Okalik sets up team to steer decentralization

IQALUIT — Premier Paul Okalik announced this week that his government will set up a new five-member unit within the Department of the Executive to carry out the decentralization of jobs and government functions among 11 Nunavut communities.

Leona Aglukkaq will head the new group, which the government is calling the “Decentralization Secretariat.” She’ll begin her work no later than the end of the summer.

Aglukaaq, who until now has served as assistant deputy minister of Human Resources, will lead a team of civil servants borrowed from the Public Works, Finance, Human Resources, and Executive departments.

Okalik said cabinet ministers discussed decentralization last week at a cabinet retreat in Apex and decided they needed a better way of managing the process.

“To date, there has been no real co-ordination of how decentralization has taken place,” Okalik told reporters.

Decentralization within three years

But he reaffirmed the Nunavut government’s commitment to distributing jobs and government functions in line with a plan unveiled by the Office of the Interim Commissioner in a community tour last fall.

“There are high expectations that decentralization will happen, and I want to assure Nunavut residents that my cabinet ministers and I are working to meet those expectations,” Okalik said in a news release.

“This does not mean that we will vary from the targeted numbers,” Okalik said. “It is the responsibility of the secretariat to monitor all the community numbers and to keep them in balance.”

He said, though, that some communities will have to wait longer than expected to get all the jobs they’re slated to receive.

Okalik told reporters that in seven of the 11 Nunavut communities scheduled to receive government jobs, the government has either met or exceeded its target numbers, and that in two other communities, the government is “very close.”

But in each of the last two communities, Pangnirtung and Baker Lake, the government is about 30 jobs short of meeting its targets.

Education council to Pond Inlet

In Pangnirtung’s case, it’s because the Nunavut government has decided to move the Baffin District Education Council to Pond Inlet instead of Pangnirtung.

Okalik explained that this was done to compensate Pond Inlet for the loss of wildlife officer jobs in the Department of Sustainable Development that should have gone to individual communities.

“Community wildlife officers have to be located in the community they serve,” Okalik said.

Pangnirtung will still receive 51 jobs in other areas of government — but that’s still 27 short of Pangnirtung’s target number of 78 jobs.

In Baker Lake’s case, it’s because the community was originally slated to received the Nunavut Workers’ Compensation Board.

“The problem that we had is that the Workers’ Compensation Board is slated to go into Baker Lake and we don’t have control over the WCB right now,” Okalik said.

Right now, it’s uncertain whether Nunavut will have its own Workers’ Compensation Board. Nunavut and the Northwest Territories have yet to finish negotiations on the fate of the Northwest Territories Workers’ Compensation Board. One option under consideration is to continue with a single board shared by both territories.

That situation has left Baker Lake about 35 jobs short of its target of 65.

To correct those shortfalls, the decentralization secretariat will be asked to find ways of boosting the number of jobs in those communities, Okalik said.

“Where numbers are low, the secretariat will develop proposals for cabinet to strengthen those communities through transferring jobs, locating potential positions in agencies or repatriating positions from our Yellowknife contracts,” Okalik said.

He also said the government will try to meet job targets by finding stand-alone government agencies that can be located in communities

“Where required, capital plans will be adapted to put stand-alone institutions into communities where the confirmed numbers are lower than the targeted numbers.”

Okalik also said the decentralization secretariat will do the following:

Establish a timeline for decentralization in each community, with priority given to those communities that currently have available housing and office space;
Work with all government departments to implement decentralization plans;
Bring financial evaluations, training recommendations and other concerns to cabinet .