Last in a three-part series on Peter Ittinuar leaving the NDP to join Pierre Trudeau’s Liberal government and the fallout he faced

The day in 1982 when Nunavut MP Peter Ittinuar crossed the floor to join the Liberals, having left the NDP, is etched in stone in his mind.

With pain and angst.

When he announced he had “crossed the floor” on Oct. 25, 1982, the former MP was scolded and condemned, especially by loyal NDP members — Peter described them as “hard core”— mostly in the territorial capital of Frobisher Bay (now Iqaluit).

The pressure was so intense that he was hesitant to appear in public. People who had voted for him and given him a victory over highly respected elder statesmen like Tagak Curley, who ran for the Liberals, and Abe Okpik, who ran for the Conservatives, were outraged.

It was his junior staffer and a veteran in politics who was far more objective about accepting the fundamental reasons for his decision.

She knew his decision was motivated not by seeking fame or glory from the Liberals, though he certainly had leverage with a minority government to ask for a parliamentary secretary position or to be chair of a committee, posts which come with an increase in pay.

No, she understood that Peter Ittinuar was bargaining with the Liberals to get support to “represent my people,” as he described it — support he had not been given at the highest levels in the NDP.

Ittinuar crossed the floor to gain support from the government of the day for the creation of Nunavut — and that was the first time the minority Liberal government had signalled its support.

He was motivated to consider crossing the floor because his own NDP party leader was dismissive of the Nunavut proposal.

Ittinuar worked actively and successfully, particularly with the Inuit Committee on National Issues, the Special Committee on the Constitution, and with the N.W.T. legislative assembly’s special committee on the Constitution, to see “aboriginal rights” for Inuit, First Nations and Métis reinstated in the Constitution bill.

And it was Ittinuar who insisted Métis be recognized and included in the committee’s report.

Ittinuar never recovered from the vitriol that came with his crossing the floor.

Rejected by the main parties as a candidate, he ran twice again for MP, coming in fourth as an independent candidate in 1984 and placed last running for the Green Party in the 2008 election. He also made an unsuccessful run for president of Inuit Tapiriit Kanatami in 2018.

With the benefit of hindsight, Ittinuar’s floor-crossing marked a point in history — a huge leap forward in achieving the blessing of the government of the day for the creation of Nunavut.

The second call Ittinuar received on that memorable morning in Iqaluit — right after he set the phone down from talking with prime minister Pierre Trudeau — was from the leader of the NDP at the time, Ed Broadbent, who graciously told him he regretted not having given Ittinuar more support for Nunavut when it was asked of him.

Though he was excoriated and condemned at the time, Ittinuar’s floor-crossing was motivated not only by high values of commitment to a noble cause, but also produced concrete results in endorsement of Nunavut by the governing Liberals of that Parliament.

Later, it was the Conservative government of Brian Mulroney and his capable minister, Tom Siddon, that enacted the law in 1993 that allowed for the creation of Nunavut six years later in 1999.

The Hon. Dennis Patterson represented Nunavut in the Senate from 2008 to 2023. He was premier of the Northwest Territories from 1987 to 1991 and played a key role in the Nunavut land claim agreement.