Finally — Quebec approves KSB’s move to Nunavik

MONTREAL — Over the years the mainly Qallunaat staff at the Kativik School Board’s head office in Montreal have reacted to news about the board’s impending move to Nunavik with a combination of dread and disbelief.

But now, after 20 years in the South, the organization that runs Nunavik’s school system will finally relocate.

Quebec’s education minister, François Legault, recently sent a letter to the KSB in which he confirmed his commitment to the board’s relocation, acknowledging that it was “important to the population.”

He also promised to ask Quebec’s treasury board for the money needed to pay for the the move by March 31, 2000.

“This would finally allow construction to start up sometime in 2000- 2001,” Legault wrote in a May 14 letter.

Last July, on a whirlwind trip to Kuujjuaq, Pauline Marois, then Quebec’s minister of education, reassured Nunavik’s leaders of her government’s support for the KSB’s move to Nunavik.

But progress on the project stalled because of provincial elections, a cabinet shuffle and the New Year’s avalanche in Kangiqsualujjuaq.

The KSB and Quebec were also haggling over the cost of relocation. Construction of new office buildings and staff housing will cost $35 million over a five-year period.

Pay-offs to board employees who decide to stay in the South would add an extra $6 million to the one-time moving expenses. The KSB will also need $3 million more per year to cover higher operating costs in Nunavik.

“It’s not a little project,” said Paul Rémilliard, native affairs coordinator for the education department.

The KSB already receives a budget of around $90 million a year. At first, Rémilliard didn’t want to boost the school board’s annual operating budget as part of the move North.

But he said he’s satisfied that the KSB has trimmed administrative costs and put more money directly into educational services. So, he’s ready to accept the annual $3 million budget increase as an acceptable higher cost of doing business in the North.

The move affects around 100 employees in Montreal. According to the relocation plan, the board’s head administrators will move to Kuujjuaq.

Special staff will be spread out throughout the communities. Financial services will move to Kuujjuaraapik.

Kuujjuaraapik is the only Nunavik community that doesn’t have to rely on satellite transmissions for telecommunications.

Improved telecommunications were to go hand-in-hand with the move North, providing communications between the new offices and opening up long-distance training possibilities.

But plans for a new high-speed telecommunications network have fallen through.

A year ago, the Quebec government promoted the idea of a Nunavik-wide telecommunications network that would be piggy-backed onto a new provincial health and social network.

After a meeting earlier this year organized by native affairs officials at the Secrétariat des affaires autochtones in Quebec City, Gordon Cockbain, the KSB’s relocation coordinator, had felt hopeful about this scheme.

“But now it’s dead in the water,” said Cockbain.

Cockbain, who recently returned from a visit to Iqaluit and Nuuk, said that Nunavut’s telecommunications are much more advanced than those in Nunavik.

Nunavik still doesn’t have its own regional server and can only handle low-speed telecommunications.

Cockbain said that new technology based on multiple low-altitude satellites may finally end up providing telecommunications for the Kativik School Board after its move to Nunavik.