Draft report on Nunavut baby’s death due at month’s end

Retired lawyer Katherine Peterson says she hopes a report she’s writing on the Nunavut government’s response following the death of a Cape Dorset baby in 2012 is made public, and without delay, after she hands in her final draft in November. (FILE PHOTO)

A report commissioned by the Government of Nunavut to look at the circumstances around the 2012 death of a Cape Dorset baby will contain “no less than” 25 recommendations on how to improve community health care in Nunavut, the report’s author, Katherine Peterson, told Nunatsiaq News Oct. 1.

“My hope is that the government makes it public fairly soon after they receive it,” said Peterson, a retired lawyer who spent most of her career in the North.

Peterson’s investigation, launched by the GN’s health department in February to look into the government’s response following three-month-old Baby Makibi Akesuk’s death, is due, in rough draft, on Oct. 31.

The final report is due at the end of November. That’s to give GN officials some time to read the report and respond to it before it’s released to the public.

“If you have a report commissioned and due on a particular day… some time is required for a bureaucratic response, but that shouldn’t be an unduly lengthy process. It kind of defeats the process if it is.”

CBC broke the story of Baby Makibi’s death in November 2014, alleging that a nurse at the local health centre, Debbie McKeown, refused to see the baby the night before he died.

According to a GN policy for triaging phone calls at local health centres, all infants under the age of one year must be assessed in person.

Fellow nurse Gwen Slade had filed nearly 20 complaints against McKeown prior to the infant’s death.

Peterson, who did not have the power to subpoena witnesses while conducting her research, said McKeown is the only major player who she did not interview.

“I would have really liked to have spoken to Debbie McKeown, because she’s really central to things that transpired, but I wasn’t able to,” Peterson said. “That’s unfortunate and a missing piece.”

McKeown’s lawyer advised Peterson that McKeown wouldn’t contribute to the report due to civil proceedings before the court.

McKeown launched a civil court action at the Nunavut Court of Justice earlier this year against the body that licenses nurses in Nunavut.

Despite hearing conflicting conclusions from within the health department on whether McKeown failed to follow government policy the night Baby Makibi died, Peterson said she’s been able to form a “relatively clear” picture of what happened.

She said she is “quite confident” that she’s identified the government processes that failed the Cape Dorset family.

“There are quite a few areas in which improvements can occur” with respect to how health care is delivered in communities, Peterson said.

Peterson said she’s aiming to write a 50-page report with at least two dozen recommendations aimed at improving how the GN delivers health care.

Those recommendations will be organized into headings, such as government processes, human relations management, education and training.

And the hope is that the trust and respect between front-line health care providers and the Nunavummiut they serve will improve, Peterson said.

“I think the best way to describe that relationship right now is troubled,” she said.

While other government services fall outside the scope of her report, Peterson said that lack of trust and respect is probably not restricted to health care delivery.

“I think there could be difficulties on a broader base, in terms of government services, whether it’s housing or social assistance benefits, or whatever,” she said.

Cape Dorset residents, in particular, are angry and frustrated, likely as a result of historic traumas, she said.

“Baby Makibi’s death is an exceedingly important event in Cape Dorset that created distrust and division between providers and recipients of health care, but I don’t think it’s the only event,” she said.

Peterson is hoping to make one last trip to Cape Dorset, if and when the report becomes public, to give community members an opportunity to ask questions.

The sooner the final report is released — and Peterson said she hopes that will happen in December — the sooner that dialogue with the community can happen.

“But a lot of that is out of my hands, in terms of how the government handles the report, how they choose to make it public, assuming they do.”

Health Minister Paul Okalik has said that the report “may” be tabled in the legislature at its November sitting.

Peterson said she will discuss a trip to Cape Dorset with health department officials when she takes her fourth and final research trip to Iqaluit later this month.

“I’m going to sit down with health officials and give them a bit of a heads up… this isn’t an ambush, or how we can catch the government off-guard. It’s about, what kinds of ways can we address a system that is struggling a lot?”

Some of the report’s recommendations can be addressed by the government, if they choose, on a short-term basis, Peterson said, while others will take more time. They might take more money too.

“That’s a mountain they would have to climb,” she said.