Scandals, more scandals, mine troubles and one big apology

January

• A whiff of a scandal: Robert Stanbury, Nunavut's integrity commissioner, finds that Baker Lake MLA David Simailak contravened the Integrity Act when he failed to disclose an ownership interest in Kangiqliniq Development Corp., a Rankin Inlet real estate firm. In late 2007, MLAs discovered that the Kangiqliniq firm was one of two related companies that in July of 2005 received $2 million in loans from the Nunavut Business Credit Corp., in contravention of territorial law.

• Igloolik's Isuma filmaking group launches a new internet project: Isuma TV, which hosts hundreds of hours of streaming videos made by indigenous filmmakers.

• About one in five Canadian Inuit now live in southern Canada, Statistics Canada reports.

• The Bathurst Inlet Port and Road project makes its long-awaited entry into the regulatory system when its proponents submit a draft environmental impact statement to the Nunavut Impact Review Board. But later in the year, the BIPAR group calls a halt to the process after Oz Minerals announces that it won't participate in the BIPAR.

• Members of the Nunavut Employees Union demonstrate for a better wage-benefit deal in front of the Nunavut legislature in Iqaluit. On Jan. 25, wage talks break down for good, but both sides agree to submit the dispute to mediator.

• The Tahera Mining Corp. enters bankruptcy protection. Later in the year, its troubled Jericho diamond mine shuts down, throwing 35 Inuit out of work.

• Victor Tootoo, the deputy minister of executive and intergovernmental affairs and one of the first Inuit in Nunavut to become a certified general accountant, suddenly quits his job. Union leader Doug Workman calls it "a black mark on the GN."

• Nunavut Tunngavik Inc. dives into the uranium business when they join forces with the Kaminak Gold Corp. to create a new company called the Kivalliq Energy Corp. NTI could end up owning 25 per cent of the new company, which is exploring for uranium throughout a large stretch of land in the Kivalliq region.

February

• In a motion filed before the Nunavut Court of Justice, lawyer Geoffrey Budden alleges that between 1971 and 1985, officials with the Government of the Northwest Territories and the Northwest Territories Teachers' Association may have covered up evidence of teachers caught in acts of sexual misconduct with students. Budden filed the motion on behalf of 69 Nunavummiut claiming damages related to sexual abuse perpetrated by Ed Horne, who worked for the GNWT as a teacher and principal during that time.

• Jordin Tootoo signs a two-year, $1.95 million contract with the Nashville Predators.

• More than one-third of Nunavut's social worker jobs sit empty, Alex Campbell, the deputy minister of health and social services, tells MLAs.

• The Nunavut Housing Corp. hires Ilamar Marshalling Inc. of Chesterville, Ont., to pack and crate building materials for hundreds of new social housing units across Nunavut. The corporation says this will help them get the $200 million program back on track, following numerous screw-ups related to their previous marshalling contractor, Aaruja Development Corp. of Clyde River.

• Allan McDowell, the former acting CEO of the Nunavut Business Credit Corp., is found guilty on two counts of fraud. The charges relate to McDowell's cashing of two cheques belonging to his former employer, Eskimo Point Lumber of Arviat. Red-faced GN officials announce that McDowell quit his NBCC job following his fraud convictions.

• Mel Orecklin, CEO of the Nunavut Business Credit Corp. between 2004 and 2006, says he told GN officials in 2004 that he had "no experience in the financial sector," but that they hired him to run the NBCC anyway.

• Brock Junkin, a former acting CEO of the NBCC, tells MLAs that the floundering agency must be moved out of Cape Dorset to a more central location.

• David Simailak, the ex-finance minister, faces new ethics allegations: that while serving as a cabinet minister he communicated with the manager of businesses in which he held interests, and which were supposed to be put into a blind trust.

• The GN announces that staff housing rents will be cut back to the previous year's levels, and that certain GN employees will qualify for a new $400 a month housing allowance.

• A Pond Inlet man is convicted of raping a woman inside a washroom at the Baffin Regional Hospital. The man was serving time at an Iqaluit halfway house for previous convictions on crimes of violence.

• Rankin Inlet emerges from a state of emergency brought on by a series of mechanical failures at its power plant.

• Pat Anablak, 54, is sentenced to 15 years in prison for killing his ex-girlfriend, Sylvia Lyall, in June 2004. During a drinking bout, Anablak strangled Lyall to death, then drank heavily for two days before police found Lyall's body in his apartment. Following a lengthy and confused set of court proceedings during which the court declared a mistrial after Anablak fired his first lawyer, he eventually pleaded guilty to the lesser charge of manslaughter near the start of his second trial. Anablak had originally been charged with second-degree murder.

• Jim Flaherty, the federal finance minister, increases the northern residents deduction by $1,000 in his Feb. 26 budget.

