Nunavik health board backs executive director

The board of directors at the Nunavik regional board of health and social services say they support executive director Jeannie May’s decision to terminate the work of a contracted employee.

Health board spokesman, communications officer, Eric Duchesneau said March 10 that board members met by telephone conference March 9 to express their support for May’s decision to fire Annie Popert, who had been contracted to re-assess the organization’s youth protection services, among other projects.

Popert maintains she was unfairly dismissed and without the consultation or consent of the health’s board of directors.

She said they “had every right” to change that decision.

“That’s not true,” Duchesneau told Nunatsiaq News March 10.

“The board of directors is there to give direction… but they don’t have every right. Questions of management come back to the director general.”

Duchesneau could not say if the board of directors was made aware of Popert’s contract termination in advance, “but they’re always made aware [of these decisions] whether it’s before or after.”

Duchesneau insists Popert’s work related to youth protection services and ensuring that these include Inuit values did not stem from any recommendations made by Quebec’s human rights commission about the failures and shortfalls in Nunavik’s youth protection services.

Popert said she was fired Feb. 18, about a week after she sent a letter to the health board’s executive director expressing her concerns about the youth protection file, staff absences, and too much non-Inuit decision making.

Popert, a former director-general at the Kativik School Board, has been contracted to work with the health board for different projects over the last seven years.

The health board won’t say more because the matter is now in the hands of lawyers, Duchesneau said.