NTI president vows action on drugs, alcohol, housing in Nunavut

Nunavut Tunngavik Inc. president Cathy Towtongie speaks Oct. 21 to delegates attending the organization’s annual general meeting in Cambridge Bay. (PHOTO BY JANE GEORGE)

CAMBRIDGE BAY — Cathy Towtongie, the president of Nunavut Tunngavik Inc., didn’t mince words during her Oct. 21 report to the organization’s annual general meeting in Cambridge Bay.

Towtongie veered away from the printed version of her speech in the 2013-14 NTI annual report to tell delegates that improved alcohol regulation in Nunavut is one of her major goals.

Nunavut earns $6 million from its alcohol sales, she said, while another $10 million goes to bootleggers.

But only $500,000 of the money the Government of Nunavut manages to collect is spent on social programs, she said.

That’s something Towtongie wants to change — and that message was welcome news for delegates meeting in the Luke Novoligak Community Hall.

Towtongie told Nunatsiaq News she plans to ask delegates to support a resolution that would ask Canada Post and the RCMP for more action to curb bootlegging.

And she also wants the GN to act on its previous commitment to open an addictions treatment centre in Nunavut.

“We are seeing the consequences of drugs and alcohol,” Towtongie said in an interview, adding they’re “causing havoc in our families and communities.”

She called this a “Nunavut-wide issue,” which is not restricted to any one community.

During the presentation of her report, Towtongie said “all the work we do is supposed to make life better for Inuit living in the communities.”

“I promise to Inuit that I will continue to make this my mandate in the remaining two years of my term,” she said.

To “provide desperately needed housing units for Inuit,” NTI is also considering “an Inuit-specific housing initiative” to deal with overcrowding, she said.

And in another move to improve social conditions Towtongie said she also wants to see more “safe shelters” for men because “often women become homeless and the person left behind is isolated.”

Twenty-one delegates are attending the AGM, which continues until Oct. 23 — two from NTI, six from the QIA, five each from the Kivalliq and Kitikmeot Inuit associations, and one delegate each for elders, women and youth.