March

• Justice Robert Kilpatrick finds ex-teacher Ed Horne not guilty on 10 sex charges alleged to have occurred during the 1970s and 1980s at Cape Dorset, Iqaluit, Kimmirut and Sanikiluaq. Kilpatrick said evidence given by the ­complainants wasn't strong enough to justify a conviction.

• Premier Paul Okalik finally says yes to Ottawa's approach to negotiating devolution – a modest step-by-step process that would start with talks on the management of onshore, non-oil and gas resources.

• Officials with the Department of Fisheries and Oceans reveal new numbers showing that the eastern Arctic bowhead whale population could be as much as 15 times greater than they estimated eight years ago, confirming the longstanding observations of Inuit hunters.

• The GN announces a deal to sell thousands of soapstone inuksuit at the 2010 winter Olympics in Vancouver.

• Seven of every 10 eligible Inuit beneficiaries can't be bothered to vote in Nunavut Tunngavik Inc.'s March 18 presidential election, won easily by incumbent Paul Kaludjak.

• MLAs choose Levi Barnabas, the member for Quttiktuq, to replace David Simailak in the territorial cabinet. Simailak had quit cabinet in December following revelations that two companies he partly owned each received $1 million loans from the Nunavut Business Credit Corp. Premier Paul Okalik puts Barnabas in charge of the Department of Human Resources.

• In a major climb-down, the Government of Nunavut announces that the Nunavut Business Credit Corp. will move from Cape Dorset to Iqaluit.

• Nunavut organizations put on an event called "Celebration of the Seal" to help counter anti-sealing propaganda campaigns.

• Doug "Qimmiq" Wilkinson, 88, dies March 12 at an extended care home in Brampton, Ont.

• Joe Otokiak is elected president of the Kitikmeot Inuit Association, but his tenure is short-lived. He resigns over complaints by some residents about his conviction on a minor assault charge, along with confusion about the legal validity of the KIA's election regulations. Later in the year, Charlie Evalik is elected to replace him.

April

• After winning a big share of the Nunavut government's medical travel contract, Canadian North on April 1 launches new scheduled services to Igloolik, Pond Inlet, Clyde River, Qikiqtarjuaq, Pangnirtung, Cape Dorset and Hall Beach, to the delight of many Baffin residents.

• Justice Beverly Browne rules that Chris Bishop, who faces three counts of first-degree-murder, has the right to be represented by Calvin Martin, an anti-gun-control lawyer who advocates the use of firearms for self-defence. Browne's judgment harshly criticizes the conduct of the Nunavut Legal Service Board, which attempted to prevent Bishop from using Martin.

• Baffinland Iron Mines Corp. prepares to hire 300 people to work at its Mary River iron project. The workers, many of them Inuit from the Baffin region, work on the extraction of a 250,000 tonne sample of iron ore that's intended to entice buyers from Europe.

• Lynda Gunn, the ex-CEO of the Nunavut Association of Municipalities, files a $600,000 lawsuit against Paul Okalik over the now legendary incident in 2007, when Okalik swore at Gunn during a reception in Nain, Labrador.

• Issacie Ikkidluak, 26, faces a variety of firearms charges after a man with a gun sets off a three-day armed standoff in Kimmirut.

May

• Justice Beverly Browne rules that the best way to deal with a massive lawsuit filed by 69 people who claim compensation for ex-teacher Ed Horne's sexual abuse is to pick 10 sample cases and put them on trial in early 2009. Parts of those trials will likely be held in Cape Dorset and Sanikiluaq.

• The Nunavut Employees Union and the Government of Nunavut strike a wage-benefit deal that adds up to a 19 per cent pay hike for most GN workers for the period between Oct. 1, 2006 and April 1, 2010.

• Inuit hunters complain about a GN research scheme that would tranquilize 300 polar bears from the Foxe Basin sub-population and outfit them with radio-frequency ear tags.

• Nunavut Tunngavik Inc. strikes a deal with the Kaminak Gold Corp. that could see Nunavut Inuit become 25 per cent owners of a uranium mine, through a new company called the Kivalliq Energy Corp.

• Officials representing the Baffin Fisheries Coalition and other Nunavut business interests burn a boat to protest a federal decision to let 2,200 tonnes of turbot quota adjacent to Nunavut remain in southern hands.

• In a special report on the Nunavut Housing Corp., Sheila Fraser, the auditor general of Canada, reveals that Nunavut's $200-million social housing construction scheme got off to a bad start in 2007, when only 20 of a planned 96 units were constructed. She says this is because of a sealift fiasco caused by the incompetence of a contractor hired to marshall building supplies for the sealift and by severe understaffing at the corporation.

