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When the Liberals won all three territorial seats in the 2015 election, northerners’ hopes for senior representation in the Liberal government were briefly realized when Trudeau tapped Nunavut MP Hunter Tootoo for a cabinet portfolio.

Tootoo however, was soon forced to resign only six months later following a scandal of his own.

Since Tootoo’s departure it would appear that a perspective from the Yukon, Northwest Territories and/or Nunavut is not on this prime minister’s priority list, for neither Bagnell nor his NWT counterpart MP Michael McLeod, made the cut.

This latest shuffle is just the most recent opportunity Trudeau has passed on where he could have ensured representation of 40% of our country’s land mass in government decisions.

Not only geographically large, the North also has a relatively large per-capita number of indigenous citizens, with the three territories’ respective indigenous populations ranging from roughly 23% to 86%, compared to the national average of just over 4%.

Accordingly, effective leadership of the various federal departments who offer programming and service delivery is crucial for empowering and enabling the success and self-determination northerners strive to achieve.

To oversee the Indigenous Services portfolio, the shuffle saw Trudeau reassign Seamus O’Regan, former minister of Veterans Affairs.

He is a personal friend of the prime minister and accompanied him on the ill-fated Christmas vacation to a billionaire’s private island, which resulted in Trudeau having the dubious honour of being the first prime minister in Canadian history to have the federal ethics watchdog determine he broke conflict-of-interest laws.