Saturday, November 15, 2008

Girl power in Nunavut

Nunavut, like the Northwest Territories, does not have territory level political parties. The legislature operates on a consensus basis -- with the Premier and Cabinet chosen among its ranks. This means among other things that even if an incumbent Premier is re-elected as an MLA in his home district he still needs the confidence of his fellow legislators to stay on in the top job. In a delightful surprise yesterday, the two-term Premier, Paul Okalik, was voted out. His replacement is Eva Aariak. What's more incredible -- Aariak is the only woman on the legislature, and she's a rookie MLA. (Previously, she was the territory's language commissioner.)


Aariak admits her job won't be easy. The cost of living in the territory remains the highest in Canada, development prospects remain grim in the current credit meltdown and if that's not bad enough the rate of suicide is far ahead of the rest of the country and there are health care issues exacerbated by a vast territory the size of Western Europe.

Perhaps this is reflected in the fact that five of her six cabinet members are also new to the executive and of them three are also rookies. (A seventh post will be filled once a by-election is held next month -- the general election in that district was cancelled to a court challenge alleging major irregularities.)

Regardless, it will be nice that the next Premiers' meeting won't all be thirteen men in suits (plus Laureen Teskey's clown, whenever he actually deems to show up). A woman's touch may actually knock some sense in the other bozos. We're going to need that in the rocky months ahead. And as a wise woman said: "If you want something said, ask a man; if you want something done, ask a woman."

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2 comments:

Chrystal Ocean said...

"What's more incredible -- Aariak is the only woman on the legislature."

It's a sad statement on the so-called equality of women in this country that this event is news (not that I'm not pleased about it).

Consider if the obverse had been the case, that the legislature had been all women but for one man - and that man had been made premier.

No headline news then! That would have been business as usual.

That the NWT has a large native population may speak to the reason why Aariak's being a woman would have been a non-issue. Now if only the rest of the damn country would learn from this!

As it is, in politics and the corporate world you'll find plenty of situations in which all the workers are female and the head honchos are, well, honchos - as opposed to honchAs.

BlastFurnace said...

It does make you wonder, Chrystal, doesn't it? Back in 1982 when The National moved back to 10 pm and the network also launched The Journal there was such a huge fuss over the fact the latter was anchored by not one but two women -- Barbara Frum and Mary Lou Findlay. They pointed out no one asked any questions when two male anchors sat at a news desk.

I can be accused of a few double standards -- quite correctly, I'm afraid. The fact the MSM continues to make a fuss when things like this happen makes them guilty of an even worse double standard.