June

• Five nations with Arctic coastlines – Canada, the United States, Denmark, Norway, and Russia – meet in Ilulissat, Greenland to declare that they will all abide by the provisions of the United Convention on the Law of the Sea to resolve disputes over their Arctic boundaries, including new boundaries that could be created by the extension of their continental shelves.

• Nunavut's disgraced ex-finance minister, Baker Lake MLA David Simailak, faces a big new ethics problem: unearthed emails that suggest he violated the terms of a blind trust that holds his business interests. Iqaluit Centre MLA Hunter Tootoo sends the emails, along with other documents, to Nunavut's acting integrity commissioner, David Jones, and asks Jones to determine if Simailak violated Nunavut's Integrity Act.

• MLAs raise Nunavut's minimum wage to $10 an hour, from $8.50.

• Nunavut Sealink and Supply Inc. announces a Canadian first: a commercial resupply service from Montreal through part of the Northwest Passage to Cambridge Bay, Gjoa Haven, Kugluktuk and Taloyoak. Later in the year the NSSI vessel Anna Désgagnés delivers the cargo while escorted by a Coast Guard vessel.

• The Nunasi Corp. and Qikiqtaaluk Corp. make plans to build a new Baffin Larga patient home in Ottawa, following the signing of a multi-million 20-year contract with the GN.

• CBC North says they have no plans to dismantle their Kitikmeot bureau in Cambridge Bay and will fill a reporter's job there that has sat vacant since March.

• The GN declares a state of emergency in Pangnirtung after torrential rains destroy two bridges, cutting off access to a water reservoir, sewage lagoon and landfill site.

• Prime Minister Stephen Harper delivers a long-awaited apology to aboriginal residential school survivors on June 11. Many Iqaluit residents watch the event in the Iqaluit cadet hall.

July

• The Government of Nunavut hikes fuel prices by 22 cents per litre for all products except jet fuel, whose price rises by 30 cents per litre. At the same time, the Qulliq Energy Corp. raises its special fuel-price surcharge by 6.4 cents per kw/h to 12.52 cents.

• In two separate statements of claim, seven Inuit file lawsuits against the federal government over an experimental program in the 1960s that saw them partly raised by families in southern Canada. The Inuit claimants allege they suffered a loss of cultural identity.

• The 11-day Alianait! arts festival wraps up in Iqaluit on Canada Day.

• The three territorial premiers demand more money from Ottawa and issue a denunciation of Liberal leader Stéphane Dion's Green Shift carbon tax plan.

• The renowned Inuktitut teacher, Mick Mallon of Iqaluit, is named to the Order of Canada.

• The Northern Transportation Co. Ltd. is ordered to pay a $10,000 fine for dumping about 1,000 litres of fuel into the ocean near Kugluktuk in 2006.

• The Government of Nunavut finally confirms a new recruitment and retention scheme for front-line nurses.

• Gideon George Antonatos, 24, is found guilty of sexual assaulting a Nunavut woman, after a second trial on the charge, which dates back to 2006.

• The GN reveals a scheme to equip 11 communities with floating docks.

• More than 200 delegates gather in Iqaluit for a major conference on climate change. During their meeting, Iqaluit experiences its warmest day ever on July 21, when Environment Canada records a high of 26.8 C.

• The Qulliq Energy Corp. announces that they will likely build a hydroelectric plant at Jayne's Inlet, with an estimated construction cost of about $150 million.

August

• Peregrine Diamonds Ltd. announces they've found a large kimberlite pipe about 150 miles north-east of Iqaluit in the Hall Peninsula area.

• Auyuittuq National Park reopens Aug. 8, after flooding and widespread erosion forced officials to close the park in July.

• First Air, reeling from the loss of a lucrative medical travel contract, announces that it's dropping a thrice-weekly jet passenger service between Winnipeg and Rankin Inlet. But the airline will continue to use a Boeing 737 jet to operate a freight service on the route.

• Hundreds of armed forces personnel and members of numerous civilian agencies gather in South Baffin for the annual Operation Nanook exercise.

• Defence minister Peter MacKay announces $3.6 million for the popular Junior Rangers program.

• John Baird, the environment minister, confirms a deal that would create three new wildlife areas in Nunavut, along with an Inuit impact and benefits agreement for all of Nunavut's federal wildlife areas and bird sanctuaries.

September

• The Government of Nunavut and Nunavut Tunngavik Inc. work out a protocol deal with Ottawa that will guide future devolution talks. They agree to a phased, step-by-step approach. The first phase would cover only lands, inland waters and mineral resources.

• Sixty-six Nunavut residents lose their right to run in the Oct. 27 territorial election. They're all candidates and financial agents who failed to submit legally-required financial return documents from the Feb. 16, 2004 election.

