GN bosses can’t blow the whistle on MLAs, Nunavut legislators decide

South Baffin MLA Fred Schell on Nov. 5, 2012, giving a speech in which he resigned from cabinet after Integrity Commissioner Norman Pickell found six breaches of the Integrity Act. At the time, he complained that GN bureaucrats “throw everything and anything in the review so at least one allegation against me would stick.” MLAs voted May 9 to prevent senior GN civil servants from making Integrity Act requests to the Integrity Commissioner. (FILE PHOTO)

Nunavut MLAs gave speedy passage May 9 to a bill amending the Integrity Act that will prevent senior Nunavut government officials — and all staff at the legislative assembly — from asking the Integrity Commissioner to investigate MLAs.

Instead, MLAs want such officials to talk to the “appropriate minister or the premier” instead.

“Given the nature of the close working relationship that exists between the most senior levels of the public service and the elected members of this house, it is appropriate that such officials not be placed in a position where they may have to submit such requests,” Hunter Tootoo, the assembly’s speaker and sponsor of the bill containing the amendments, told MLAs.

MLAs moved the amendments, contained in Bill 67, through the house with lightning speed, giving the bill first, second and third reading in a single afternoon with no debate.

The gag order on Integrity Act complaints applies to all deputy ministers, assistant deputy ministers, associate deputy ministers, and the chairs and presidents of Crown corporations.

It covers the clerk and all other staff at the legislative assembly and all independent officers of the legislative assembly, except for the Integrity Commissioner.

And it also covers all cabinet support and advisory staff, including executive assistants and other ministerial staff.

In June, 2011, Janet Slaughter, who then served as deputy minister of justice, filed a request with Integrity Commissioner Norman Pickell that contained four allegations concerning the conduct of Baffin South MLA Fred Schell.

In October 2011, Pickell found that Schell breached the Integrity Act in 2009 by attempting to influence a decision by a government official that would have furthered the interest of Polar Supplies Ltd., a business that Schell owned in 2009.

Under the amendments, deputy ministers like Slaughter will no longer be allowed to make such requests to the Integrity Commissioner.

In April 2012, Dan Vandermuelen, the deputy minister of the executive, filed a request with Pickell that contained 21 Integrity Act allegations concerned Schell’s conduct.

In October 2012, Pickell, after rolling those 21 allegations into nine and holding a behind-closed doors hearing, found that in six of them, Schell was in breach of the Integrity Act.

He also found that Schell had lied under oath at the Integrity Act hearing in early October 2012.

Afterwards, Schell complained that Pickell’s review took too much time and he suggested that Government of Nunavut bureaucrats were out to get him.

“I was left with the impression that the premier’s officials were trying to throw everything and anything in the review so at least one allegation against me would stick,” Schell told MLAs on Nov. 5, 2012.

It now appears as if MLAs agree with much of Schell’s complaints.

“These amendments have been introduced to address a number of issues that emerged as a consequence of the Integrity Commissioner’s most recent review under this section of the legislation,” Tootoo said May 9.

Bill 67 also gives the Integrity Commissioner more authority to subpoena witnesses.

And the amendments give the commissioner the authority to apply to the Nunavut Court of Justice for search warrants to collect evidence.