Made-in-Nunavut Corrections Act bill will die with assembly dissolution

Rankin Inlet North-Chesterfield South MLA Tom Sammurtok, chair of the standing committee on legislation, said regular MLAs don’t have time to look at Bill 40, a new Corrections Act, by the time the fourth legislative assembly dissolves Sept. 24. (FILE PHOTO)

A made-in-Nunavut Corrections Act bill, meant to replace decades-old legislation grandfathered from the Northwest Territories, will be buried alongside another failed bill amending Nunavut’s Education Act, after MLAs quietly dropped the legislation on the final day of their last sitting before government dissolved for elections.

“This assembly has simply run out of time,” said the chair of the standing committee on legislation, Rankin Inlet North-Chesterfield South MLA, Tom Sammurok, Sept. 19.

Known as Bill 40, the proposed new Corrections Act was supposed to provide “robust appeals and grievance mechanisms for inmates, introduce an independent Investigations officer, and establish an Inuit Societal Values Committee,” according to a summary in the nearly 80-page copy of the final legislation, which had its second reading in Nunavut’s assembly, March 17.

But those same features were exactly what the standing committee believe needs more consideration, Sammurtok said, and therefore could not recommend Bill 40 for consideration in the assembly’s committee of the whole.

“This legislation will have a profound effect on the success of our current [corrections] system, the lives of inmates and the wellbeing of communities,” he said.

“For that reason, it is essential we get it right.”

Sammurtok said the standing committee encourages the next government, which will form after territorial elections on Oct. 30, to revisit the act “early in its term.”

“The standing committee does not believe that the next government and assembly need to start from scratch.”

Drafting of Bill 40 began in earnest following a series of consultations across Nunavut in 2016.

Some of those consultations were thinly attended, such as in Iqaluit, while other meetings in Cambridge Bay netted strong opinions from residents calling for improved restorative justice for inmates.

Nunavut’s current Corrections Act was grandfathered into law from the Northwest Territories, following the establishment of Nunavut in 1999.

The act itself has not had any major amendments in over 30 years, Justice Minister Keith Peterson said at the Nunavut legislature in June last year.