• Igloolik actor Natar Ungalaaq makes a big impression with his lead role in Ce qu'il faut pour vivre a French and Inuktitut film about life in a tuberculosis sanatorium in the 1950s.

• Nunavut's integrity commissioner, Norman Pickell, finds that Baker Lake MLA David Simailak committed numerous breaches of Nunavut's Integrity Act when he served as minister of finance and minister of economic development. Pickell recommends that Simailak pay a $5,000 fine and apologize to the legislative assembly and to his constituents. In the Oct. 27 territorial election, Simailak runs but loses his seat.

• Leona Aglukkaq quits her Nunavut cabinet job to run for a seat in the House of Commons for the Conservative party. Prime Minister Stephen Harper gives her campaign a big boost when he attends a Conservative rally held Sept. 20 at the Iqaluit cadet hall. On Oct. 14, Aglukkaq wins the Nunavut seat, defeating Liberal Kirt Ejesiak, New Democrat Paul Irngaut, and Green party candidate Peter Ittinuar, then lands a job in the federal cabinet as national health minister.

• Charlie Evalik becomes the president of the Kitikmeot Inuit Association, replacing Joe Otokiak.

• Forty-four people declare their candidacies for Nunavut's Oct. 27 territorial election. Two of them, Tagak Curley of Rankin Inlet North and Keith Peterson of Cambridge Bay, win by acclamation.

October

• A Nunavut judge rules that Jack Anawak, the former MP and MLA, is not eligible to run in the consituency of Akulliq on Oct. 27 because he hasn't lived in Nunavut for 12 consecutive months prior to the election. But the vote in that seat is cancelled until early December to give the court time to hear another part of Anawak's legal action, which alleges a violation of the Charter of Rights. Anawak eventually loses that case too.

• The Iqaluit RCMP conducts an investigation into the eligibility of Okalik Eegeesiak, who was accepted as a candidate for Iqaluit Centre. Sandy Kusugak, Nunavut's chief electoral officer, eventually removes Eegeesiak's name from the ballot on the grounds that Eegeesiak was not a Nunavut resident for the previous 12 months.

• In the Oct. 27 territorial election, voters dump four incumbent cabinet ministers and Premier Paul Okalik barely hangs on to his seat, defeating Iqaluit mayor Elisapee Sheutiapik by a slim, 44-vote margin.

• Newmont Mining announces that it will postpone plans to develop its Hope Bay gold project, dashing hopes for an early start-up of the small Doris North gold mine.

• Leona Aglukkaq, Nunavut's new MP, becomes the first Inuk to serve in the federal cabinet when Prime Minister Stephen Harper appoints her as national health minister.

November

• MLAs choose Iqaluit East MLA Eva Aariak to serve as premier of Nunavut, rejecting bids made by incumbent Paul Okalik and Rankin Inlet North MLA Tagak Curley. They choose Uqqummiut MLA James Arreak to serve as speaker, and elect Louis Tapardjuk, Daniel Shewchuk, Keith Peterson, Peter Taptuna, Lorne Kusugak and Hunter Tootoo to serve in cabinet.

• Inuit delegates from Alaska, Canada and Greenland demand more say in Arctic sovereignty and boundary issues after a gathering in Kuujjuaq.

• International conservation groups condemn a decision by the Government of Nunavut to accept a recommendation from the Nunavut Wildlife Management Board that would retain quota of 105 animals for the Baffin Bay polar bear sub-population.

• The Nunasi Corp. announces plans to build a new $6-million 56-bed patient home in Yellowknife for Kitikmeot residents.

• Simonie Michael of Iqaluit, who in 1966 became the first Inuk elected to serve in what was then called the Territorial Council of the Northwest Territories, dies in Iqaluit at age 75.

• Pond Inlet hunters harvest hundreds of narwhal trapped by ice in a small patch of open water.

• A report on Nunavut's health care system released by Nunavut Tunngavik Inc. urges the GN to spend more on public health and disease prevention and less on medical travel.

December

• Michael Kusugak of Rankin Inlet wins the Metcalfe award for children's literature.

• The Beverly and Qaminirjuaq Caribou Management Board warns that the Beverly caribou herd may be in serious decline.

• Thomasie Alikatuktuk wins re-election to the presidency of the Qikiqtani Inuit Association with 25.2 per cent of the vote, defeating eight other candidates in an election held Dec. 8.

• John Ningark of Kugarruk wins the Dec. 8 by-election in Akulliq by only two votes, subject to a mandatory judicial recount.

• The Tahera Diamond Corp. moves one step closer to oblivion when the company lays off all staff as of Dec. 12 and announces plans to close its Toronto office by Dec. 31.

• Two men from Sweden are plucked from Davis Strait after their Cessna aircraft is forced to crash land on an ice-floe.