Quebec officials communicate poorly with Inuit, Viens commission hears

The Viens commission is hosting hearings this week at the Katittavik centre in Kuujjuaraapik, before heading to Kuujjuaq to hold the commission’s final week of hearings Nov. 19-23. (PHOTO COURTESY OF CERP)

The first few days of testimony from the Viens commission hearings in Nunavik are shining a light on the disconnect and lack of support Inuit feel within Quebec’s health and justice systems.

The Quebec commission is looking at how Indigenous groups interact with six public services—health, social services, correctional services, justice, youth protection and policing—in hearings chaired by former Quebec Superior Court Justice Jacques Viens.

Lucy Kumarluk, an Umiujaq mother and vice-chair of the Kativik Regional Government, was among the first to testify at the commission’s week-long hearings in Kuujjuaraapik.

Kumarluk told the commission on Monday, Nov. 12, about the 2002 death of her brother, Matthew Kitishimik, whose body was found that year in the Lachine Canal in Montreal.

For years, her family believed Kitishimik was murdered, but was unable to get answers from Montreal police.

“We didn’t know what happened to Matthew,” said Kumarluk, in an audio recording of the hearing provided by the CBC. “We didn’t know how he died.”

Once the commission heard Kumarluk’s story, its staff found a copy of the coroner’s report into Kitishimik’s death to give to the family. The report showed the man suffered from mental illness and alcohol dependency and drowned accidentally in 2002.

That gap in communication is not uncommon in Nunavik, where Inuktitut-speaking families say they have trouble getting the information they need through Quebec’s French-language agencies—especially when they are located outside the region.

Nunavimmiut regularly leave the North for Montreal, in search of work, housing or other services, but Kumarluk said there is rarely a better life waiting for them there.

Her own son lives in Montreal, homeless, despite her efforts to fly him back home.

“It’s really painful to see your child on their streets, with no place in this world,” she told the commission.

“He refuses [to come home] because he says there’s nothing to do and nowhere to go.”

Nunavik lacks counselling services for victims of trauma, witness says

Kumarluk traces much of the pain and trauma in Nunavik’s Hudson Bay communities to sexual abuse at the hands of church and school leaders in the region in the 1970s and 1980s.

Most victims have had nowhere to turn for help, for healing or for justice.

“There has been no counselling and support for the students and victims,” she told the commission.

“There was no aftercare, and that has led to many families being destroyed by addictions, suicides, homicides … and family violence. We see that in the communities [and] it’s transferred to the next generation.”

To deal with her own trauma, Kumarluk said she tried to access sessions with a Montreal-based psychologist through videoconferencing set up in Umiujaq’s health centre.

But she said there was little privacy in the room and she found the experience “unpleasant.”

Psychologists or counsellors come to visit Nunavik’s communities in person a couple times a year, but Kumarluk said they’re rarely the same ones each time.

“So that’s a big need—having psychologists or counsellors helping families with their issues,” she said.

The commission continues its hearings in Kuujjuaraapik this week, before hosting its final week of hearings in Kuujjuaq Nov. 19 to Nov. 23.

After the commission wraps up at the end of the month, Viens will be tasked with making recommendations to the Quebec government on how to eliminate discriminatory practices.