Nunavut Implementation Training Committee shuts down

(updated April 2, 4:30 p.m.)

The Nunavut Implementation Training Committee, one of the organizations created in 1993 after the ratification of the Nunavut Land Claims Agreement, closed its doors March 30.

“Despite NITC’s track record of successful training, the federal and territorial governments decided not to renew funding to support scholarships, workshops, and employment training for Inuit in Nunavut,” said the NITC in a March 28 news release.

The NITC’s closure had been in the works for some time. Last November, the Canada Gazette published that the NITC planned to gve up its charter and its Nunavut Beneficiares Scholarship program, which used to give about 100 students about $1,750 a year.

The NITC, based out of Rankin Inlet, went through the pot of money it received in 1993: in 2007 the NITC only had $5 million left of the $12 to $13 million it received after the signing of the NLCA.

“The interest is not keeping up,” said the late Peter Kritaqlikuk, then NITC’s vice-chair, at the 2007 annual general meeting of Nunavut Tunngavik Inc.. “If we’re not going to receive any funding, we’re thinking that NITC may no longer be.”

Later, Kritaqlikuk told Nunatsiaq News in 2007 that he believed the remaining money would last “three years at the most.”

The NITC did not receive any money from the federal or territorial governments to continue.

Information tabled at last November’s NTI annual general meeting said that over 17 years NITC provided over nine million dollars in training funds to organizations and about two million dollars in scholarship funding to Nunavut land claims beneficiaries.

In 2010, the NITC, originally set up to help governments in implementing Inuit employment plans and to plan and deliver training, provided funding for a finance officer trainee and a GIS technician within the Kivalliq Inuit Association and the training of an instructor trainee for Nunavut Sivuniksavut Program in Ottawa.

The NITC also continued supporting the Nunavut Inuit Wildlife Secretariat. It provided nearly half a million dollars over four years for training boards and staff of hunters and trappers organizations, said its 2011 report to NTI.

“This is an organization that really made a difference,” says Paul Quassa, current NITC president, who called March 30, NITC’s last day of operation, “a sad day” in last week’s news release. “I’m very proud of what we achieved. Many of Nunavut’s leaders worked for NITC over the years, or served on our board. Just about everyone received NITC-funded training or scholarships.”

“I don’t know what’s supposed to happen now,” said NITC’s chief executive officer Dorothy Merritt in the release. “Over the years our scholarship helped hundreds of Inuit students through school, and we provided dozens of workshops on management, governance, special skills — training Inuit in literally every community. There’s no other funding for training like that.”