Nunavik board “sabotaging” youth protection reform: ex-contract employee

Nunavik educator Annie Popert says she was unjustly fired from Nunavik’s board of health and social services, which had hired her to re-assess youth protection services in Nunavik and ensure that these programs included Inuit culture and values. (FILE PHOTO)

Educator Annie Popert says the Nunavik regional board of health and social services has “sabotaged” her efforts to improve youth protection services in Nunavik.

In a March 9 interview with Nunatsiaq News, Popert said the board in late February terminated three contracts she held with the agency over a letter she sent to the board’s executive director Jeannie May.

The letter expressed Popert’s concerns about one of the projects she was involved in.

Popert, an educator and counselor, started a contract with the regional health and social services board in late 2010.

Her goal was to re-assess youth protection services in Nunavik and ensure that these programs included Inuit culture and values.

The assessment was part of the health board’s follow-up on recommendations from a 2007 report in which investigators from Quebec’s human rights commission, la Commission des droits de la personne et des droits de la jeunesse, revealed severe shortfalls in youth protection services in Nunavik.

Popert described “absences that I felt were non-acceptable and non-Inuit making many of the decisions” in that letter she wrote to May and copied to the health board’s chair Alasie Arngak.

On Feb. 18, two weeks after she sent the letter, Popert said she received a termination letter signed by May.

She was fired on the spot.

“I feel like my work was being sabotaged,” Popert told Nunatsiaq News.

“Anytime we talk about making changes, people get scared and I don’t know why. The health board has a legal mandate to provide services that will [address the population] and that’s what I was trying to do.”

Popert said there was no reason given for her firing in the letter and she’s not sure the health board’s board of directors were even consulted.

When the board learned of her termination the following week, Popert said members requested she appear at their meeting in Kuujjjuaq.

But when she arrived at the meeting, Popert said Gilles Boulet, the board’s assistant director, told her she couldn’t speak at the meeting, and that the board could not reverse the decision to end her contracts.

Popert, a former director-general at the Kativik School Board, does not agree.

“They [the board of directors] had every right — if they so desired — to change the decision of the direction,” she said.

“The executive director is an employee of the board. And to terminate anyone’s position, there has to be cause.”

Health board chair Arngak issued an open letter March 9, saying the board can’t reveal much because “the matter is presently being negotiated between Mrs. Popert’s attorney and that of the NRBHSS.”

“Nevertheless, we can assure you that the members of the NRBHSS’ board of directors have in their possession all of the information necessary to understanding the situation,” Arngak said in the statement.

“We deplore this unfortunate situation and are trying to find a solution acceptable to both parties as soon as possible.

“Until then, we invite interested individuals to withhold their opinions concerning a situation for which they do not have all the facts necessary for informed judgment.”

The health board’s comments also address an online petition posted March 4 insisting that Popert’s contracts be re-instated.

Popert said she plans to eventually present the petition to the health board, in the hope that she can continue her work building youth protection services.

“This is the organization where I can be of the most use to the region,” she said. “And I believe people were happy with the work I was doing.”

But there was no good will to make any changes, Popert said, adding that there’s “very little room for Inuit,” at the health board..

“Dismissing [employees] by silencing them seems to be becoming a practice in some of the organizations in Nunavik,” she said. “This isn’t the first time this has happened at the health board.”

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