No answers, no info on “improved” Nunavut Harvester Support Program

Baker Lake in the summer. The Baker Lake beneficiary who wrote this letter says she can’t get information about the revamped Nunavut Hunter and Trapper Support Program from either the Kivalliq Inuit Association or Nunavut Tunngavik Inc. (FILE PHOTO)

I’m sorry for having to resort to this newspaper to seek answers to my questions, since I’m not getting any response by contacting the people who have knowledge of the answers.

I have been contacted by others to push for a satisfactory response.

Approximately four or five years ago, Nunavut Tunngavik Inc. shelved the Nunavut Harvester Support Program, or NHSP, to do some surveys to upgrade and to improve the program.

The program returned last spring with what were supposed to be improvements for beneficiary hunters.

Each Nunavut community used to get $95,000 each for hunting equipment of their choice.

The main rules in the past were for one applicant per household and, to be eligible, household income must not be over $75,000.

Local hunters and trappers organizations would distribute the applications, review them and make recommendations to the region’s NHSP director.

NTI took about four years to do the review. My calculations might be slightly off, but I would say $9.5 million that would have been allocated to the communities sat in the bank and must have earned some hefty interest, minus the cost of the review.

In my community, we never heard back about who won equipment. The questions I forwarded were:

1. Who won the equipment from last year?

2. When is the NHSP opening again for applications?

3. Will the communities receive the backlog of NHSP equipment that NTI owes to the communities?

4. What is NTI doing with the unused funds and with the interest that was earned?

It took four years for NTI to improve the process of the NHSP, but we have not heard much about what improvements they have made.

Why must I, as a beneficiary, have to go to news media to get my answers?

I sent several messages, going through the right channels with my questions.

The first one was to our hunters and trappers organization office, and they said to contact our region’s Inuit organization.

So I forwarded my questions to our Kivalliq Inuit Association representative.

Without getting any response, I thought I was in luck when I was told that KIA was having a board meeting in our community during the week of April 22 and I made another request to speak to the board.

Again, with no response by April 26, I asked where the meeting was being held.

“Meeting has changed to Rankin Inlet, as Baker Lake people are too aggressive towards KIA.”

I then sent written list of questions to be presented to the KIA board through our KIA representative. Again, it’s been a week since I fired off my questions and there has been no response of any kind.

I also asked that the NHSP director come to Baker Lake to explain to the people about the improved NHSP application process, including my list of questions.

Are we the only community not getting answers here, or is it the same with other communities?

Why do we have workers and directors in our organizations earning over $100,000 a year and they do not serve us or provide answers?

Joan Scottie
Baker Lake

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