Nunavut legal aid body terminates popular Cambridge Bay lawyer

Nunavut’s legal services board has formally terminated a Cambridge Bay lawyer after he spoke out against Nunavut’s shortage of judges in a February television interview.

In a telephone interview, Harte confirmed he was fired by the Nunavut Legal Services Board May 3, but was reluctant to discuss the firing in detail.

“At this stage, I don’t think saying ‘this is what happened to me’ is going to achieve any significant goal,” Harte said Aug. 22.

The Nunavut Legal Services Board is the body that operates the territory’s legal aid system.

The LSB has declined to comment specifically on the Harte matter, saying it’s an employment issue and therefore confidential.

In an instant message, Madeleine Redfern, Iqaluit’s mayor and the chair of the LSB, said the board’s rules prohibit individual lawyers from speaking on behalf of the organization without approval from the chair or executive director.

But she denied Harte was fired for his comments to the media.

“No LSB staff person has… been released from their employment as a result of speaking to the media” since she joined the board in 2008, Redfern said.

Harte was suspended from his job as a legal aid defence lawyer in April after he told Asha Tomlinson, then a CBC North reporter, that Nunavut’s shortage of resident judges leads to “second-class justice” for Inuit.

“Sentencing, when you’re dealing with First Nations or aboriginal offenders, is more time-consuming than it might otherwise be because you’ve got to listen to this person’s life story. Judges who know what it’s like to work in the North understand the conditions people in Nunavut have to deal with and [are] in a position to dispense justice fairly,” Harte said.

That statement closely echoed the views of Nunavut justice Robert Kilpatrick, who wrote in an October, 2010 report that resident judges provide better justice to Nunavummiut, because they know more about the communities they serve.

“Southern judges are likely to apply the jurisprudence and procedures they are familiar with, but which have no resonance with the communities of the North,” Kilpatrick wrote.

After the board suspended Harte this past March pending a review of his employment status, Cambridge Bay resident Millie Angulalik circulated a petition demanding he be reinstated.

“He’s really here to help and he shows that he does care,” Angulalik told Nunatsiaq News this past April 1.

The Nunavut Court of Justice often relies on deputy judges, who volunteer to come up from the south on a fill-in basis, to help manage its caseload.

In its last budget, the federal government announced $4.2 million for new judges and prosecutors in Nunavut, but no money for more defence lawyers.

Harte told Nunatsiaq News he’ll stay in Cambridge Bay and plans to establish a private legal practice there. He said Nunavut has a shortage of lawyers, especially in the Kitikmeot region.

Harte said he’s looking to do civil law in addition to criminal law. He also plans to continue his “Law Dog” spots on CBC radio’s Qulliq morning show.

“I get questions pretty routinely about the things I talk about on the radio… so it’s obvious there’s a need for people to answer those [legal] questions.”