culture as a whole has tended to fawn on them, and look after them, and protect them from the outside world like children, and has thus stripped them of all initiative. This might look attractive, and is fatally hard to break away from, but it is not the path to either accomplishment or happiness.