Inuit org to accelerate loan repayments to Nunavut Trust

Nunavut Tunngavik Inc. board members discuss debt repayment to Nunavut Trust Oct. 22 during their annual general meeting in Apex. (PHOTO BY STEVE DUCHARME)

Nunavut Tunngavik Inc. board members passed a new policy at their annual general meeting this week that should help eliminate its debt to the Nunavut Trust, the organization that manages Nunavut’s land claims compensation fund.

Under a long-term financing amendment, NTI will automatically set aside five per cent of its annual distribution from the Trust to repay outstanding loans.

“Repayment of any loans owed to Nunavut Trust requires concerted efforts of both NTI and [regional Inuit associations],” the amendment says.

“For example, we would limit what we took that year to $38 million instead of $40 million,” NTI’s director of finance, Sharron Griffin, said Oct. 22, at the organization’s general meeting in Apex.

According to an Oct. 20 presentation from Nunavut Trust, the Inuit organization owes Nunavut Trust more than $32 million in outstanding loans dating to the land claims body’s start-up in 1993.

NTI intended to pay back the start-up loans by 2007.

That’s the year the Trust received the final installment of the approximately $1.1 billion lands that Ottawa agreed to pay the Inuit of Nunavut under the Nunavut Land Claims Agreement.

But it has not done so.

Since then, the Nunavut Trust has lost more than $182 million in additional distribution funds to beneficiary organizations that it could have earned had NTI repaid its debt on time and the fund been bigger, Trust staff said.

That’s in part because Inuit organizations were drawing loans from the Trust’s principal. To date, the Nunavut Trust has loaned $146 million to NTI.

In recent years, however, NTI has made substantial payments to cut that figure down to the current $32 million outstanding balance.

“We are very excited by how fast our loan to Nunavut Trust is depleting,” said Griffin.

The financial resolution, which was tabled and approved at executive meetings prior to the AGM, required a final vote by the greater membership to come into effect.

Board members passed the resolution unanimously on Oct. 22 before the conclusion of this year’s AGM.